Glyph
A glyph (from the Greek γλύφω, glýfō, “to sculpt or carve”) is an engraved or, by extension, written or painted sign. For example, the glyphs of the Mayan script.
The graphic signs used in Ancient Egypt are called hieroglyphics (from the Greek sacred carvings).
If the signs are carved into the rock, they are called petroglyphs.
In typography, a glyph is a graphic representation of a character, several characters or part of a character and is the current equivalent of the typeface (the piece that had the letter engraved on it).. A character is a textual unit while a glyph is a graphic unit. For example, the ligature fi will be rendered as a glyph in fonts that have it, assuming it is recognized by the compositing system (such as TeX, desktop publishing programs in general and processors with advanced typographic functions).
A character can correspond to several glyphs (for example, e, e and e are three glyphs for the lowercase Latin letter “e") or several characters to a glyph (for example, “A" is capital Latin "a" or capital Greek alpha).