Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system of ancient Egypt, used for religious texts, royal monuments and tomb inscriptions. The earliest known examples, found on labels in a tomb at Abydos, date to about 3250 BCE. The system combined logograms, which stand for whole words, with phonetic signs for sounds and determinatives that indicated meaning. Simplified cursive forms, hieratic and later demotic, were used for everyday writing. The last known hieroglyphic inscription was carved at Philae in 394 CE. The knowledge of how to read them was lost until Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered them in the 1820s, with the help of the Rosetta Stone.
Before and after
- from c. 3,300 BCE to 600 BCEBronze Age
- from c. 3,300 BCE to 1,100 BCEMinoan civilization
- from c. 3,300 BCE to 2,600 BCEYamnaya culture
- from c. 3,300 BCE to 1982Origins of Qatna
- from c. 3,250 BCE to 400 CEEgyptian hieroglyphs
- from 4th millennium BCE to 1st millenniumAncient history
- c. 3,201 BCENewgrange passage tomb is built
- from c. 3,200 BCE to 1,050 BCECycladic civilization
- from c. 3,200 BCE to 3,060 BCENaqada III
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The era
This moment belongs to the Human prehistory (300,000 years ago to 3,200 BCE), the human story before writing.