Hieroglyphics

Hieroglyphics is the Egyptian picture writing used in ancient Egypt. The word hieroglyphics is made up of two Greek words - hieros, which means sacred, and glyphe, which means carving.
For centuries, no one could actually read Egyptian hieroglyphics. In 1799, however, the famous Rosetta Stone was discovered at Rashid in the Western Delta. The stone is a copy of a decree issued in Memphis in 196 B.C. by priests commemorating Ptolemy IV.
It is written in three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic, and Greek. The Greek text was easy to read and soon the names of the Ptolemaic rulers were recognized in the demotic text. Then an English scientist discovered that the hieroglyphic script consisted of phonetic signs, and that the royal names were written in ovals called cartouches. This led to the breakthrough in deciphering hieroglyphics by the French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion.
The hieroglyphic writing is divided into Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, and Late Egyptian. Hieroglyphics eventually developed into hieratic, in which the figures are joined. After 700 B.C., another form of cursive, or connected, writing was used in Egypt.

Mena founded the first dynasty of Egyptian kings. Only much later would the Egyptian king be called pharaoh, a name that means Great House. The period of the first two dynasties of kings - about 400 years - is known by the Archaic Period. It was during this period that Egypt was transformed from a tribal society to a state with a centralized government.