Editing Egyptian hieroglyphs (section)

====Uniliteral signs====
[[File:Amada ( 110 miles south of Aswan, left bank ). Temple founded by Tuthmosis III.jpg|thumb|Hieroglyphs at Amada, at temple founded by [[Tuthmosis III]]]]
{{Main|Transliteration of Ancient Egyptian#Uniliteral signs}}
The Egyptian hieroglyphic script contained 24 uniliterals (symbols that stood for single consonants, much like letters in English). It would have been possible to write all Egyptian words in the manner of these signs, but the Egyptians never did so and never simplified their complex writing into a true alphabet.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gardiner |first=Alan H. |year=1973 |title=Egyptian Grammar |publisher=[[Griffith Institute]] |isbn=978-0-900416-35-4}}</ref>

Each uniliteral glyph once had a unique reading, but several of these fell together as [[Old Egyptian]] developed into [[Middle Egyptian]]. For example, the [[List of Egyptian hieroglyphs#S29|folded-cloth glyph]] ({{lang|egy|𓋴}}) seems to have originally been an [[voiceless alveolar fricative|/s/]] and the [[List of Egyptian hieroglyphs#O34|door-bolt glyph]] {{lang|egy|𓊃}}) a [[voiceless dental fricative|/θ/]] sound, but these both came to be pronounced {{IPA|/s/}}, as the {{IPA|/θ/}} sound was lost.{{Clarify|reason=This does not seem to be an example of a change from unique reading to non-unique reading, as suggested in the previous sentence. The ''reading'' of both glyphs is still unique; it's the ''writing'' of the sigle sound /s/ that has changed to non-unique.|date=September 2019}} A few uniliterals first appear in Middle Egyptian texts.

Besides the uniliteral glyphs, there are also the [[Egyptian biliteral signs|biliteral]] and [[Egyptian triliteral signs|triliteral]] signs, to represent a specific sequence of two or three consonants, consonants and vowels, and a few as vowel combinations only, in the language.