Original: By 2700 BCE the ancient Egyptians had developed a set of some 22 hieroglyphs to represent the individual consonants of their language, plus a 23rd that seems to have represented word-initial or word-final vowels.
Simplified: By 2700 BCE the ancient Egyptians had developed a set of some 22 hieroglyphs to represent the consonants of their language, plus a 23rd that seems to have represented word-initial or word-final vowels.