Hieroglyphics is an Ancient Egyptian system of picture or symbols writing. Hieroglyphic is a Greek word for "sacred carvings" (hieros = sacred; glyphe - carving). It was called sacred carvings because the priestly class did most of the writing. Egyptian hieroglyphs, or characters, were written on stone, painted on walls, and written on papyrus. The hieroglyphs were originally pictures of familiar things such as men, other living creatures, natural or manufactured objects, and geographical features. Later, various abstract symbols became characters. Researchers deciphered the hieroglyphics and used it to learn more about the Egyptian culture and history. For a while the scholars were not able to decipher the writing because the hieroglyphics was lost. In the year 1799 during Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, the French found at Rosetta a stone with writing in three scripts, Egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek. By using Greek as a guide they had discovered the key to the hieroglyphics on the stone.

Papyrus - is an Egyptian writing material made from the papyrus plant and from which we get the modern paper.

Types of Hieroglyphs: The Egyptians had more than 500 hieroglyphs. There were three types of characters

1. Picto-ideograms or word signs - were the earliest type of hieroglyphs. A pictograph was a character representing the object depicted. Later, pictures were used as ideograms to represent qualities of the object depicted. For example, a picture of a lion might mean "lion" (pictograph) or "strength" (ideogram).

2. Phonograms or sound symbols - were devised at a later stage to represent syllables and sounds. The Egyptians had about 100 phonograms, the mostimportant of which formed a hieroglyphic alphabet of 24 letters. After the Egyptians developed their sound signs, they could have discarded picto-ideograms, but instead they developed a system that mingled sound signs with word signs.

3. Determinatives or guides to the meaning - were used to prevent confusion. Almost every word was followed by a determinative. For example, a picture of a sitting man after a group of signs indicated that the group referred to a man or to a man's name.

History of Hieroglyphics:

• 3100 B.C - during this time the oldest known hieroglyphs were written. Gradually the Egyptian developed Hieratic.
• 600 B.C. - demotic style of writing was developed.
• 3^rd Century A.D. - the old Egyptian language reached its final form as Coptic, it was written in Greek and demotic letters. After this the hieroglyphic system soon died out.

Hieratic - a cursive, flowing style of writing with a brush. Hieratic is the "priestly" script extensively used on manuscripts and paintings.

Demotic - a simple cursive script that replaced hieratic as the script for everyday use from 600 B.C. onward.

Coptic - is the final form of Ancient Egyptian language, it was written in Greek and demotic letters. Coptic alphabet was used during the 3^rd century B.C. after the Greek conquer Egypt. Coptic was an official language in Egypt until around the 13^th Century A.D. Arabic later replaced it.