ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING.

The ancient Egyptian writing which is called hieroglyphics were composed of pictures and drawings. The hieroglyphic alphabets is composed of drawings to symbolize ancient Egyptian letters. The anciet Egyptians were very cultured and civilized that is why they cherished learning and cherished their history and invented this method of writing to keep their civilization recorded on walls of temples and tombs. The hieroglyphics alphabet is made up of drawings representing sound of letter, thus they were all constant letters. Also ancient egyptian writing used small pictures for representing whole words, ideas or actions. HIEROGLYPHICS There is about 700 letters in ancient egyptian writing system. The ancient Egyptians considered this type of writing as sacred and religious writings and most were placed and carved on tombs or wall of temples.The Egyptian writings were considered "words of Gods". The ibis-headed god Thoth was considered to be patron deity of writing and scribes. Hieroglyphs were primarily used for religious and formal secular purposes. Early in historical period, a simpler cursive script was developed, in which each character was a simplified version of a hieroglyph. This script is today known as hieratic and was widely used until about 800 BCE for business, literary and religious texts. By about 700 BCE another script today called demotic had evolved from hieratic. Business, legal and literary inscriptions were written in demotic.

Egyptologist-Jean-Francois Champollion 1790-1832

Champollion was a French Egyptologist, who is acknowledged as father of modern Egyptology. He achieved many things during his short career, but he is best known for his work on Rosetta Stone. It was his deciphering of hieroglyphics contained on Stone that laid foundations for Egyptian archaeology. He was born in 1790. His oldest brother educated him until he turned 10, at which time he was enrolled in Lyceum in Grenoble. His brother was also an archaeologist, and it is probably from his influence that he developed a passion for languages in general and for Egypt in particular. While he was at Lyceum, he presented a paper in which he argued that language of Copts in contemporary Egypt was in essence same as that used by Egyptians of antiquity. His education continued at College de France, where he specialized in languages of Orient. He knew bits and pieces of many languages, and was fluent in several others. A partial listing of languages he was familiar with is astounding: Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean, Chinese, Coptic, Ethiopic, Sanskrit, Pahlevi, and Persian. When he finished his education, he was invited to teach Royal College of Grenoble, where he taught history and politics. By age of 19, he had earned his Doctor of Letters and his career began really taking off. He continued to teach at Grenoble until 1816. In 1818, he was appointed to a chair in history and geography at Royal College of Grenoble, and taught there until 1821.