They assumed that hieroglyphs were nothing more than primitive picture writing, and that their decipherment relied on a literal translation of the images they saw.

SAN ANTONIO — The world’s earliest alphabet, inscribed on stone slabs at several Egyptian sites, was an early form of Hebrew, a controversial new analysis concludes. Israelites living in Egypt ...

The alphabet was invented by illiterate Canaanite miners in ancient Egypt who turned elaborate hieroglyphs into basic letters 4,000 years ago, a study claimed.

Over 3,500 years ago, a few of them seem to have had the idea to adapt the writing system to their own language, and the way they repurposed hieroglyphs was inspired. Taking the ox-head glyph, for ...