Science Activities for 5-8
Hieroglyphs
Hieroglyphic writing first began around 5,000 years ago. Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphs into the Fifth Century CE. Hieroglyphs are like word pictures. There are more than 2,000 hieroglyphic characters.
It has been almost 2,000 years since people used hieroglyphics to communicate. So how do we know how to read the characters? In 1799, in a town in Egypt called Rosetta, a soldier unearthed a large black stone. The stone came to be known as the Rosetta Stone because of where it was found. On the stone, there were three different types of writing that seemed to say the same thing and one was definitely Greek, and the other two were different scripts used in Ancient Egypt. Even though people could read the Greek words, many years went by before anyone could understand the hieroglyphics. Finally, in 1822, a Frenchman named Jean François Champollion cracked the code.
The Rosetta Stone is 114.4 centimeters high, 72.3 centimeters wide, and 27.9 centimeters thick. It weighs approximately 1,676 pounds. Since 1802, the Rosetta Stone has been kept at the British Museum in London, England. If you visit the museum, you can see this incredible artifact on display.
There were a few different types of hieroglyphs. Some stood for entire words, others were used for individual sounds, others represented groups of sounds or syllables, and some were idea signs.A small group of hieroglyphs that represent a single sound, like the letters in our alphabet, were used by the Ancient Egyptians to spell just as we use our alphabet to spell words. Engage your students with an exploration of hieroglyphics by encoding and decoding messages.
The K-4 Think Like an Egyptian activity booklet includes activities for students. You can view the page pertaining to hieroglpyphic writing by itself or view the entire activity booklet. Both documents are PDFs.