by Lian Slayford-Wei

Created on: October 22, 2009

A Brief History of Egyptian Hieroglyphs

The ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs are one of the recognised systems of writing in the world. They are the doorway into ancient Egypt and have come to fascinate us all on their own. For centuries these hieroglyphs were unreadable to us until a French scholar, Pierre-Francois Champollion, made the remarkable discovery of how to decipher them, enabling us to bring the ancient writings back to to life again.

Hieroglyphs were first used to record the Egyptian language at least 5,000 years ago and it is still argued amongst archaeologists whether Egyptian hieroglyphs or the ancient cuneiform script (found in Iraq) are the earliest examples of writing. In recent years, this argument has been swayed to the side of the hieroglyphs, due to new archaeological evidence.

Despite the fact that there were many different dialects up and down the River Nile, the ancient Egyptian language was the only language written in hieroglyphs. It lasted for over 4,000 years and underwent many different changes.

The language, and subsequently the hieroglyphs, is divided into various states - Old Egyptian was spoken before 3,000 BCE and at this time, the hieroglyphs used consist of simple lists and labels. This period lasted for 500 years.

Middle Egyptian (also called Classical Egyptian) was spoken from 2100 BCE for 500 years. From 1600 BCE Late Egyptian replaced the Middle Egyptian, although the previous language was used right up until the Roman period.

Around 650 BCE, Late Egyptian developed into the writing system which is known as demotic, which dervives from the ancient Greek word meaning 'popular'. After Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, Greek became the official language and both demotic and Greek were spoken alongside each other. The final phase of the Egyptian language was Coptic which emerged around 100 CE which simply means 'Egyptian'.

The languages that were spoken in ancient Egypt are important into understanding the history of the hieroglyphs. The written system was much slower to develop than the oral language. Despite the transition of spoken Old Egyptian to Middle Egyptian, the hieroglyphs continued to be used as the formal language for funerary, monumental and religious inscriptions.

It is the hieroglyphs from the Middle Egyptian language that is mostly studied today. "Among the more striking characteristics of hieroglyphic writing is the separateness or discreteness of its elements. In the first place, the phonetic and ideographic

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