the four fundamental principles of hieroglyphics. First, the language of the script is at least related to Coptic, and, indeed, examination of other hieroglyphics showed that it was Coptic pure and simple. Second, semagrams are used to represent some words, e.g., the word “sun” is represented by a simple picture of the sun. Third, some long words are built wholly or partly using the rebus principle. Finally, for most of their writing, the ancient scribes relied on using a relatively conventional phonetic alphabet.
