O'Connor,+Ian

CLASS LIST

__Hieroglyphs__

SYMBOLS Not all symbols represented single letters; some pictures represented words. The symbols that make up the alphabet in Egyptian hieroglyphics are sub-divided into categories including phonograms and ideograms. Ideograms were used to write the words they represented. An example of an ideogram would be a picture of a woman that actually looked like a woman and represented the word 'woman'. Phonograms were used to spell out the sound out the words they represented and they usually had no relation to the word they were sounding out. As a result, symbols could be both ideograms and phonograms and the reader would need to determine the context of the 'sentence' in order to find out which word was intended. To indicate whether a symbol represented a complete word or merely a sound scribes would place a straight line after the word.

ROSETTA STONE The Rosetta Stone is written in three scripts because when it was written, there were three scripts being used in Egypt. The first was hieroglyphic which was the script used for important or religious documents.

The second was demotic which was the common script of Egypt. The third was Greek which was the language of the rulers of Egypt at that time. The Rosetta Stone was written in all three scripts so that the priests, government officials and rulers of Egypt could read what it said.