Hieroglyphs were drawn to fill in the space of a line, keeping unsightly gaps to a minimum. Two consecutive short hieroglyphs were written one on top of the other, emphasizing design as well as content.
Ancient Egyptian writing was as ingenious as it was beautiful. It consisted of over 600 picture signs, or hieroglyphs. Some of these signs represented complete words . Others stood for ideas . Still others were used to indicate sounds, just as letters of the alphabet are used today.
The hieroglyphs represented above are all sound signs.
The sound hieroglyphs were arranged according to the way a word would be spelled phonetically. For example, the English word for cat would be spelled using the glyphs for K, A, + T since there is no hieroglyph for the letter C.
Some letters have more than one hieroglyph and can be used interchangeably.
Hieroglyphs were drawn to fill in the space of a line, keeping unsightly gaps to a minimum. Two consecutive short hieroglyphs were written one on top of the other, emphasizing design as well as content.
They were written with no gaps between words, and in either direction (the birds, snakes and animals are always facing the direction the hieroglyphs should be read. They often appear in columns, always read from top to bottom but again appearing with animals facing in the directions the columns should be read.