He was able to decipher the text, which was a message from Egyptian priests to Ptolemy V written in 196 B.C. Then, between 18, French linguist Jean-Francois Champollion was able to show that hieroglyphics were a combination of phonetic and ideographic symbols. The three languages engraved upon a single stone enabled researchers to decipher the hieroglyphic writing.īritish scientist Thomas Young, who began studying the stone in 1814, first deduced that some of the symbols were phonetic spellings of royal names. It was covered with writing in three different scripts-hieroglyphic writing, demotic and ancient Greek.

In 1799, French soldiers serving under Napoleon in Egypt, who were repairing a fort in the town of Rashid (also known as Rosetta), discovered a stone slab that became known as the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 and featured writing in three different scripts: hieroglyphic, demotic and ancient Greek. there probably were few Egyptian sculptors left who even could understand what they were being asked to carve into the walls, as Hilary Wilson writes in Understanding Hieroglyphs: A Compete Introductory Guide. About 600 years later, in 384 A.D., the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius approved a decree that banned pagan religion from being practiced in Egypt, which was the beginning of the end for the use of hieroglyphics, according to author Stephane Rossini.īy the time the last known hieroglyphic writing was carved into the Philae Temple in 394 A.D. Hieroglyphic writing gradually died out.Īfter the Ptolemies, who were of Macedonian descent, began to rule Egypt in the 300s B.C., Greek replaced Egyptian as the official court language. 'Inscriptions that were meant to have a larger audience were carved in Demotic instead,' he writes. Allen in his book Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. In the later stages of ancient Egyptian civilization, only priests were able to read hieroglyphic writing, according to James P.

Few Egyptians could read hieroglyphic writing. Hieroglyphics could be written either from left to right, or right to left, and vertically as well as horizontally. Additionally, unlike modern English, hieroglyphics aren’t necessarily read horizontally from left to right. That means that readers have to have a good grasp of ancient Egyptian grammar and know something about the context of a message in order to be able to tell individual words, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and chapters apart. Hieroglyphic writing doesn't have any spaces between the words, and there's no punctuation. Demotic, another form of writing that was developed in the 800s B.C., was used for everyday documents, as well as for literary works. But, Dornan says, it rarely made the jump to formal monuments. Hieratic writing, a cursive script that was written on papyrus with a pen or brush, or upon a piece of limestone called an ostracon was invented for use primarily on papyrus, a more fragile material.

Ancient Egyptians used other forms of writing.īecause hieroglyphic writing was so complicated, the ancient Egyptians developed other types of writing that were more convenient.

Egyptian scribe drawing