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	Ancient Egyptian writings survived more than three thousand years. The earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions are from around 3000 B.C. The last known text is from 394 A.D. Egyptian hieroglyphs are far more flexible than English in some ways. For instance, you can write in any of three different directions: left to right, right to left, or even up to down. (The only one you won't find is down to up.) How do you know at which end to start reading? Just look "into the faces" of the hieroglyphic signs (such as the birds). For writing correspondence, accounts, lists, and other texts about daily life, ancient scribes used a cursive script. This form of hieroglyphs, called hieratic, always goes from right to left or up to down. Try comparing the differences between your own print and script handwriting to those between hieroglyphs and hieratic. Languages also change and grow over generations. Just think of how different the English language we speak today sounds from a play by Shakespeare!