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jeltztoday at 10:59 AM0 repliesview on HN

Egyptian hierghlyps had phonetic values too so it definitely would be able to express everything spoken Egyptian could.

The main issue with hieroglyphics is that it was a very convoluted system, where symbols meant different things depending on context. A symbol of a bird could be a literal bird, some abstract concept related to that bird or part of the sounds of the word for that bird.