Hieroglyphs
Hieroglyphs are a writing system that was used in ancient Egypt. The word comes from Greek and means “sacred carvings,” because these symbols were often carved into temple walls and monuments.
What hieroglyphs look like
Key facts
- Picture-based symbols: Each hieroglyph can represent a sound, a word, or an idea.
- Used for over 3,000 years: From around 3100 BCE until about 400 CE.
- Found on monuments and papyrus: Temples, tombs, statues, and scrolls.
- Written in different directions: Left-to-right or right-to-left, depending on how the symbols face.
Types of hieroglyphs
- Phonograms – represent sounds (like letters or syllables)
- Logograms – represent whole words
- Determinatives – give clues about meaning but aren’t spoken
How we understand them today
For centuries, hieroglyphs were a mystery—until the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799. It had the same text written in:
- Hieroglyphs
- Demotic (another Egyptian script)
- Greek
Because scholars could read Greek, they used it to decode hieroglyphs.
Fun example
A picture of an owl usually represents the sound “m”, not the animal itself.
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