The Egyptians believed that hieroglyphs offered magical protection to people in this life and the afterlife, and inscribed the signs on monuments, statues, funerary objects, and papyri.

The elegant pictorial writing system of the ancient Egyptians—known as hieroglyphics—has fascinated generations of archeologists. Its precise origins are uncertain. One ancient Egyptian legend holds ...

Schoolchild’s homework in Greek on a wax tablet, Egypt, 2nd century AD (copyright the British Library) LONDON — A 2,000-year-old wax tablet bears inscriptions of the Greek homework of an Egyptian ...

Who invented the alphabet, and why? First, the hard facts: The earliest evidence of what’s thought to be the world’s first alphabet is a group of 3,500-year-old inscriptions found in Egypt’s Sinai ...

Archaeologists from Yale and the Royal Museums of Art and History in Belgium have discovered an ancient Egyptian "billboard" that might turn back the clock on when the hieroglyphic writing system was ...

The example of hieroglyphs shows that it's possible to come into contact with writing without wanting or knowing how to make sense of it. Writing then becomes a set of mysterious decorative symbols, ...

Archaeologists from Yale University just made a revolutionary discovery that will give us clues into one of the most intriguing and mysterious ancient languages—Egyptian hieroglyphics. The team, led ...