Quickbytes Explanation
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Question
What were hieroglyphs?
Reveal Answer
Answer
A writing system used by ancient Egyptians that combined picture signs and other symbols.
Quick Explanation
Egyptian hieroglyphs were a complex writing system, not simply picture writing. Signs could represent sounds, whole words, or clues to a word's meaning. Monumental hieroglyphs appeared on temples, tombs, and monuments, while faster cursive scripts such as hieratic were commonly used for letters, accounts, and other everyday writing.
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More Than Pictures
Hieroglyphs are the best-known form of ancient Egyptian writing. Many signs look like recognizable people, animals, plants, and objects, but the system was far more sophisticated than a collection of pictures.
Some signs represented one or more sounds, some represented complete words, and others acted as determinatives that helped clarify a word’s meaning. A single text could combine these functions.
Sacred and Monumental Writing
Hieroglyphs were especially suited to formal inscriptions on temple walls, statues, coffins, tombs, and royal monuments. Their careful appearance made them an important part of Egyptian art as well as writing.
Faster Scripts for Daily Use
Scribes did not carve elaborate hieroglyphs for every document. They developed more cursive forms, especially hieratic, for writing quickly with ink on papyrus, pottery fragments, or other surfaces. A later script called Demotic became widely used for everyday and administrative writing.
Scribes and Literacy
Reading and writing required training. Professional scribes worked for temples, palaces, government offices, military organizations, and private households. Their records give historians evidence about taxation, trade, religion, literature, medicine, law, and ordinary disputes.
How the Script Was Lost and Recovered
Knowledge of hieroglyphic writing eventually disappeared after ancient Egyptian scripts went out of use. In the nineteenth century, scholars used bilingual and multilingual inscriptions—especially the Rosetta Stone—to make major breakthroughs in decipherment.