Editing Ancient Egypt (section)

===Writing===
[[File:Rosetta Stone BW.jpeg|thumb|The [[Rosetta Stone]] ({{circa|196}} BC) enabled linguists to begin [[decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts|deciphering ancient Egyptian scripts]].{{sfnp|Allen|2000|p=13}}|280x280px]]
[[Egyptian hieroglyphs|Hieroglyphic writing]] dates from {{circa|3000}}{{nbsp}}BC, and is composed of hundreds of symbols. A hieroglyph can represent a word, a sound, or a silent determinative; and the same symbol can serve different purposes in different contexts. Hieroglyphs were a formal script, used on stone monuments and in tombs, that could be as detailed as individual works of art. In day-to-day writing, scribes used a cursive form of writing, called [[hieratic]], which was quicker and easier. While formal hieroglyphs may be read in rows or columns in either direction (though typically written from right to left), hieratic was always written from right to left, usually in horizontal rows. A new form of writing, [[Demotic (Egyptian)|Demotic]], became the prevalent writing style, and it is this form of writing—along with formal hieroglyphs—that accompany the Greek text on the Rosetta Stone.{{sfnp|Loprieno|1995a|pp=10–26}}

Around the first century AD, the Coptic alphabet started to be used alongside the Demotic script. Coptic is a modified [[Greek alphabet]] with the addition of some Demotic signs.{{sfnp|Allen|2000|p=7}} Although formal hieroglyphs were used in a ceremonial role until the fourth century, towards the end only a small handful of priests could still read them. As the traditional religious establishments were disbanded, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was mostly lost. Attempts to decipher them date to the Byzantine{{sfnp|Loprieno|2004|p=166}} and Islamic periods in Egypt,{{sfnp|El-Daly|2005|p=164}} but only in the 1820s, after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and years of research by [[Thomas Young (scientist)|Thomas Young]] and [[Jean-François Champollion]], were hieroglyphs [[decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts|substantially deciphered]].{{sfnp|Allen|2000|p=8}}