50 Fun Facts About Egyptian Hieroglyphs

In a row of Egyptian hieroglyphs, which way do the animal and human signs face, giving readers a direction arrow?

Toward the line's start is the rule: when the figures look left, you read from left to right, and vice versa. Readers simply read into the faces.

Which oval ring around royal names in Egyptian hieroglyphs did French soldiers name after their paper gun cartridges?

Cartouche is the French word for a paper powder cartridge, whose shape the ring resembled. Egyptians called it shenu and meant it to protect the name's owner from evil spirits.

Which sounds did Egyptian hieroglyphic writing normally leave out, so modern readers must guess how words were spoken?

Vowels were not normally written, so the true sound of most words is lost. Egyptologists just slip an e between the consonants, which is why nfr is said as nefer.

Which animal's head, borrowed from Egyptian hieroglyphs by Sinai labourers, is thought to have grown into the letter A?

An ox is thought to hide in the letter A: its ancestor aleph, a Semitic word for the animal, began as a pictogram of the beast's head.

Which French scholar announced in 1822 that he could read Egyptian hieroglyphs, helped by the Rosetta Stone?

Jean-François Champollion showed the signs mixed sounds with whole-idea pictures, a kind of script nobody had met before. He reportedly collapsed from excitement after telling his brother.

Which Egyptian hieroglyph, a T shape topped by a loop, stood for the word life and was carried by gods?

Ankh wrote the three consonants of the word for life, and the same sounds also spelled the Egyptian word for mirror. Gods are often shown holding one out to a pharaoh.

Which ibis-headed Egyptian god of wisdom was credited with inventing hieroglyphs and served as scribe of the gods?

Thoth was so tied to writing that scribes kept his picture where they worked. In judgement scenes he records the result as a heart is weighed against a feather.

Which institution has shown the Rosetta Stone, the key to Egyptian hieroglyphs, almost continuously since 1802?

The British Museum received it as a spoil of war after British troops defeated the French in Egypt in 1801. Its own records rank the slab as its most visited single object.

Which general's invasion of Egypt brought the soldiers who found the Rosetta Stone while strengthening a fort?

Napoleon Bonaparte brought more than 150 scholars and engineers along with his army, and a lieutenant named Bouchard spotted the slab in 1799 as soldiers demolished a wall.

The title pharaoh comes from two Egyptian hieroglyphs read per-aa, which together meant what?

Great house first meant the royal palace, not a person. The earliest confirmed use of it to address the ruler himself is a letter to Akhenaten.

The word hieroglyph comes from two Greek words that described Egyptian temple writing with which meaning?

Sacred carving is the literal sense: hierós meant holy and glýphō meant to engrave. The Egyptians' own name for the script meant words of gods.

What kind of document is repeated in three scripts on the Rosetta Stone?

A decree by priests, issued at Memphis in 196 BC, set up a cult of the newly crowned Ptolemy V. It ordered a copy in three scripts for every temple, which is why one slab could unlock the others.

Which collection of Egyptian spells on papyrus, placed in coffins, was known to its users as Coming Forth by Day?

Book of the Dead is a modern label for what Egyptians called the Spells of Coming Forth by Day. Its scrolls were often illustrated with scenes of the owner's journey into the afterlife.

Which object, read as ra, did Egyptian hieroglyphs use to write both the word for day and a chief god's name?

The sun sign was read ra and also wrote the word for day. The spelling Ra is a modern convention, since the script recorded only its consonant sounds.

Which civilisation's script, decoded with help from Yuri Knorozov, did explorers call hieroglyphs after Egypt's?

Maya writing struck 18th and 19th century explorers as looking Egyptian, so the name stuck, though the two systems are unrelated. Its signs turned out to spell syllables.

Egyptian scribes wrote most of a funerary papyrus in black, but which colour marked spell titles and demons' names?

Red ink, made from ochre, flagged spell titles, ritual instructions and the names of dangerous creatures such as the demon Apep. The black ink was based on carbon.

Which bird writes the sound m among the 24 single-consonant Egyptian hieroglyphs often called an alphabet?

