5,000-Year-Old 'Billboard' of Hieroglyphs Contains a Cosmic Message

[Judi Lynn]

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | June 22, 2017 06:39pm ET


Archaeologists have discovered a "billboard" of hieroglyphs carved into the rocks near the Egyptian village of El-Khawy. The symbols, which show a message related to the cosmos, are the earliest monumental (large) hieroglyphs known, dating back around 5,200 years.

"This newly discovered rock art site of El-Khawy preserves some of the earliest — and largest — signs from the formative stages of the hieroglyphic script and provides evidence for how the ancient Egyptians invented their unique writing system," John Darnell, a professor at Yale University who co-directs the expedition that discovered the rock art, said in a statement from Yale University. The Egyptian antiquities ministry also issued a statement today (June 22) announcing the discovery.

The archaeologists also discovered another carving, this one showing a herd of elephants, created sometime between 4000 B.C. and 3500 B.C. One of the adult elephants in the scene was drawn with a little elephant inside its body — "an incredibly rare way of representing a pregnant female animal," Darnell said in the Yale statement. [Photos: 5,000-Year-Old Hieroglyphs Discovered in Sinai Desert]

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