Heiroglyphics

When I think of ancient Egypt, I think of a Cleopatra, Marcus Aurelius, and king Tut. But they are only small details that encompass a great civilization that was far advanced for its time. The Ancient Egyptians formed many different types of literature, including poetry and short stories, and they were extremely advanced as far as art, medicine, science, and religion went. One of the more mysterious aspects to Ancient Egyptian civilization was their use of hieroglyphics. Very few people to this day can understand the complex language. The growing government bureaucracy in Egypt was the reason that the scribes started using hieroglyphics. Most people believe that the Egyptians created hieroglyphics. The origin of using pictures to represent things can be traced back to the caveman, but the main influence for the Egyptians came from the Sumerians.

Because the Nile flooded every year, the Egyptian farmers had begun to build dykes to keep the floodwaters out of towns, basins to capture and hold the water after the floods receded, and irrigation canals to distribute the water throughout the fields. Those projects required a very organized effort among every one of the farmers, and a strong central government and bureaucracy developed to manage and control this effort. Eventually, this bureaucracy, including the king and the upper-class became a rigid network that managed everyone’s life. By 3100 B.C., when the Sumerians had invented their picture writing, it had become impossible to run that network without an accurate record-keeping system.

It is believed that while trading in the land of Sumer, the Egyptian traders noticed how helpful a written language was and how it could help their government’s bureaucracy function much more smoothly. They brought back samples of the language in hopes that it might help with some of their barriers. Once brought back the language was quickly adopted.

The Egyptians didn’t even acknowledge that the written text...