Hieroglyphic writing has been used in Egypt for three and a half thousand years. It is a picturesque letter, which is supplemented by phonetic designations.
Instruction manual
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Most often, hieroglyphs were carved in stone, but there is also a special linear hieroglyphics that was used on papyri and wooden sarcophagi.
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The writing system developed in ancient Egypt at the beginning of the reign of the First Dynasty, that is, at the turn of the fourth and third millennium BC. Initially, it was purely picturesque, and the words in it were depicted in clear pictorial pictures. The sun was indicated by a circle, the bull by a schematic representation of this animal.
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Hieroglyphic writing developed, drawings began to denote abstract concepts, for example, the image of the sun could indicate not only the sun itself, but also the day, because it shines only at this time of day. Such signs were called ideograms; they played a big role in the further development of the written system.
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Sound signs appeared even later, which correlated not only with the meaning of the depicted word, but with its sound side. The writing systems of the Old, Middle and New Egyptian kingdoms cost about eight hundred characters, but after the start of Greco-Roman rule in Egypt, the number of characters increased many times and exceeded six thousand characters.
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The decorative and formal character of the hieroglyphs led to their use for recording sacred texts and monumental inscriptions. For administrative documents, correspondence, and other daily needs, a simplified hieratic letter was used, which existed in parallel with the hieroglyphic, without crowding it out. Hieroglyphs continued to be used during the Persian and Greco-Roman reigns. However, the number of people able to read, and even more so write, using a complex system of hieroglyphs, was rapidly declining. Towards the end of the fourth century of the new era with the spread of Christianity, hieroglyphic writing was completely discontinued.
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Ancient Egyptians usually wrote in horizontal lines, most often from right to left, but in some cases from left to right. Sometimes (for decorative or other purposes) the texts were recorded in vertical columns that could only be read from top to bottom. Signs, which are schematic images of birds, animals and people, were always turned to the beginning of the line, which in particular helped to determine which side to start reading the inscription from. The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing did not use separators of sentences or even words, that is, the punctuation system was completely absent. Calligraphic signs tried to arrange the correct geometric shapes without spaces, creating rectangles or squares.
