Reading Egyptian Hieroglyphics - In progress easy Handout for Classes Taught Online



 Reading Egyptian Hieroglyphics

By Sekhet Naneferenpet - Jenn H.
Feel free to email or message me on FB with any questions. 

What you need to know:

1. Hieroglyphics are not a kind of picture writing and do not correspond with our alphabet. Their writing system contains phonetic images called phonograms. They are read as the sound of the object they represent.

2. The alphabetical element of the ancient writing system was combined with pictorial and symbolic elements. An understanding of all three elements, phonetic, pictorial and symbolic is necessary to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs – the alphabetical element is a great way to start.

3. They did not contain vowels such as E, I, O, U, but did use the letter A. Consonants used are B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, W, Y, and Z.

4. L, O, V, X are not used. The letter L did not appear until the Ptolemaic Period with the lion symbol portraying it.

5. Direction of writing! Ancient hieroglyphics were written both vertical and horizontal and from left to right and right to left. Something else to notice!

Any hieroglyph with a front or face will look towards the beginning of the text. If you have the face of a man facing towards the left because you are used to writing from the left. The other thing to remember, hieroglyphs written in columns always read from top to bottom, never upwards. When you see a hieroglyph above another one, read the top first.

6. There were no spaces between words, no punctuation, commas or question marks.

How it works:

The Egyptian writing system is complex but relatively straightforward. The inventory of signs is divided into three categories.

1. Logograms – Signs that write out morphemes. What is a Morpheme?



Examples of Logograms:




2. Phonograms – Signs that represent one or more sounds. What is that?!





3. Determinatives – Signs that denote neither morpheme nor sound but help with the meaning of a group of signs that precede them. Ok, what is this?
Here are some common determinatives. They are generally written at the end of words and they help us to break a text up into individual words. Very useful where there are no commas or spaces between Egyptian inscriptions.


Like Proto-Sinaitic-derived scripts, Egyptians wrote only with consonants. All phonograms are uni-consonantal, bi-consonantal, and tri-consonantal. The following are Uniconsonantals:
1. Sound signs: There are 16 glyphs that we write sounds we know from English.


These three hieroglyphics do not have special letters for them in the English Alphabet. 


Do recognize that s, t, and d with the diacritics above and below the letters indicate the different sounds per different letter.
Finally, we have seven hieroglyphs that write sounds we do not recognize in English:


A few examples of bi-consonantal and tri-consonantal:


Examples from Famous Cartouches! Let’s make our own!





References/Credits Due!!
Glypher. (n.d.). Word of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Retrieved from GlyphViewer: https://www.2glyph.com/blog/word-of-ancient-egyptian-hieroglyphs/

Manley, B. (2012). Egyptian Hieroglyphs for Complete Beginners. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.

Millmore, M. (n.d.). Discovering Egypt. Retrieved from Eyelid Productions: https://discoveringegypt.com/

Scoville, P. (2015, July 2). Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Retrieved from Ancient History Encyclopedia: https://www.ancient.eu/Egyptian_Hieroglyphs/

https://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/hieroglyphics.htm
















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