Egyptian hieroglyphs

 The Egyptian hieroglyphs (Ancient Greek ἱερός hierós, German 'holy', γλυφή glyphḗ, German 'carved') are the characters of the oldest known Egyptian writing system, which dates from about 3200 BC. to 394 AD in ancient Egypt and Nubia for the early, ancient, middle and modern Egyptian languages ​​as well as for the so-called Ptolemaic Egyptian. The Egyptian hieroglyphs originally had the character of a purely pictorial writing. In the further course, consonant and symbolic signs were added, so that the hieroglyphic writing is composed of sound signs (phonograms), pictorial signs (ideograms) and descriptive signs (determinatives).

With originally around 700 characters and around 7000 in the Greco-Roman period, the Egyptian hieroglyphs are one of the more extensive writing systems. Of the many thousands of characters, a scribe in the Ramesside period only uses around 700 at most. Originally, there was no sequence similar to an alphabet. Only in the Late Period were single-consonant signs presumably arranged in an alphabetical order that shows great similarities with the South Semitic alphabets.