Egyptian Hieroglyphics – Alphabets and Writing
Rohan was playing with his monster truck while his mother was showing off her shopping to her friend. “What a lovely print!” exclaimed Mrs. Sharma’s friend. “Looks like an Egyptian hieroglyph,” she said.
“Indeed! That was a nice observation,” Mrs. Sharma said.
At night, Rohan was sitting with his friend Sir Dig-A-Lot. He cleared his throat and asked, “What is an Egyptian hieroglyph?”
“Long ago when writing techniques were being developed to record events or laws, the Egyptians came up with a formal writing system, which used pictures as words. It was used as early as 3000 BC. There were thousands of symbols used, which represented sounds as well as whole words.
It was a complicated form of writing. Unlike the normal way of writing, the Egyptian hieroglyphs could be written any way- from left to right or vice versa, top to bottom and so on. There were no punctuation marks or even vowel sounds.
The purpose of inventing this form of writing was to make the writing look like art. Some of the pictures meant words as well as letters. For example, the picture of an eye meant an eye as well as the letter ‘I.’ It took years of education and practice to master the art of writing.
The Egyptian mostly wrote on walls or tablets made of wood and stone. The ancient pens were thin and made of reed and the paper was made of papyrus. Ironically, most of the ancient Egyptians didn’t know how to read or write, but till date the style of writing is nothing less than beautiful.”
“I wish I knew Egyptian hieroglyphs, I would’ve developed my own secret language,” said Rohan.
“Well, even if you knew it, you would have to know someone else who knew the language, so you could converse,” Sir Dig-A-Lot reasoned.
“You could be that person! You can learn it if I can,” Rohan said.
Sir Dig-A-Lot laughed and said, “Certainly Rohan. We will write to each other when you go on your next holiday.”
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