History of the alphabet

Alphabets are collections of letters that we use to write down words. The first alphabet was created thousands of years ago by the ancient Egyptians. They made a picture for each sound they wanted to write and put them all together into a list. Each one of these pictures was a symbol that stood for one sound. Over time, other cultures started using this system and changing the symbols that represented sounds. Eventually, all the symbols got combined and changed so much that there were only 26 symbols left - the letters of the alphabet which we use today.