Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics

Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics Imagine writing using around 800 symbols!? These symbols, used for important writings were complex drawings. The origins of ancient hieroglyphs are a huge part of the early history of writing. Hieroglyphics are an important part of everyday life in Egypt, these ancient symbols are also a major part of the history of writing.

Origins of Ancient Hieroglyphics

Our early history in writing dates back to the origins of the ancient Egyptian civilization. According to History-world.org, “ The earliest evidence of an Egyptian hieroglyphic system is believed to be from about 3300 or 3200 B.C.” Glyphs are some of the earliest writings known to man. One belief the Egyptians had was “that writing was invented by the god Thoth…” (Simon Ager). The hieroglyphics were not inspired by any other civilizations writings, they were believed to be passed down to the Egyptians by the god Thoth. Hieroglyphs were not based on any other writing but instead were the beginning of centuries of writing to come.

As shown in the book “Hieroglyphs - The Writing of Ancient Egypt” by Norma Katan, these glyphs are squiggles, lines, and shapes, and drawings that represented letters, words, or sentences. Then each symbol was combined to form the hieroglyphs. In hieroglyphics everything is represented by something, “Hieroglyphs, characters in any system of writing in which symbols represent objects and ideas” (An Exploration of Hieroglyphics, history-world.org), these are called ideograms. “Phonograms, which are glyphs that represent sounds...“ (An Exploration of Hieroglyphics, history-world.org). Then they would put them together to create hieroglyphs. “Egyptians wrote hieroglyphs in long lines from right to left, and from top to bottom. They did not use spaces or punctuation” (history-world.org). Their writing may look backwards because of the way they wrote. Hieroglyphs were pictures made up of phonograms and