Ancient Mayan Script

Today, all Maya languages use the Roman Alphabet.  In history, Maya used an intricate set of hieroglyphics to record their words and stories, according to Omniglot.  At first, people didn't believe the Maya hieroglyphic script was a complete writing system and the symbols weren't dechipered until the 1950's by a Russian enthologist named Yuri Valentinovoch Knorosov.  He was the first to suggest that Mayan hieroglyphics were in fact a complex family of phonetic sounds.

As you can see, pictures represent phonetic sounds rather than letters:

Pictures from: Omniglot