Many of today's residents are descendants of those hard-working pioneers. Most returned after the flooding to find their belongings destroyed and their houses ruined. Some have no plans to remain, saying that they are too worried about future flooding. For others, pride in the past is more powerful than fears of the future. A recent discovery in the Egyptian desert has shed new light on the origins of alphabetic writing.
Alphabetic writing uses symbols to stand for certain sounds.
For example, in the English alphabet, the letter A represents a sound. This is different from Egyptian writing, or hieroglyphics, where a picture stands for an idea or object. This early alphabetic writing was found in a canyon area west of the Nile River called Wadi el-Hol. This find is important because it may be older than any alphabetic writing ever found. Some scholars think that the people who developed these early alphabetic symbols were brought to Egypt from a region northeast of Egypt called Syria-Palestine.