Hieroglyphic Writing

We would not know what any of the hieroglyphs meant if it weren't for the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta stone was a great discovery. It allowed us to translate Hieroglyphs. The Rosetta stone was written in three different languages: Hieroglyphics, Arabic (Demotic), and Greek.

Ancient Egyptian writing uses more than 2.000 hieroglyphic characters. Each character represents a common object or idea which is associated with the object.

Hieroglyphics are written in rows or columns and can be read from right to left, left to right, or top to bottom. Most of Hieroglyphic writings are written from right to left like the Arabic language. Only 4% of these writings are written from left to right like the English language. If you want to know the direction of the writing, just look at the pictures of animals or humans. They always face the direction the line should be read from. For example, if the head of falcon is facing right, it should be read from right to left. If the head of falcon is facing left, it should be read from left to right. Also, if the hieroglyphics writing was on top of one another, the top of picture is always read before the bottom.