An owl wrote m, one of 24 signs that each stood for a single consonant, much like English letters. Scribes mixed them freely with signs worth two or three consonants.

Which queen's name on an obelisk shipped to an English estate helped confirm the first Egyptian hieroglyphic letters?

Cleopatra shares the letters p, o and l with Ptolemy, so signs guessed from one name could be tested on the other. The obelisk still stands at Kingston Lacy in Dorset.

The spread of which religion closed Egypt's old temples and left nobody able to read hieroglyphs by the fifth century?

Christianity spread through Egypt, and in the early 390s the Roman emperor Theodosius I ordered the temples of the older faith closed. With them went the last people trained to read the signs.

Which English polymath, who showed that light behaves as a wave, picked out the name Ptolemy in Egyptian hieroglyphs?

Thomas Young identified sound signs in the royal name ring of Ptolemy V on the Rosetta Stone. A considerable rivalry with his French counterpart followed.

Which baby bird writes the sound w in the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet, where it was often shrunk to a simple coil?

A quail chick wrote w or u. Scribes had a shortcut for the fluffy bird: a quick spiral that counted as exactly the same letter.

Which snake writes the sound f in Egyptian hieroglyphs and, tacked onto the end of a noun, means his?

A horned viper wrote f, and since f was also the ending meaning his or him, the little two-horned snake is everywhere. A cobra stood for a different sound, dj.

Which zigzag sign writes the sound n in Egyptian hieroglyphs and, standing alone, spells to and of?

A ripple of water wrote n and, standing alone, the small words to, for and of. Stack three of them and you get mw, the Egyptian word for the liquid itself.

Which part of the face writes the sound r in Egyptian hieroglyphs and may be the distant ancestor of the letter P?

A mouth wrote r in Egyptian, yet the sign possibly fathered the Semitic letter pe, whose name means the same body part.

Which food, drawn as a small half circle, writes the sound t and marks feminine words in Egyptian hieroglyphs?

A loaf of bread, seen from the side, wrote t. Feminine words in Egyptian ended in that sound, so the half circle doubles as a feminine marker.

Which reclining animal sign, first read rw, later came to write the letter l in Egyptian hieroglyphs?

A lion lying down first spelled rw, an Egyptian word for the animal itself. Later scribes reused it for l, a letter with no sign of its own in the classic 24-sign set.

Which term names a silent Egyptian hieroglyph added after a word to show its category, such as animal or plant?

Determinative signs helped in reading but were not pronounced. They sorted look-alike spellings into categories such as divinities, people, animals and plants.

Which principle, also behind picture puzzles, let Egyptian hieroglyphs use a duck drawing to spell the word son?

Rebus writing borrows a picture purely for its sound: the Egyptian words for duck and son shared the same consonants, so one bird could spell both.

Which cursive Egyptian script, brushed in ink on papyrus, was everyday handwriting while hieroglyphs filled monuments?

Hieratic arose in the third millennium BCE and stayed Egypt's principal handwriting for over two thousand years. Its signs are cursive forms of the hieroglyphs themselves.

Which Egyptian script, whose Greek name means popular, fills the middle band of the Rosetta Stone?

Demotic was at first mistaken for Syriac by the French experts studying the slab. Egyptians called it document writing and used it for legal and business records.

Which insect's Egyptian hieroglyph, read kheper, wrote the verb meaning to come into existence?

A scarab beetle spelled kheper, to come into existence, and gave its name to Khepri, a god of the dawn often shown with the insect for a face.

The Egyptian hieroglyph nefer, which opens the names Nefertiti and Nefertari, wrote a word with which meaning?

Beautiful, good and perfect were all senses of nefer. The sign looks like a lute, but it actually shows an animal's heart with the windpipe rising from it.

The djed, an Egyptian hieroglyph shaped like a pillar and called the backbone of Osiris, stood for which quality?

Stability was the djed's message. In a ceremony called raising the djed, part of the royal jubilee, the pillar was set upright to act out the triumph of Osiris over Seth.

Which language, the final stage of Egyptian and still used in church services, helped a scholar decode hieroglyphs?

