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Early writing and Alphabets

When people first began to write, they did not use an alphabet. Instead, they drew small pictures to (31) _______ the objects they were writing about. This was very slow because there was a different picture for any word.

The Ancient Egyptians had a system of picture writing that was described hieroglyphics. The meaning of this writing was forgotten for a very long time but in 1799 some scientists (32) _______ a stone near Alexandria, in Egypt. The stone had been there for (33) _______ a thousand years. It had both Greek and hieroglyphics on it and researchers were finally able to understand what the hieroglyphics meant.

An alphabet is quite different from picture writing. It (34) _______ of letters or symbols that represent a sound and each sound is just part of one word. The Phoenicians, who lived about 3,000 years ago, developed the modern alphabets. It was later improved by the Roman’s and this alphabet is now used (35) _______ throughout the world.

Instead, they drew small pictures to (31) _______ the objects they were writing about.