[left that other site]

Well, it's a phonetic alpabet, with a few pictographs thrown in, at least that's what the Egyptologists say.

[Srednik]

However, as I understand it, the rebus-like hiero (priestly) glyphs (pictograms) were deciphered by men who knew the vulgar (public) language of ancient Egypt, demotic (demos=the people in Greek). This was the key that unlocked the language because hieroglyphics were essentially symbols that when read showed them to be pictorial demotic.

While this is not Srednik’s area of expertise, he tries to be well read in language studies.