Communication has a long and complicated history. How to get something so transient in an image? I've just read Scott McCloud's UNDERSTANDING COMICS and REINVENTING COMICS ( http://www.scottmccloud.com/) He talks about Egyptian hieroglyphs and tomb paintings as early "comics." Regardless, they were a form of both written and pictorial communication at the same time. So I'm trying to portray how communication reaches both backwards and forward in time. (Plus I think Egyptian art is really neat. Seeing the "Palette of Narmer" in the Cairo museum is still one of those stand out moments in my life.)
And just to prove the mind boggling array of the web, I got a hieroglyphic translation for "Once upon a time" from this web site: http://webperso.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~rosmord/nomhiero.html