The Indus valley civilization had a writing system, but it remains a mystery : no one can figure it out! This is one of the reasons why the Indus Valley Civilization is one of the least known of the important early civilizations. Examples of this writing system have been found on pottery, amulets, carved stamp seals, and even in weights and copper tablets.
Two great cities of the Indus valley are MohenjoDaro and Harappa . Because no one can understand the writing of the Indus people, the relationship between these cities, such as whether they were independent city-states or part of a larger kingdom, is not clear.
Hieroglyph comes from two Greek words meaning “sacred writing”. This in turn came from the
Egyptians’ own word for their language meaning “divine speech”Ancient Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphs which used little pictures instead of letters, There were no vowels in Egyptian
Hieroglyphs, only consonants.
There are over 700 hieroglyphics in the ancient Egyptian alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphs could be written in both directions - right to left or left to right. A single picture symbol could stand for a whole word, called an ideogram, or a sound, called a phonogram. For example, a picture of an eye could mean the word “eye” or the letter “I”
An important group of people in Egypt were the scribes. However, it was not easy to become a scribe-- training took up to twelve years to complete. They were held in high regard by society.
Scribes worked in temple writing rooms, markets, army barracks, the homes of nobles, government offices or anywhere their skills were needed.
Scribes wrote on papyrus, a type of paper made from the papyrus plant growing by the Nile. Fine brushes made of plant fibre were used as we would use a pen. The black ink was made from soot

and water. Everyday messages were written on clay tablets; very important information was carved into stone so that it lasted forever. Scribes kept records of supplies and taxes, wrote letters and messages, designed the inscriptions carved into tombs and worked as teachers and librarians.
They sat cross-legged and stretched their linen skirts tightly across their knees to form a writing surface to lean on.
The Rosetta Stone was discovered by the French in 1799, and was important in cracking hieroglyphs. The stone contained passages written in Middle Egyptian, Demotic and Greek and in the 1820s French historian Jean-Francois Champollion finally translated and cracked
Egyptian hieroglyphs!

The earliest known writing originated with the Sumerians about 5500 years ago. Writing was not invented for telling stories of the great conquests of kings or for important legal documents.
Instead, the earliest known writing was used to keep track of goods stored in ziggurats.
Cuneiform began as pictographs just like the Egyptians. But pictographs are not easy to form into sentences, so they started to use triangle shapes to represent sounds , which they could then use to spell words.The English word cuneiform comes from the Latin cuneus , meaning
“wedge.” With this writing people could communicate names, words, and ideas. Writers could record histories and stories, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh
—the oldest epic known.
Cuneiform preserved Sumerian literature, ideas, and values on tablets that when dried can last forever. Other nations used cuneiform to write their own language and because they had to learn
Sumerian writing they also learned Sumerian ideas and culture. The Akkadian king Hammurabi used cuneiform to write
Hammurabi’s Code
-- the first written law code in world history
Most people were not able to read and write cuneiform. It was only learned by a small class of people called scribes.

HIEROGLYPHIC NUMBERS
______________________________________________________________________________
CUNEIFORM NUMBERS