Ancient Egyptians had more than 2,000 characters, which they called hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics were used as a written language. In Egyptian letters each of the symbols stood for a sound, unlike English, hieroglyphics were used phonetically.

Egyptian Letters is Hieroglyphics

There are two basic types of hieroglyphs: Ideograms and Phonograms. Ideograms are images that depict the object they represent. For example, the image of a mouth can represent the word ‘mouth’. Phonograms are images that represent the sounds of the Ancient Egyptian language, just like our alphabet represents the sound of our language. For example, the image of a mouth can also represent the sound ‘R’.

The mysteries of ancient Egypt have confounded and fascinated other cultures for years. Hieroglyphics were used to represent various ideas and thoughts. These symbols have Egyptian letters, word, or phrase meanings that are still of interest to people today. This writing was uncovered by the Rosetta Stone. Hieroglyphics uses small pictures which represent the sound of the object or an idea associated with the object.

Hieroglyphs are pictures that were used to write the ancient Egyptian language. AS in other languages, words in Egyptian were made up of sounds, partly of consonants and partly of vowels. But, the writing of hieroglyphs constantly ignored and omitted vowels. You can see hieroglyphics on ancient tombs, pyramid walls, pottery, and ceramics. Scribes also used hieroglyphics on papyrus to record the history of Egypt.

Hieroglyphs were written on papyrus reed, which is a water or marsh plant, with tall straight hollow stems. The reeds were flattened, dried, and stuck together to make pages. Egyptian writing was done with pen and ink on fine paper (papyrus). The ink and paint came from plants which they crushed and mixed with water.

Egyptian Signs

Egyptian signs were of two types, phonetic signs, and determinatives, signs which gave a clue to the meaning of the word. Most words were made up of phonetic signs, followed by one determinative. A few had two or three determinatives.

Hieroglyphs are written in rows or columns and can be read from left to right or from right to left. You can distinguish the direction in which the text is to be read because the human or animal figures always face towards the beginning of the line. When the names of kings and queens were written using hieroglyphics they were always placed within an oval border or cartouche.