3500 B.C - Picture Writing: Before the ancient Egyptians had
writing, they used pictures to communicate and record information. This system
was useful for recording general information. However, the ancient Egyptians
were not able to record specific information like dates and names using
pictures.
3300 B.C: Early
Hieroglyphic signs Used
3200 B.C: Hieroglyphic Script developed . Hieroglyphic
writing was the most sacred of the ancient Egyptian scripts. It was only used
to record important information about religion or the pharaoh. Hieroglyphs were
usually written on the walls of temples and tombs, or on stelai.
2700 B.C: Hieratic
Script developed. Hieratic is an ancient Egyptian script based on hieroglyphic
signs. Hieratic was developed so that everyday information could be written
down quickly and easily.
800 B.C: Hieratic
Script slowly replaced by be demotic script. Demotic was a script based on
hieratic, but it was even faster and easier to write. Demotic was used mostly
for business documents and everyday writing. By about 700 B.C. demotic had
replaced hieratic as the script used for most official documents.
700 B.C: Demotic
Script used for most official documents.
300 B.C.: Greek
Script used in government documents. Greek was the official language in ancient
Egypt under the Ptolemaic rulers. Thus, all official documents at this time
were written in an Egyptian script, and in Greek script.
196 B.C: Rosetta Stone Carved. This stele
was carved with an agreement between a group of priests and the Egyptian
government. It was written in three different scripts
that were used in ancient Egypt at that time: hieroglyphic, demotic and ancient
Greek. This stone was found in A.D.1799 by one of Napoleon's soldiers working
in the town of Rosetta
(Rashid).
100 A.D: Coptic script developed. Coptic is a script used in
ancient Egypt after the first century A.D.. It was based on the Greek alphabet,
but included seven signs taken from demotic script. These seven demotic signs
were used because there were certain sounds in the ancient Egyptian language
that could not be expressed using the Greek letters.
300 A.D. : Hieroglyphic and demotic used for the last time.
The last evidence of hieroglphic and demotic scripts being used is at the
Temple of Philae in southern Egypt.
600 A.D. : Arabic
became primary language and script. Egypt was conquered by Arabs, that their
own script, which became the official script in Egypt.
1500 A.D. : Coptic script stopped being used.
1799 A.D. Rosetta Stone found
1822 AD: Hieroglyphic script deciphered.
