Egyptian Hieroglyphs Illustrated @ University of Pennsylvania Museum

The ancient Egyptians used a complex script that modern scholars call hieroglyphs ("sacred writings"). In their language, the ancient Egyptians called their writing medou netcher, or "god's words" and they had over 700 different hieroglyphic signs. While many people think of hieroglyphs as simply "picture writing," the system is much more complicated than that. Egyptian has an alphabet of signs with single sounds, as well as signs that may represent 2 or more sounds. Words were spelled out phonetically with these different sounds signs. Another category of hieroglyphs are called determinataives. These signs were not pronounced. They were placed at the ends of words to clarify their meaning.

For example, the word for "time" is written:

Time is spelled rk and pronounced rek.

The word for "day" is written:

Day is spelled hrw and pronounced herew.

Egyptians did not write vowels, so Egyptologists usually substitute an "e" in between consonants in order to make the word pronounceable.

arm	foot	placenta	hand