Over 5000 years ago, ancient Egyptians wrote using a picture writing called hieroglyphics. The writers were called scribes. Not everyone had this training not even the Pharaoh and his family. There was a problem because Egyptians wrote down everything, and hieroglyphs were beautiful, but time consuming!  The scribes needed a faster way to write. They created the first shorthand called Demotic script. The new scribes used that exclusively and never learned the ancient hieroglyphs. They wrote faster and even  created some new scripts.

Hundreds of years passed and archaeologists discovered beautiful hieroglyphic writing on ancient walls of tombs and pyramids in Egypt. But there was a problem. Though they knew there was a story told there on the wall, and they could read Demotic Script, there was not one person on the face of the earth who could read ancient Egyptian!   This mystery wasn’t solved until about 200 years…