The elegant pictorial writing system of the ancient Egyptians—known as hieroglyphics—has fascinated generations of archeologists. Its precise origins are uncertain. One ancient Egyptian legend holds ...

Who invented the alphabet, and why? First, the hard facts: The earliest evidence of what’s thought to be the world’s first alphabet is a group of 3,500-year-old inscriptions found in Egypt’s Sinai ...

Archaeologists have discovered an oversized inscription that offers a new glimpse into the early development of the Egyptian writing system. A team led by Yale University Egyptologist John Darnell ...

The language of the world's first alphabet could have been Hebrew. This is according to an archaeologist who has spent the past four years piecing together the letters of the alphabet from ...

Discovered in Egypt by Napoleon’s conquering forces, this plain-looking slab was the key to cracking the code of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Although it's just a fragment of a larger rock slab, the ...

In 2010, archaeologist Glenn Schwartz quietly suggested that the history of writing needs, well, rewriting. More than a decade later, he still thinks he's on to something. If he's right, the world's ...