The word 'hieroglyphics' is Greek, meaning 'to carve pictures'. The most famous 'carved picture writing' was made by the Ancient Egyptians.

Egyptian hieroglyphs were developed soon after the writing invented by the Sumerians (the world's first civilisation) and may have been a kind of copy of what the Sumerians had done.

They went out of use when other civilisations invented writing that used a much smaller number of symbols – just as our writing does today.