How did the system of Egyptian hieroglyphs develop? do we have any surviving fragments of ‘proto-hieroglyphs’? did the system of hieroglyphs evolve over the centuries, so that an inscription can be dated from the style of hieroglyphs, or was the system fairly static?
How much has the language changed over the years. Obvoiusly no non-scholars read or write in hieroglyphcis anymore, but could a speaker of coptic Egyptian travel to 3300 BC and have any hope of understanding the spoken language?
A hieroglyph is a Rebus. You know the game, where you say the pictures aloud to make a phrase? A picture of an eyeball, a wood saw, and an ewe can be read as “I saw you.” Hieroglyphs work the same way.
It’s a bit more complex, because it also includes ideograms to distinguish between various words that sound alike.
Yes, it changed over time. When first invented, there were a few hundred standard symbols in use. Over centuries, this grew to several thousands. Each of them represented a specific syllable.
And then much later, they had a revolutionary idea. They invented a simplified system, using just 24 glyphs, from which it was possible to build any word.