The hieroglyphic writing system included around 600 symbols, the most of which were images of things. Each symbol represents one or more Egyptian language sounds. Because of these alternatives, hieroglyphics were versatile to write but difficult to understand. Even experts have trouble reading some inscriptions. Hieroglyphics are flexible because each image can be used to represent many different objects or concepts. For example, a single glyph could represent an animal, a tree, a god, a weapon, etc. This makes hieroglyphs useful for recording information about people, places, and things without using any other writing system at all. Hieroglyphics are also difficult to understand because it's hard to know how to interpret the images that make up each word. There are several theories on how hieroglyphics were deciphered, but none has proved completely reliable. After the pharaohs, no one was able to control Egypt because there were no official priests or rulers. So, over time, new languages evolved and mixed with Ancient Egyptian to form modern languages such as Arabic and English. Today, only certain signs are still used for writing words in Ancient Egyptian, so knowing what symbols to look for is important for understanding ancient texts.