For about 1,400 years, no one could read Egyptian hieroglyphs. The latest hieroglyphic inscription known, at Philae, dates to 394 CE, and after that the script gradually passed out of use. A black stone slab found near Rosetta in 1799 gave scholars the key to read it again. Today you can stand before the same stone in London, or before a temple wall in Luxor, and with some practice read what it says.
Egyptians called the script mdw-nṯr, “the words of the gods.” This guide covers how it works, how the Rosetta Stone opened it up, and how to start reading it yourself.
What Are Hieroglyphs?
At first glance, hieroglyphs look like simple pictures: birds, hands, crowns, loops. But each sign has a function. Some stand for whole words, some for sounds, and some only clarify meaning. Hieroglyphs first appear around 3200–3100 BCE and were never just decoration. They were the formal script for royal decrees, temple texts, funerary spells and names, which were enclosed in oval loops called cartouches. The script was sacred and public, written on stone.
Three Thousand Years of Use
- Early period (c. 3200–2686 BCE). The earliest signs, used for administration and royal display, were formalized in the early dynasties.
- Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BCE). The classical form of the language, Middle Egyptian, became the model for monumental writing. A faster cursive script, hieratic, handled everyday records on papyrus.
- Late Period to Roman times (from c. 664 BCE). Everyday writing moved to the demotic script, then Greek and Coptic, while hieroglyphs survived on temples because they were sacred. The number of signs in use grew, and temple writing in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods used thousands of them.
How the Writing System Works
Hieroglyphs combine three kinds of signs:
- Logograms stand for a whole word. A sun sign can mean “sun,” “day” or the god Ra.
- Phonograms stand for sounds. Uniliteral signs work like single letters: the vulture stands for a glottal sound often written 3, the quail chick for w, the mouth for r and the water ripple for n. Biliteral signs stand for two consonants: the house sign is pr, meaning “house.” Triliteral signs stand for three: the heart-and-windpipe sign is nfr, “good” or “beautiful,” as in the name Nefertari. The ankh is also a triliteral, ʿnḫ, “life.”
- Determinatives are silent signs placed at the end of a word to show its category, such as a pair of walking legs for movement.
Egyptian writing generally omits vowels, so scholars add conventional ones to make words pronounceable. Numbers had their own signs too; see Ancient Egyptian Mathematics.
Reading direction. Hieroglyphs can run right to left, left to right or top to bottom. The rule is simple: figures face the beginning of the line, so read into the faces.
How to Start Reading Hieroglyphs
- Find the reading direction by looking at which way the animals and people face.
- Identify each sign’s role as logogram, phonogram or determinative.
- Look up the signs in a sign list. Sir Alan Gardiner’s Egyptian Grammar contains the standard list used by Egyptologists, which catalogs roughly 750 signs for classical Middle Egyptian.
- Build up from names. Royal names in cartouches are the easiest place to start, because they use many sound signs.
A good practice is to copy short offering formulas from museum catalogs, or to try writing your own name in hieroglyphs phonetically using the single-consonant signs.
The Rosetta Stone and the Race to Decipher It
In 1799, French soldiers in Napoleon’s expedition found a carved stone near Rosetta (Rashid). It bears one decree in three scripts: hieroglyphic, demotic and Ancient Greek. Because scholars could read Greek, they could compare the texts. Thomas Young made early progress identifying sounds in royal names, but Jean-François Champollion made the decisive breakthrough in 1822. He showed that hieroglyphs record sounds as well as ideas, which opened the field of modern Egyptology.
Symbols and Cartouches
- The ankh means life, and gods hold it up to the king’s nose to give life.
- The Eye of Horus (wedjat) means protection and healing. As an amulet it appears on jewelry; see Ancient Egyptian Jewelry.
- The djed pillar means stability and is linked to Osiris.
- Cartouches enclose a king’s names and were meant to protect the name for eternity.
Where to Read Real Hieroglyphs in Luxor
- Karnak Temple. Start in the Great Hypostyle Hall, where columns and walls are covered with ritual scenes and royal names.
- Luxor Temple. Royal inscriptions and festival scenes, best in the evening when the lighting makes the reliefs easier to read.
- Medinet Habu. Detailed reliefs, often much quieter.
- Tomb of Seti I. Some of the finest painted and carved reliefs in the valley.
For current tickets and hours, see Luxor Entrance Fees.
Beyond Luxor. The Rosetta Stone is on free display in the British Museum, London, and the Louvre in Paris has a large collection of inscribed objects. For an overview of where Egyptian collections are held, see Egyptian Museum Collections Worldwide.
Tip for visitors. Arrive early or late to avoid heat and crowds, and consider a certified guide if you want specific inscriptions translated on the spot.
From Sacred Script to the Alphabet
Hieroglyphs may also have shaped the alphabet you are reading. Scholars widely think early alphabetic writing in the Sinai region drew on Egyptian signs as models. Those scripts developed into the Phoenician alphabet and later Greek, Latin and many others. The details are still debated, but it is one of the most important legacies of a script people often think of only in connection with pharaohs and pyramids.