History & Evolution
Hieroglyphs emerged from the preliterate artistic traditions of Egypt. Most scholars believe that Egyptian hieroglyphs came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and, probably were invented under the influence of the latter. However, no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt.
Recent discoveries such as the Abydos glyphs challenge the commonly held belief that early logographs, pictographic symbols representing a specific place, object, or quantity, first evolved into more complex phonetic symbols in Mesopotamia.
Hieroglyphs consist of three kinds of glyphs: phonetic glyphs, including single-consonant characters that function like an alphabet; logographs, representing morphemes; and determinatives, which narrow down the meaning of logographic or phonetic words.
How It Works
The Egyptian writing system is complex but relatively straightforward. The inventory of signs is divided into three major categories, namely (1) logograms, signs that write out morphemes; (2) phonograms, signs that represent one or more sounds); and (3) determinatives, signs that denote neither morpheme nor sound but help with the meaning of a group of signs that precede them.
Examples of logograms:
Like Proto-Sinaitic-derived scripts, Egyptians wrote only with consonants. As a result, all phonograms are uniconsonantal, biconsonantal, and triconsonantal.
The following are the uniconsonantals:
And a few biconsonantals and triconsonantals:
