What is the ancient Egyptian writing system using pictures?

The ancient Egyptian writing system using pictures is hieroglyphics, more precisely called Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Hieroglyphs were the formal script used to write the Egyptian language, especially on temples, tombs, stelae, and other monumental surfaces. Their signs could function as pictures, sound signs, word signs, or determinatives that clarified a word’s meaning. Thus, the system was not simply a collection of drawings: many signs represented consonantal sounds.

The earliest decipherable hieroglyphic sentence dates to Egypt’s Second Dynasty, around the 28th or 27th century BCE. During the Middle Kingdom, the mature system used roughly 900 signs; by the Greco-Roman period, more than 5,000 signs were known.

Hieratic and demotic were faster, more cursive scripts derived from hieroglyphic writing and were better suited to papyrus. The Rosetta Stone helped Jean-François Champollion decipher the script in 1822 because it presented the same decree in hieroglyphs, demotic, and Greek.