Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Smith:

If your children are just learning to read or write, they may be frustrated trying to understand those squigglies on the page. They don't realize that writing is an effective way to communicate facts and ideas. Through your study of Ancient Egypt, you can help your children understand the power of the written word.

Although only four out of every thousand ancient Egyptians could read or write, they valued writing very highly. Many of their buildings were covered with inscriptions and drawings. We know as much about Ancient Egypt because of the written record it left behind. But for many years, Egyptologists could not read ancient Egyptian writing. Called "hieroglyphics," the writings consisted of pictures that represented sounds, letters, and words. In 1799, a French soldier stumbled upon a stone with writing in three scripts, including hieroglyphics and Greek. Twenty years later, a French scholar was able to use the Greek text to translate the hieroglyphics. He had cracked the code! Now Egyptologists could read what had long been hidden in the complicated writing of the Egyptian documents and inscriptions.

As your children discover Egypt's fascinating hieroglyphics, point out to them that simply because a scribe jotted down grain yields, we can now draw conclusions about daily living in that time and place.

And until next time, I'm Mike Smith.