With respect to your first comment: I think you're right, hieroglyphs being inspired by cuneiform is quote improbable. One reason for this is pointed out in [1]

With respect to your first comment: I think you're right, hieroglyphs being inspired by cuneiform is quote improbable. One reason for this is pointed out in [1]: "Unlike early Chinese and Egyptian writing, there is only sporadic evidence for phonetic complementation, which is used more frequently in later phases of the writing system" (p35). An interesting possible explanation of why cuneiform started with less phonetic symbols and evolved to have more is given in [2]: "...cuneiform writing apparently developed in two stages. In the first stage, writing was fairly in- dependent of phonetic coding, but its application was restricted to narrowly defined contexts and its signs and sign combinations did not yet represent universally applicable words but rather specific entities and activities in the context of administration. In the second stage, phonetic coding made a new type of application possible, the written representation of information in the same way as it was previously transmitted orally."" [1] The World's Writing Systems, OED, 1996. This is a fantastic book to have if you're interested in the topic btw. [2] http://cdli.ucla.edu/files/publications/cdlj2006_001.pdf http://cdli.ucla.edu/files/publications/cdlj2006_001.pdf