United States Army | Egyptian Hieroglyphs | | | Kelvin D. Bernier | 3/26/2013 |

The Egyptian Hieroglyphs is among the old writing system in the world. Unlike its contemporary cuneiform Sumerian, Egyptian Hieroglyph's origin is much more obscure. There is no identifiable precursor. It was once thought that the origin of Egyptian Hieroglyphs are religious and historical, but recent developments could point to an economical impetus for this script as well as push back the time depth of this writing system.
Egyptian hieroglyphics were around for almost 3,500 years before their meaning was lost for another 2,000 years. The first Egyptian hieroglyphs appear sometime around 3100 BC and then became obsolete around 394 AD. There were about 700 different hieroglyphs during the Middle Kingdom, and this number expanded to thousands later on. Each hieroglyph is a picture/sign that could represent a letter, a combination of letters, or a word.
After the fall of ancient Egyptian civilization in 30 BC, the meaning of hieroglyphs remained a mystery for about 1,800 years. Then, during the French occupation of Egypt from 1798 to 1801, a group of French soldiers and engineers uncovered a large stone now known as the Rosetta Stone. This stone bore an ancient inscription containing the same text written three different ways—in hieroglyphs, in the demotic script, and in ancient Greek. The stone was taken to Europe, where scholars translated the ancient Greek and used the information to decipher the other two texts.
French Egyptologist Jean François Champollion was the first modern person who was able