Earthblog

HIEROGLYPHS are pictures that were used to write the ancient Egyptian language. In the beginning hieroglyphic signs were used to keep records of the king's possessions. Scribes could easily make these records by drawing a picture of a cow or a boat followed by a number. But as the language became more complex more pictures were needed. Eventually the language consisted of more then 750 individual signs.

AS in other languages, words in Egyptian were made up of sounds, partly of consonants and partly of vowels. But, the writing of hieroglyphs constantly ignored and omitted vowels. Thus the two signs  which represent "mt", could be read as met, mat, amta, emt or any other combinations of vowels and "mt". Since the ancient language has never been heard, we are not sure how this word would be pronounced. In order to avoid this, we need a method of writing and pronouncing these glyphs consistently . The course usually adopted is to use the English vowel "e" and in a some cases "a" between the two glyphs. So we can pronounce  as "met".