hieroglyphic writing: Quick Facts

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Ptolemaic ostracon with demotic inscription

Athanasius Kircher

A chart showing ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic numerals, with symbols representing 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, and 1,000,000, plus an example using these symbols to form the number 258,458.

Stone with Egyptian hieroglyphs and a pottery shard with Greek script, linked by a blue arrow; faint pyramids in the background.

Decoding the Rosetta Stone

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Hittite hieroglyphic writing hieroglyph Maya hieroglyphic writing Today in History—September 27: The Rosetta Stone Is Decoded demotic script hieratic script determinative phonogram hieratic numeral ideogram cuneiform cryptology punctuation shorthand Braille Phonetic transcription Linear A and Linear B The World’s 5 Most Commonly Used Writing Systems ogham writing Quoc-ngu

Key People

James Henry Breasted

James Henry Breasted

American archaeologist

Rosetta Stone

Jean-François Champollion

French historian and linguist

Al-Jizah. Giza Necropolis, Giza Plateau, Cairo, Egypt. Side view of Sphinx with the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) rising in the background. The sides of all three of the Giza pyramids are astronomically oriented to be north-south, east-west (see notes)

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