Hieroglyphics
Explore Egyptian hieroglyphics — the sacred carved writing system that combined logographic and alphabetic elements for over 3,500 years.
Egyptian hieroglyphics — from the Greek for "sacred carvings" — represent one of the longest-lived writing systems in human history, in use from roughly 3200 BCE to the 4th century CE. Unlike cuneiform's abstract wedges, hieroglyphs retained their pictorial character throughout their existence: a bird always looked like a bird, a reed like a reed. But appearances were deceiving — the system was far more sophisticated than simple picture-writing.
Hieroglyphs operated on multiple levels simultaneously. A single sign could represent an object (a logogram), a sound (a phonogram), or a category classifier (a determinative) that helped readers distinguish between words that sounded alike. This complexity made the system powerful but also limited its accessibility — full hieroglyphic literacy was restricted to a small scribal class, while simpler scripts (hieratic and demotic) served everyday needs.
The ability to read hieroglyphs was lost after the closing of Egypt's temples in the late Roman period and was not recovered until Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered the Rosetta Stone in 1822. This breakthrough opened a civilization's worth of texts — religious hymns, royal annals, personal letters, medical treatises, and love poetry — that had been unreadable for nearly 1,500 years.