Bible Dictionaries
Hieroglyphics

Holman Bible Dictionary

Greek term meaning “sacred carvings,” referring to the pictographic symbols used in ancient Egyptian writing. Normally hieroglyphs were carved in stone, though sometimes they were written with pen on papyrus. These picture-symbols consisted in both ideograms (representing an entire word or phrase) and phonhyhyograms (representing a consonant). A simplified cursive script (hieratic) was developed early. This was in turn simplified into the demotic script about 700 B.C.