from the Greek for "sacred carvings," the oldest form of Egyptian writing, composed of pictograms (pictures of objects), phonograms (symbols representing sounds), and ideograms (symbols that determine the meaning of words) It continued to be used for monumental writing until approximately 394 AD Simplified, hieroglyphs can be thought of as printing, while hieratic as handwriting
Any character or figure which has, or is supposed to have, a hidden or mysterious significance; hence, any unintelligible or illegible character or mark
It is made up of three, or, as some say, four classes of characters: first, the hieroglyphic proper, or figurative, in which the representation of the object conveys the idea of the object itself; second, the ideographic, consisting of symbols representing ideas, not sounds, as an ostrich feather is a symbol of truth; third, the phonetic, consisting of symbols employed as syllables of a word, or as letters of the alphabet, having a certain sound, as a hawk represented the vowel a
A picture of a figure, animal or object, standing for a word, syllable, or sound These symbols are found on ancient Egyptian monuments as well as in their written records
a Greek word meaning "sacred symbol " In Egypt, one of some seven hundred signs used in writing (considerably more if one counts signs used exclusively in the Old Kingdom and the periods after the New Kingdom) "Hieroglyphs" refers to the signs themselves; "hieroglyphic script" is Egyptian writing (Calling the signs "hieroglyphics" is incorrect )
Hieroglyphs are symbols in the form of pictures, which are used in some writing systems, especially those of ancient Egypt. = hieroglyphics. Character in any of several systems of writing that is pictorial in nature, though not necessarily in the way it is read. The term was originally used for the oldest system of writing Ancient Egyptian (see Egyptian language). Egyptian hieroglyphs could be read iconically (the representation of a house enclosure stood for the word pr, "house"), phonetically (the "house" sign could have the phonetic value pr), or associatively (a sign representing one thing could stand for a homophone meaning something else). Unlike contemporary cuneiform writing, phonetic hieroglyphs denoted consonants, not syllables, so there was no regular way to write vowels; by convention, Egyptologists insert the vowel e between consonants in order to pronounce Egyptian words. The standardized orthography of the Middle Kingdom (2050-1750 BC) employed about 750 hieroglyphs. In the early centuries AD, use of hieroglyphs declined the last dated text is from AD 394 and the meaning of the signs was lost until their decipherment in the early 19th century (see J.-F. Champollion; Rosetta Stone). The term hieroglyph has been applied to similar systems of writing, notably a script used to write the ancient Anatolian language Luvian and a script used by the Maya (see Mayan hieroglyphic writing)