I am sorry but this like saying that "chinese cannot represent abstract notions" because "picture" .
In middle egyptian (the language you probably assume) "pictures" are just syllables. They are phonetic, not semantic, in the same way letter of modern language correspond to sounds, not meanings.
Egyptians had no problem expressinyg conplex concepts and they also had cursive writing, which is much easier to write.
Nit pick: the Egyptian writing system never had any symbols for syllables.
The phonetic symbols included in the Egyptian writing system represented 1 consonant or 2 consonants or 3 consonants, not syllables. Any syllables or short syllable sequences with the same consonants were written with the same symbol.
This makes the Egyptian writing system an exception, as all other writing systems that have developed completely independently, instead of being inspired by an existing system, have used phonetic symbols for syllables.
This is the very reason why the Egyptian writing system has generated the ancient Semitic alphabet with 29 consonannts, from which all later Semitic consonantic alphabets have been derived, then the Greek alphabet and other European alphabets, and the Indian writing systems and other Asian writing systems derived from them.
Since the beginning, the Egyptian writing system had two variants, depending on the writing instruments: hieroglyphic for inscriptions carved in stone and hieratic for texts written with a reed brush on papyrus. The latter is what you mean by "cursive". "Cursive" is not really appropriate, as hieratic was still a very complex script, difficult to write, even if it was simplified in comparison with hieroglyphic. Millennia later, a more cursive form of hieratic developed into the demotic script.
I don't get your quibble about "cursive" not being an appropriate way to describe hieratic. Pretty much every Egyptologist I've heard speak on the matter uses the term "cursive," with Demotic often described as "even more cursive." And I've copied quite a bit of it and it is far faster to write with a nice fountain pen than even "cursive" hieroglyphs. It's not particularly difficult, either. Sure, it's more complex than an abjad or an alphabet, but I don't see what that has to do with anything. The complexity is far more in reading it than writing it. If we're going to talk about difficulty in both reading and writing, Demotic is worse. And let's not even get into Ptolemaic-period hieroglyphs...
That is correct, but my knowledge of middle egypytian is limited to a single introductory book, and didnt want to muddy the waters with details.
The point stands still: the writing was not as clean as modern alphabets but was capable of expressing abstract concepts, it is completly orthogonal to concepts expressed in writing.
As a language matures, it moves away from concrete things towards abstract things. Eg cave paintings -> pictorial scripts -> modern languages which are very detached from pictorial/phonetic meaning (even modern chinese). These days we have programming languages which do not have any phonetic or pictorial representation. And this trend will keep going on. I think I still stand by my point that this script isn't as refined as a modern language. Just like the great pyramids aren't as refined as burj khalifa.
> Just like the great pyramids aren't as refined as burj khalifa.
I'd wager the Great Pyramids will still be around in 1000 years and the Burj Khalifa will not, if anyone wants to take bets.
I dont think this chnages anything. The writing was less convenient than modern alphabets but still capable of expressing all things necessary.
The closest analogy might be: modern alebraic notation is compact and clean but this doesnt mean algebra didnt exist much, much earlier.
To make this claim, wouldn't you need to understand the meaning of the script? It's probably not about monads, but you don't know for sure.
The mental image of an ancient Mesoamerican civilization writing about monads thousands of years before the rest of us, only for it to go unappreciated because we can't comprehend their script, is a great one.