Early Egyptian Hieroglyhics

            In this report, I am going to discuss how different writing styles from these early civilizations are the same and how they are different. The writing styles I'm going to discuss are Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Sumerian Cuneiform, Harappan Pictograms, and Chinese Script. I will also inform you on why they were important. I will start by discussing Egyptian Hieroglyphics. The Egyptian writing system was called hieroglyphics. The Egyptian carved picture symbols on pieces of slate. These pictures symbols were called hieroglyphs, which stood for objects, ideas, and sounds. The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system consists of several hundred picture signs. The signs can be divided into two classes, phonograms and ideograms. .
             Phonograms, or signs used to write the sounds of the Egyptian language. The particular sound value of a sign was usually obtained from the Egyptian name for the object represented. Since the Egyptians did not normally write the vowels, only the consonantal "skeleton"" of the word is given although each consonant can be written with a single sign (the alphabet signs), most sound-signs express a series of two or more consonants. Ideograms, or idea-signs, in which each picture stands for the object represented, or for some idea closely connected with the object. The Egyptian writing system was like the Sumerian Cuneiform because scribes wrote them both on slates and tablets. Also, the scribes went to a special school and so did the Sumerian scribes. The Egyptian writing system was like all the other writing systems that used pictograms. Egyptian hieroglyphics were different from all the other writing styles because they would elaborately carve and paint their hieroglyphs for part of a decorative scheme of an Egyptian temple or tomb.
             The Sumerian cuneiform was written on clay tablets. The Sumerians writing system is believed to be the oldest in the world dating back to 3100 B.