A Unique Writing System

Hieroglyphics were not simply pictures representing words. The system combined logographic and alphabetic elements in ways that made it extraordinarily flexible and fiendishly difficult to decode.

Some symbols represented whole words, others represented sounds, and some served as silent determinatives that clarified meaning. A single sentence might use all three types. When knowledge of hieroglyphics was lost around the fifth century CE, it would take nearly fourteen hundred years before anyone could read them again.

Over 700 distinct signs were in common use during the New Kingdom period. This rich complexity awed early explorers.