Are hieroglyphs really as indecipherable as they look? Here is a primer on how to start interpreting these ancient motifs.

Who invented the alphabet, and why? First, the hard facts: The earliest evidence of what’s thought to be the world’s first alphabet is a group of 3,500-year-old inscriptions found in Egypt’s Sinai ...

A rock panel featuring depictions of a bull’s head on a short pole followed by two back-to-back saddlebill storks with a bald ibis bird above and between them. A rock panel featuring depictions of a ...

This essay proposes a hypothesis that Mixe-Zoquean speakers-more specifically Mixeans-were involved in the initial stages and subsequent development of the Maya hieroglyphic writing system, traces of ...

An archaeological mission from Yale University has discovered a new rock inscription site near the village of El-Khawy near Luxor, during their excavation work on the Elkab Desert Survey Project in ...

Extracted from: Visible religion (Leiden) 4 (5) 1985-1986, pages 63-72. The ancient Egyptian writing system is at once pictorial, phonetic and symbolic. The number of hieroglyphic symbols are thought ...

An archaeological mission from Yale University has discovered a new rock inscription site near the village of El-Khawy near Luxor, during their excavation work on the Elkab Desert Survey Project in ...