Statue of the royal scribe Ra-hotep
The ancient Egyptian language, written in hieroglyphs, was thought to be a gift of the god Thoth to mankind and therefore any human intervention in it was forbidden. The word comes from the combination of the Greek words ?åñüò (hieros, 'sacred') and ãëýöù (glypho, 'I carve') and means 'sacred carvings'. Hieroglyphs were used from the period of the Old Kingdom (ca. 3000 BC) until the era until the Llate Roman period (4th century AC). Egyptian script comprises symbols which render concepts and sounds.
Only consonants are denoted. Numerous signs standing for living creatures, objects or abstract forms are written, from right to left or vice versa, in vertical columns or horizontal lines.
Hieroglyphic Egyptian was deciphered by Jean-Francois Champollion, a French linguist and egyptologist, in 1822, by means of the text on the Rosetta Stone (now in the British Museum), a slab with a decree of Ptolemy V (196 BC), written in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. The key to deciphering the text was provided by the Greek words ‘Ptolemy’ and ‘Cleopatra’.
