Hieroglyphic inscriptions on temple walls and other monuments were used for decorative and sacred purposes. Parts of the Book of the Dead, a compilation of spells the ancient Egyptians believed would assist them in the afterlife, were inscribed on sarcophagi. A cartouche was a type of name tag on a sarcophagi, often reserved for royalty and was shaped in an oblong fashion and can be also found on Egyptian monuments and papyri documents. Priests used hieroglyphs to write down prayers and texts related to life after death and worship of the gods. When preparing their tombs, many citizens in Egypt had hieroglyphic guides of the afterworld written on the surfaces of tomb walls and on the insides of coffins.
The glyphs are usually read from right to left, top to bottom and do not use spaces or punctuation. On the walls of temples and tombs in Egypt, they generally appear in columns. There are between 700 and 800 basic symbols called glyphs and there is no punctuation or indication of where words or sentences begin or end. The ancient Egyptian writing system is a pictorial script with a huge number of characters: 24 of which stand for what would be recognized as letters, others stand for complete words or combinations of consonants. Today, millions of hieroglyphs in sacred texts, sarcophagi, tombs, and monuments remain as memories of a highly civilized, bygone era. Known in ancient Egyptian as the “language of the gods” and said to have been created by the god of knowledge Thoth, hieroglyphs were vital in the fulfilment of royal duties and were used by powerful pharaohs and their scribes to record the achievements of their reign.
Egyptian hieroglyphs are among the oldest writing systems in the world, dating back some 5,200 years.
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