Dates: 3100 B.C. to 30 B.C. Writing: Hieroglyphics, a writing system that uses pictures; hieratic, a quicker type of "cursive"; and demotic, a written short-form script Ancient Egypt's gods ...

Among the papyri was the journal of a previously unknown official named Merer, who led a crew of some 200 men who traveled from one end of Egypt to the other picking up and delivering goods of one ...