Hieroglyphs

the most ancient pictorial symbols of Egyptian writing, used from the end of the fourth millennium B.C. (as distinct from the hieratic and demotic scripts). About 5,000 different Egyptian hieroglyphs are known, although no more than 700–800 were used in each era. Four types of Egyptian hieroglyphs are distinguished: (1) single-consonant signs (approximately 30), which represented the consonants of the Egyptian language; (2) two-consonant and three-consonant signs for the phonetic representation of morphemes; (3) ideograms for the representation of entire words; and (4) determinatives, un-pronounced auxiliary ideographic symbols indicating word meanings more precisely.

The term “hieroglyph” is also used with respect to the symbols of other writing systems. Thus, the characters of ancient (2000 B.C. ) and modern Chinese writing and the symbols of the noncuneiform pictorial variety of Hittite writing (2000–1000 B.C.) are usually called hieroglyphs.

in geology, randomly curved ridges, furrows, and other forms of imprints on the bedding surfaces of some rocks, usually fine-grained ones (for example, in flysch). They are often molds with the irregularities of the surface of that layer on which the next younger bed was deposited (negative hieroglyphs). Such hieroglyphs may occur through filling up small depressions (furrows) formed by streams (sinter hieroglyphs) or when water currents drag various objects along the bottom.