Coptic is Egyptian written in Greek letters plus seven extra signs, so it preserved how the old words sounded. The French decipherer learned to speak it fluently in Paris.

Which insect, paired with a sedge plant in a royal title, stood for Lower Egypt in hieroglyphs?

A bee stood for Lower Egypt and the sedge for Upper Egypt, so the title 'he of the sedge and bee' meant ruler of both lands. It introduced a pharaoh's throne name.

In Egyptian hieroglyphic numerals a single stroke meant one, but which plant stood for one thousand?

A lotus flower on its stem meant 1,000, and scribes simply repeated it: three blooms in a row made 3,000. Ten thousand was a bent finger.

Which small pond creature did Egyptian hieroglyphic numerals use as the sign for one hundred thousand?

A tadpole stood for 100,000. Only one number sign ranked higher: the god Heh, whose figure meant a million.

Which spells, first inscribed inside King Unas's tomb at Saqqara, are the oldest Egyptian funerary writings?

The Pyramid Texts were reserved for the pharaoh alone and, unlike later funerary spells, had no illustrations. Gaston Maspero found them when he entered the chambers in 1881.

Which ceremonial slab from about the 31st century BC carries some of the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs ever found?

The Narmer Palette spells its king's name with a catfish and a chisel, the sound signs behind Narmer. Some think its scenes show the uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt.

On which temple island in southern Egypt was the last known Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription cut in AD 394?

Philae stood on the Roman Empire's southern frontier, where its temple of Isis outlived the closures elsewhere. The priest who cut the inscription wrote that he hoped it would last for all eternity.

Which pharaoh's name, copied at Abu Simbel, showed that Egyptian hieroglyphs spelled out native rulers by sound too?

Ramesses emerged when a French scholar matched the name's final signs to the s in Ptolemy and guessed the rest. It proved that sound signs were not reserved for foreign names.

Which German Jesuit polymath of the 1600s claimed to read Egyptian hieroglyphs but got most of his translations wrong?

Athanasius Kircher worked by guesswork, and most of his translations turned out to be wrong. He did correctly link ancient Egyptian to the language still used in Egypt's churches.

Which palace-shaped frame topped by the Horus falcon held Egyptian kings' names centuries before the oval name ring?

Serekh frames combine a palace front with a plan of the royal courtyard, and they predate the oval ring by five to seven hundred years. The falcon on top marked the king's divine patron.

Which Egyptian goddess of writing, shown in a leopard skin, has a name that simply means female scribe?

Seshat was seen as a record keeper and is usually shown holding a notched palm rib, the hieroglyph for year, on which she marks off a ruler's reign.

Which Egyptian burial site yielded the tiny labels of a ruler called Scorpion I, forerunners of true hieroglyphs?

Abydos held the tomb, known as U-j, where German excavators recovered the small labels. They date to about the 33rd century BC, before Egypt had its first dynasty.

Which English Egyptologist's sign list, from his 1927 Egyptian Grammar, remains the standard catalogue of hieroglyphs?

Alan Gardiner filed each sign under a letter and a number, a code Egyptologists still quote. Printing his grammar also produced one of the few hieroglyphic fonts then available.

The Rosetta Stone, key to Egyptian hieroglyphs, was long mislabelled black basalt; which rock is it actually made of?

Granodiorite showed through after a 1999 cleaning stripped off old wax and chalk, revealing a dark grey rock with a pink vein, typical of quarries near Aswan.

Which computing standard added more than a thousand Egyptian hieroglyphs in 2009, so they can be typed like any letter?

Unicode added 1,071 of the signs in version 5.2. The flowing handwritten forms got no codes of their own, since they count as the same characters.

Which Egyptian hieroglyph, drawn as two upraised arms, named the life spirit said to leave the body at death?

Ka was a person's vital essence, the difference between a living body and a corpse. Food and drink were offered at tombs because the Ka was thought to need sustaining.

Which name is given to the pottery shards and stone flakes that Egyptian scribes used as cheap notepaper?

Ostraca cost nothing, so they carried receipts, messages, notes and students' exercises. The same Greek word gave us ostracism, from votes scratched on shards in Athens.