Hieroglyphics: The Ancient Egyptian Writing System

How Scholars and Archaeologists Deciphered the Pictorial Symbols of the Pharaohs

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics have been partially decoded through the efforts of scholars and archaeologists over the years. Hieroglyphics are a system of writing used by the ancient Egyptians, consisting of pictorial symbols that represent sounds and concepts.

The first breakthrough in deciphering hieroglyphics came in 1799 when a French scholar named Jean-François Champollion deciphered the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is a large stone slab that contains a decree issued by King Ptolemy V in 196 BC, written in three scripts: hieroglyphics, Demotic (a simplified script used for everyday purposes), and Greek. Champollion was able to match the Greek text to the known alphabet and use it as a guide to crack the hieroglyphic code.

Through this breakthrough, scholars were able to decipher the phonetic values of many hieroglyphic symbols. They discovered that hieroglyphics could represent both individual sounds as well as whole words or concepts. Some symbols functioned as determinatives, giving clues to the meaning of a word.

Hieroglyphic texts were often written in columns or rows, and they could be read from left to right or right to left. Some symbols were used phonetically, while others represented whole words or concepts.

Deciphering hieroglyphics is an ongoing process, as there are still many symbols and words that have not been fully understood. However, significant progress has been made over the past two centuries, and we now have a much better understanding of the ancient Egyptian writing system and the civilization that used it.