The Hieroglyphic Writing
Signs Used and General Principles of Hieroglyphic Writing
Hieroglyphics have two major uses as ideograms and phonograms:
1. Ideograms
There are two kinds of ideograms;
a- Signs that are used to convey both sound and meaning (sound and meaning signs). For example 
depicts a house (in plan) and represents the sound combination of p + r = pr. The sign is used in the word pr = house.
b- Signs that are used to convey meaning with no sounds and we call those signs (determinatives)
2. Phonograms
Signs are used to indicate the sounds of signs (sound signs) i.e.
sS writing and scribe. The sign 
Dw represents a sand hill and is used as a sound sign in 
which means evil.
The sound of these signs is in Latin letters, known as transliteration. We shall start with unilateral signs which could be identified as "Alphabet".
The basic writing system of ancient Egyptian consisted of about five hundred common signs,known as hieroglyphs. Each hieroglyph is a picture of a thing that existed in the world or imagination of the ancient Egyptians for instance, the ground plan of a simple house , a human mouth 
, or a pair of legs in motion 
. These could be used to write the words that they depicted, or related words: for example, “house”; “come.”