LET'S GET THE FACTS!

Most of the Ancient Egyptians could not read or write. Only priests and scribes used a system of writing called hieroglyphics to record information about religion and government. Hieroglyphic writing first began around 5000 years ago and consisted of about 600 symbols. The word “hieroglyphics” means “sacred writing”. The Ancient Egyptians believed this sacred writing conveyed the words of the gods and helped to preserve the memory of the deceased. Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphs up to about 400 AD. After that time period, people began writing in a short-hand cursive style called demotic. Over time, people forgot how to read and write hieroglyphs. In 1799, a large black stone with three different types of writing on it was discovered by a french soldier. It was called the Rosetta Stone, after the area where it was found.  The stone had engraved the same message  in three different languages. Because the message was written during the time when the Greeks ruled Egypt, one of the three languages was Greek. The other two were demotic and hieroglyphic. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone allowed us to decipher hieroglyphics and unlocked the mysteries of the Ancient Egyptian civilization.