Decode the Past: 11 Fascinating Fun Facts About Hieroglyphics You Never Knew!

1. Ancient Emoji Pizzazz

Hieroglyphics: the ancient emojis that added a dash of pizzazz to Egyptian texts before it was cool. Riddled with more symbols than a hipster's tattoo sleeve: these fascinating glyphs boasted a whopping 700 different symbols, with some even dishing out syllable-by-syllable action and others serving as context-setting determinatives for a word.
Source => penn.museum

2. Sacred Language of Pharaoh Tweets

Hieroglyphics: the sacred and eternal language of love letters and divine tweets! As mysterious as your teenager's texts but far more ancient, they boasted a whopping 1,000 unique emoji-like characters and kept the pharaohs LOLing in the afterlife: Behind the laugh, hieroglyphics served as a versatile writing system that adapted to various contexts, from monumental inscriptions to religious texts and affectionate correspondence. After gathering dust for millennia, this dashing script was brought back to life by Jean-François Champollion's decoding skills, all thanks to the legendary Rosetta Stone.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

Did you know that unlike the cunning creatures from Greek myths, Ancient Egyptian sphinxes were actually considered friendly guardians? Discover the truth behind the iconic Great Sphinx of Giza and more! 🐱‍🏍✨

=> Fun Facts about Ancient-Egypt-Religion

3. Rosetta Stone: Trilingual Decoder Ring

Move over, trilingual geek squad: the Ancient Egyptians had their own triple threat when it came to scripts! The Rosetta Stone, a literal rockstar of the academic world, showcased three different scripts – hieroglyphics, demotic, and Greek – making it the ultimate decoder ring for modern scholars deciphering hieroglyphics.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

4. World's Oldest Pictionary Game

Hieroglyphics: the world's most ancient game of Pictionary, played on colossal stone tablets and the occasional papyrus sheet: In reality, hieroglyphs were an elaborate writing system for ancient Egyptians, boasting over 700 symbols and determinatives for word clarification, enduring for nearly 4,000 years until becoming unreadable around the 5th century A.D. Thanks to the Rosetta Stone's discovery in 1799, we can now enjoy deciphering thousands of years' worth of Pharaoh's emojis and cat pictures.
Source => penn.museum

5. Egyptian Emoji Storytelling

Move over, Picasso! The ancient Egyptians had their own form of emoji storytelling with some extra pizzazz: Hieroglyphics were not only aesthetically pleasing symbols but also a highly functional communication system, designed for easy readability and clarity by positioning and directing symbols thoughtfully on surfaces.
Source => worldhistory.org

6. Multi-directional Hieroglyph Reading

Hieroglyphics: the original choose-your-own-adventure of the literary world, where flipping back and forth between directions was an art form rather than an indication of indecisiveness: The ancient Egyptian text could be read horizontally either left to right or right to left, or vertically from top to bottom, with the orientation of the symbols' faces indicating the correct reading direction.
Source => timetrips.co.uk

7. Power Washing Time Travel

Who needs a time machine when you've got a power washer?: The restoration of the 2,000-year-old temple of Esna in Egypt has unveiled the original vibrant colors of hieroglyphic inscriptions, providing researchers with new insights into ancient Egyptian religious ideas and cult events at the site.
Source => phys.org

8. Ptolemy's Trilingual Magic

Who said three's a crowd? It turns out Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy V was a devout believer in the "trilingual magic" and took the art of triple threat to a whole new level: The Rosetta Stone, an unexpected educational treasure, was just one of many similar stelae scattered across Egypt, showcasing Ptolemy's impressive tall tales in hieroglyphs, demotic script, and ancient Greek. This linguistic hat-trick eventually led Jean-François Champollion, a blind date with the Rosetta Stone's sibling scripts, to crack the hieroglyphic code and finally give our ancestors' emoji game some well-deserved recognition in 1822.
Source => daily.jstor.org

9. Egyptian Twitter for Shoe Fans

If ancient Egyptians had Twitter, they'd have been tweeting about everything from shoes to foreign affairs: hieroglyphics were used not just for religious purposes, but also for everyday record keeping, with one of the earliest instances being labels on sandals, found on ivory plaques dating back to the First Dynasty, which detailed important events and information about foreign lands.
Source => khanacademy.org

10. Hieroglyphic Open House Events

Like interior decorators from the ancient world, Egyptians used hieroglyphics to beautify their legendary "open house" events: Hieroglyphic inscriptions adorned Egyptian tombs and temples, including notable sites such as Tutankhamun's tomb and the temples of Karnak and Luxor, showcasing the artistic talents of these ancient aesthetic aficionados.
Source => britishmuseum.org

11. Persistent Champollion's Quest

Amidst political bedlam and an invasion of baguettes, one man refused to be deterred from his cryptic quest for ancient truths: Jean-François Champollion, the "Founder and Father of Egyptology," went on to decipher the Rosetta hieroglyphs, revealing a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs, and traveled to Egypt to explore never-before-studied texts.
Source => en.wikipedia.org