The Rosetta Stone and Egyptian writing

In Rosetta, some hundred years before Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun, some soldiers dug up a large black stone. It was covered in both Greek and hieroglyphic writing; archaeologists used the Greek to translate the hieroglyphs. These hieroglyphs were pictures, rather than words, and there were more than 1,000 of them. Scribes would write in hieroglyphs to record things the pharaohs said or did and to compose religious messages. Over time scribes wanted to make hieroglyphs simpler and eventually they were only used for religious writings.