Egyptian hieroglyphs are a writing system that dates back about 5,000 years, to around 3250 BC. The script combined signs for sounds, whole words, and contextual markers, and it adorned temple and tomb walls across ancient Egypt.
Knowledge of the script was lost in antiquity. In the 1820s, the French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs using the Rosetta Stone, a bilingual inscription that paired hieroglyphs with a Greek text.
Alongside the monumental script, Egyptians used faster cursive scripts, hieratic and demotic, for daily record-keeping. Hieroglyphs remained in religious use until the 4th century AD.
Cairo, Egypt’s capital, is the natural base for studying Egyptology. The Pyramids of Giza stand on its edge, and the Egyptian Museum holds one of the world’s largest collections of pharaonic artifacts, including treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Related: Egyptian Academic Odyssey: Strategies for Success, Pre-Columbian art history in Mexico City, and Inca civilization in Cusco, Peru for more ancient traditions.

