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Egyptian hieroglyphics are absolutely fascinating. Put together here are some of the most interesting facts discovered so far:
The oldest known hieroglyphs date to around 3200 BCE—they’ve been found on pottery and ivory labels in royal tombs at Abydos. The symbols were mainly used for administrative activities and goods.
Hieroglyphs may have evolved from prehistoric rock art. Probably created by hunter-gatherers in Egypt’s Western Desert as early as 5000 BCE. The rock art was used to mark water sources or routes.
The concept of writing likely reached Egypt via trade with Mesopotamia, where cuneiform emerged slightly earlier. However, scholars debate whether hieroglyphs were an independent invention or inspired by Sumerian scripts.
Egyptians developed hieratic (cursive hieroglyphs) by 2800 BCE and demotic (simplified script) around 600 BCE for everyday use. The famous complex hieroglyphs were used mainly for monuments and rituals.
Egyptian hieroglyphs combined logograms (whole words), phonograms (sounds), and determinatives (context clues). A single symbol could represent an object, sound, or concept.
Egyptian hieroglyphs could be written left-to-right, right-to-left, or top-to-bottom. The direction depended on which way the animal or human figures were facing.
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs lacked spaces between words and punctuation, making decipherment a grammatical puzzle.
While Gardiner’s Sign List catalogs 700+ Egyptian hieroglyphs, later discoveries expanded the count to over 1,000! Including abstract concepts and sounds.
Egyptians used hieroglyphics for a decimal system. They had symbols for units up to a million. For example, a lotus flower represented 1,000.
Ancient Egyptians called hieroglyphs medu netjer, believing Thoth, the god of wisdom, gifted them writing. Another God—Ra opposed it—fearing it would weaken human memory.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were key to spells—from curing scorpion bites to love incantations. For example, a New Kingdom love spell wanted Ra to make a woman pursue a man “like a cow seeking pasture”.
Ancient Egyptian tomb walls have been known to feature hieroglyphic texts like the Book of the Dead to guide souls through the underworld. Queen Nefertari’s tomb portrays her playing the afterlife board game senet.
On September 14, 1822, Jean-François Champollion, after deciphering the names Ramses and Thutmosis on the Rosetta Stone, using Coptic and cartouche analysis—famously exclaimed: “Je tiens l’affaire!” (“I’ve got it!”). He then collapsed into a five-day faint from exhaustion and euphoria—his work was key to translating ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics.
Islamic scholars in the 9th–10th centuries partially decoded hieroglyphs by comparing them to Coptic—long before the Rosetta Stone.
The final known hieroglyphs were carved in 394 CE at the Temple of Philae—sadly it would be the end of a 3,600-year tradition.
A pharaoh’s name (possibly Senusret II) was written as a pair of outstretched arms followed by three penises in hieroglyphs—a ballsy detail lost to time.
The Rosetta Stone’s inscription was basically a tax decree—it praised Pharaoh Ptolemy V for granting priests tax exemptions.
Food historians have recreated recipes from hieroglyphic texts—including dishes like crocodile meatloaf.
In ancient Egypt, scribes were exempt from taxes, military service, and manual labor. Literacy was literally a path to the social elite.
The last descendant of the ancient Egyptian language is Coptic—which uses Greek letters plus hieroglyphic-derived symbols. The symbols are still used in Coptic Christian liturgy.
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