Egyptian manuscripts

The hieroglyphs were a writing system invented by the ancient Egyptians. It was used from the predynastic period until the fourth century. The ancient Egyptians used three basic types of writing: hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic; the latter corresponds to the Late Period of Egypt.

The hieroglyphs are characterized by the use of signs, whose meaning is known thanks to the deciphering of the texts contained in the Rosetta Stone, which was found in 1799, in which a decree is recorded in three types of writing: hieroglyphic, demotic and Uncial Greek It was possible to decipher this document thanks to the studies carried out by Thomas Young and, fundamentally, to Jean-François Champollion who managed to decipher the method of its reading in 1822, 23 years after the stone was discovered.

By extension, the hieroglyphic sign has also been given to some of the graphemes of the cuneiform script and others. The reason is that those few signs would not use the phonetic principle, but the ideographic principle of representation of writing.