The system of characters used in ancient Egyptian writing from before 3000 BC to the late 4th cent. AD. The system consists of some 5000 signs some of which represent a complete word (ideograms), some to represent sounds (phonograms), and others to indicate semantic categories (determinaties). Hieroglphics was eventually replaced by an adopted Greek alphabet that came to be called Coptic.
"In the temple of the goddess Isis on the island of Philae, a few miles to the south of the city of Aswan, one wall bears a brief hieroglyphic inscription. Its significance is not in its content or meaning but purely its date—it was written on 24 August ad 394, and as far as we know it was the last time that the hieroglyphic script was used." Hieroglyphic was lost to the world from then until its rediscovery in the 19th Cent., when the Rosetta Stone was discovered and deciphered.
©ALBERITH
u271020lch