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How to Make Up a Sentence With Hieroglyphics

If you are interested in the culture of Ancient Egypt or you are doing a school project on this subject, you can try learning how to write in hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphs are the symbols used by the Ancient Egyptian scribes to make records. There were around 700 hieroglyphs that stood for many different things, but there are also symbols that represent sounds that correspond to the letters we use in the English language. Use a reference chart to help you use these symbols to write a secret message.

Instructions

- 1
  Write out a short sentence in English near the top of a piece of paper. Start with a simple sentence to practice writing in hieroglyphics, such as "Today is a fine day for fishing."
- 2
  Look at a chart of Egyptian hieroglyphs that correspond to the different letters of the alphabet and the sounds they make. Below the sentence written in English, draw the hieroglyphs for the sounds below the letters or sounds they represent. For the example sentence, the first letter is a "T", which makes the hard "T" sound in the word "Today." Draw the upward-facing semi-circle, which represents this sound.
- 3
  Draw the next hieroglyph directly to the right of the first. This next symbol represents the next consonant sound in the word "Today," the letter "d," which is represented by the hand pointing to the left. You can skip the "o" sound, because it is soft and you will still know what word you are saying if you skip this letter.
- 4
  Draw the hieroglyphics symbols that represent the letters "a" and "y" in "Today." Since the sound is a hard "a" sound, you will include the symbols for this in the sentence. If you excluded the symbols that made up the "ay" sound, you wouldn't know what word you are saying and the sentence wouldn't make sense.
- 5
  Make the symbol for the first letter of the next word in the sentence directly below the first letter in the first word. Hieroglyphics were written left to right and up and down to keep the sequence of words neatly organized so that they made sense. If you continue writing and reach the bottom of the paper, draw a line between the columns of symbols to keep them separate.

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