hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphs are the formal writing system of ancient Egypt, employing logographic, phonetic, and determinative signs to encode language in a pictorial form. The term hieroglyph comes from Greek hieros "sacred" and glyphe "carving," reflecting their sacred use in temple and tomb inscriptions.

The script uses hundreds of signs: logograms that stand for words, phonograms that convey sounds (including uniliteral, biliteral, and triliteral signs), and determinatives that clarify meaning but are not spoken. Signs may be arranged in horizontal or vertical blocks and typically face the beginning of the line, indicating the reading direction.

Originating in the late predynastic period and first attested around 3200 BCE, hieroglyphs were used primarily for monumental religious and ceremonial texts, while daily writing was carried out in cursive scripts known as hieratic and, later, demotic. The script declined after the end of the pharaonic era, gradually being replaced by other writing systems.

The decipherment of hieroglyphs began with Jean-François Champollion’s work in 1822, following the Rosetta Stone, which bore the same inscription in Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphic signs. This breakthrough opened access to Egyptian history, literature, and daily life through inscriptions on temples, tombs, and papyri.

In the modern era, hieroglyphs are studied through archaeology, linguistics, and digital technologies. They are encoded in Unicode (Egyptian Hieroglyphs block) to support scholarly work, reproduction, and education.