Name Ancient Egypt

Hieroglyphics
Ancient Egyptians used pictures in their writing to represent objects,
actions, sounds, ideas, or words. The pictures are called hieroglyphs, and
there were over 700 of them, collectively known as hieroglyphics. The
word Hieroglyph has two Greek root words: hieros means holy and glyphe
means writing; thus, hieroglyph means “holy writing.”

While we always read from left to right, hieroglyphs could be read in

several different ways, with the pictures themselves being the clues to
how to read them. When an animal hieroglyph faced right, the
hieroglyphs were read from right to left. When an animal hieroglyph faced
left, the hieroglyphs were read from left to right. Sometimes they were
even read from top to bottom.

Hieroglyphs were written on the stems of a water

plant called papyrus reed. The Egyptians
flattened the reeds, dried them out, and
fastened them together into pages. Sometimes
hieroglyphs were carved into stone, or painted
on the walls of the tombs. They used thin, sharp
reeds dipped into ink as a writing utensil, similar in concept to quill pens.

Today scholars are able to understand some hieroglyphics thanks to the

Rosetta Stone. This stone, which was found in 1799 and named after the
town where it was discovered, is over twenty-two hundred years old. It is
45 inches high, 28.5 inches wide, and 11 inches think, and weighs almost
1,700 pounds. In 196 B.C., when it was made, there were three kinds of
writing being used in Egypt: hieroglyphics for important and religious
documents; Egyptian writing (Demotic) by most Egyptian people; and
Greek writing by the rulers. The same passage is carved into the stone
three times, once in each kind of writing. It took scholars 20 years to
decode and understand what is written on the stone: a list of what the
pharaoh of the time had done to benefit the priests and people of Egypt.

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