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History

The evolution of Egyptian Writing
The writing system developed in ancient Egypt at the turn of the 4th and 3rd thousand. BC. (The beginning of the reign of Dynasty I). The letter began with the fact that people were trying to draw things that were said. Drawing is savage tribes should convey some persuasion: the image lake with floating fish in it and people on both sides means that two villages had agreed to work together to enjoy fishing in a certain place. You can jot down a few features images of various things and beings: human, bird, lion, shovels, stars. The word "day", "prayer", "force" can not be drawn; they only have to recall the figure: the day - a circle, meaning sun, prayer - image of a man with raised hands to the gods, force - a figure of a bull, and so on. So people started developing such kind of communication.
The word 'hieroglyph' comes from the Greek hieros 'sacred' and gluptien 'carved in stone'. From the Old Kingdom (about 2613-2160 BC) onwards, hieroglyphs were reserved largely for monumental inscriptions. (Britishmuseum)
Ancient Egyptians used three scripts: hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic. Hieroglyphic system, invented in 3000 BC, is the earliest form of the ancient Egyptian writing. Its elements are pictures or pictograms, and it was used for religious texts. Hieratic letter - a simplified cursive form of hieroglyphic, is used in the preparation of legal and business documents. Demotic, another kind of shorthand, was bases approximately 600 years BC. It was used in everyday life for a variety of purposes, while the hieroglyphic and hieratic system at the time was used only for religious texts.
You may also see different signs on the walls of tombs, sarcophagi and temples. The Egyptians called their hieroglyphics ("words of the gods"), and the writing itself "speech of the gods." The Egyptians did not care about the rules of writing texts. Their only concern was the beauty of characters. So the texts could be written both left to right and right to left, and even upside down. Typically, this depended on the surface on which they are deposited. Each character had its own color.

All characters were divided into 4 groups:

1. alphabetical characters-letters. They represent one sound. There were 24 signs.
2. Hieroglyphics-syllables. Consists of two or three characters, letters and presents the reading of two or three consonants. Vowels are not indicated.
3. Characters keywords (drawings of objects). They used them infrequently, some have become syllabic characters. But if they are still in use, it is separated by a vertical line in order to let the reader understand that this is one word.
4. Hieroglyphics-definition determiners. They can not be read, help the reader, and placed after the word. For example, marching feet, drawn at the end of words, indicates the verb associated with the motion. And the heads of people, animals, birds are always rotated in the direction from which we should start rading. Sentences and words were never separated from each other.
Medieval scholars could not read Egyptian hieroglyphics for centuries. However, at the end of the XVIII century when the Danish archaeologist Morgen Zongo made a startling discovery, wich had broken a myth about the mystical power of signs. He was unable to decipher the hieroglyphs themselves, but he found that oval frame around some icons indicate the name of the Pharaoh. At the same time, the English physicist Thomas Young also studied characters. He found that the names of pharaohs and personal names sounded the same in all three inscriptions. So it was deciphered the name of Ptolemy.
Rosetta Stone played a huge role in solving the mysteries of Egyptian writing. It is a slab of granodiorite found in 1799 near the small town of Rosetta (Rashid now), not far from Alexandria. In addition, the last hieroglyphic text was written at the Temple of Philae in A.D. 450. The spoken Egyptian language was superseded by Arabic in the Middle Ages. (Historymuseum)
The writing with the creation of papyrus had spread rapidly around the state. In the manufacture of writing material papyrus stems were purified from the cortex, the core was cut lengthwise into thin strips. The resulting overlapping strips laid out on a flat surface. They laid out at right angles to another layer of strips and placed under a large smooth stone, and then left in the hot sun. Papyrus was sold in rolls in large quantities. In order to write, the roll was unwound and a strip piece of strip needed was cut then.
The Egyptians had used obliquely truncate reed that, wrapping, can be adapted for writing fine or coarse dashes. After the III century BC Egyptians began to use a sharpened reed, so-called "Calamus", which made the obtaining an accurate outline of the letters possible.
Inks were made from leather or charcoal, water and resin. The quality of the inks was very high, and even has retained its deep gloss black till nowadays. A red dye and natural ocher used to write titles and section titles.
Today, about 70% of the predynastic characters are supposed to translated. Jim Allen, a member of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, said that these characters are like puzzle of modern Japanese writing. Values ​​depicted on them in the form of drawings. At first phonetic symbol indicates, for example, "I believe" – ​​bee, glah, sheet.
Abydos hieroglyphs preceded complex hieroglyphic forms detected at later attractions like Turin and Metge. In archeology, it is assumed that the new digs create many new issues and challenges that must be addressed.
First attested in writing as early as 3200 BC, the Egyptian language was spoken until the 11th century AD, when it died out except for use in ritual in the Coptic Church, the ancient Christian Church of Egypt. And after Islamic invaders from Arabia conquered the Nile valley in AD 641, Arabic gradually replaced the native speech and writing. (Powell)
Then Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire. Although its ancient customs continued under Roman rule for the next four
hundred years, Egypt gradually lost its old identity, first to Christianity and then, in AD 641, to Islam. The Roman conquest of 30 BC is generally considered as the end of ancient Egyptian civilization. (James 11)
Then after Egypt lost its independence, the Egyptian writing, language and culture quickly fell into disrepair, came under the influence of Greek and Latin ones. In the III century BC, Greek letter gained the final victory. Egyptians started to use the letter based on the Greek alphabet, which was called Coptic.

Works Cited

Allen, James P. Middle Egyptian : An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2010. eBook. 2nd ed., rev..
Powell, Barry B. Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, p. 27
"Egyptian Civilization - Writing - Hieroglyphs." Civilization.ca, 1 Jan. 2012. Web. 22 Feb. 2015. <http://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/civil/egypt/egcw02e.shtml>.
British Museum. "Language and Writing in Ancient Egypt." Web. 22 Feb. 2015. <http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/l/language_in_ancient_egypt.aspx>.