Hieroglyphics

Triarama Task
Hieroglyphics
    Hieroglyphs were a system of writing that used ideograms or logograms, instead of an alphabet,   that may either represent, objects ,ideas or a subject   as a form of writing. Often used as a combination of ideograms- symbols that expressed a   whole word or idea, and phonograms- symbols   that suggest a phonetic sound, they   were created   by the ancient Egyptians as a form of writing and date back to the earliest periods of their history from about 3100 B.C.   The word "hieroglyphics" is derived from the two Greek words- hieros, for sacred, and glyphein, for writing. Hieroglyphs did not contain either vowels or punctuation and could be read either from right to left or left to right, in order to know which direction to read in, the scribe would positioned the hieroglyphs so that they face the correct way. It was thought that ancient Egyptian writing developed from the Mesopotamia's pictographic cuneiform, but while the Mesopotamians' developed a more comprehensive writing, the Egyptians   never lost their pictographic nature. However, in the time of the new kingdom, the hieroglyphic writing was reformed by scribes, as it was too   impractical for everyday use, and a new handwriting called hieratic writing was created that was just a form of simplified hieroglyphics   better   suited for quick writing. Again in 700 B.C further refinement of the hieratic writing created the demotic   or popular script   that was primarily used for such things as letters, accounts and record keeping, and eventually derived from demotic writing, glyphs based on Greek alphabet called Coptic writing would emerge. At last, when the ancient Egyptian civilization began to   fade so did the use of hieroglyphs and by 394 A.D the last recorded use of hieroglyphs were found on the temple of Isis in Philae, by that time only a few priests knew the their   meaning   and kept it a secret. Not until 1799 when Napoleons army found the Rosetta stone while they were digging...