What did scholars study to help them decipher hieroglyphics?

Scholars studied hieroglyphics by looking at the shape of the glyphs, and guessing what they might represent. They also looked at how often certain shapes appeared together to make up a word or sentence. This method helped them figure out that many words had two different meanings depending on where in a sentence they were positioned, for example “water” could mean either liquid or boat; if it was written separately from other words it meant water, but when written with others around it would indicate boats. Once scholars figured this out, deciphering hieroglyphics became much easier!