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Ten inscriptions to read at the British Museum
25 October 2026
Seven of the best inscriptions in the British Museum stand in one gallery, Room 4, on the ground floor: the Rosetta Stone, the Younger Memnon, the Abydos king list, the Shabaka Stone, the sarcophagus of Nectanebo II, a statue of Senusret III and a ram sphinx of Taharqa. Upstairs, Nebamun's tomb paintings, the papyri and the coffins make ten.
Each one teaches something different: names, a list of kings, a sacred text, a prayer. Displays and room numbers change, so check the museum's map on the day. General entry to the Egyptian galleries has been free.
The Rosetta Stone holds Ptolemy's cartouche
1. The Rosetta Stone (EA 24), near the entrance to Room 4, carries a decree of 196 BC for Ptolemy V in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek. The hieroglyphic part at the top is broken, with 14 lines left. Find the ovals in it: they hold Ptolemy's name, with the stool (Q3) for p and the lion (E23) for l. Some add "living forever, beloved of Ptah".
Matching those ovals to the Greek name Ptolemaios gave Thomas Young and Champollion their first sound values. It is usually behind a crowd. Come at opening time, or read it from the side.
Ramesses II signs a colossus and a list of kings
2. The Younger Memnon (EA 19) is the head and chest of a colossal granite statue of Ramesses II, about 7 tonnes, from his temple at Thebes, the Ramesseum. Giovanni Belzoni moved it to the Nile in 1816 and it reached London in 1818. Shelley's poem Ozymandias takes its title from a Greek form of Usermaatre, the king's throne name. Read the inscription on the back pillar, and look for the canine head (F12) of wsr.
3. The Abydos king list (EA 117, Bay 30) is part of a limestone wall from a temple Ramesses II built at Abydos, around 1250 BC. It held 34 kings' names, the ancestors he honoured, in rows of cartouches. Parts of three rows survive, and several names can still be read.
Two kings of the Middle Kingdom and Kush stand in stone
4. A granodiorite statue of Senusret III (EA 686, Bay 21), found below the temple of Mentuhotep II at Deir el-Bahari, shows his lined, careworn face. A cartouche with his name is carved on the front of his belt. His throne name, Khakaure, is easy to learn: the sun, a sun rising over a hill and three pairs of raised arms (D28).
5. A ram sphinx (EA 1779, Bay 9), the ram of Amun, shelters a small figure of the Kushite king Taharqa between its front legs, from around 680 BC. A band of hieroglyphs runs along its base. Look for Taharqa's four alphabet signs: a loaf, a reed shelter, a mouth and a hill.
A sacred text and a sarcophagus were reused
6. The Shabaka Stone (EA 498) is a slab of black granite on which King Shabaka of the 25th Dynasty had a text copied from a worm-eaten papyrus he found in the temple of Ptah at Memphis. It tells how Ptah created the world by thinking it in his heart and speaking it with his tongue. Later someone used it as a millstone, and the grooves wiped out the middle of the text.
7. The sarcophagus of Nectanebo II (EA 10, Bay 8), the last native Egyptian king, is a huge box of conglomerate stone carved inside and out with scenes and texts from the Amduat, the book of the sun's journey through the night. It was never used for him. Later it became a ritual bath in a mosque courtyard in Alexandria, and twelve holes were drilled near its base.
Upstairs, painted signs and papyri
8. The tomb paintings of Nebamun (Room 61), from Thebes around 1350 BC, show him hunting birds in the marshes with his wife, daughter and cat, a feast with musicians, and a count of geese and cattle. Eight columns of painted hieroglyphs survive on the hunting scene alone. The signs are painted in colour, the finest painted hieroglyphs in the museum.
9. Books of the Dead on papyrus, such as Hunefer's and Ani's, are shown in turn when on display, since light damages them. They show the weighing of the heart, with long columns of spells in hieroglyphs and the owner's name again and again.
10. The painted coffins and mummies, also upstairs, carry the offering formula, ḥtp-dj-nswt, down their lids. Look for the sedge (M23) and the offering mat (R4) at the top of a column, and the owner's name with mꜣꜥ-ḫrw, "true of voice", at the end.
The live camera boxes the signs on a stela
Room 4 is well lit and the stone pieces suit the camera. Point it at one column at a time. Glass cases upstairs reflect: hold the phone close at a slight angle and avoid the flash. Where a sign is worn, trace it over your photo.
Questions
Where is the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum?
In Room 4, the Egyptian sculpture gallery on the ground floor, near its entrance.
Are the Egyptian galleries at the British Museum free?
General entry to the permanent galleries, Egyptian rooms included, has long been free. Special exhibitions usually need a ticket.
Which room has the Nebamun paintings?
Room 61, upstairs, given over to the tomb-chapel of Nebamun. Displays can move, so check the map on the day.
Glossary
- cartouche
- An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
- coffin
- A box for the body, of wood or stone, often shaped like a person and painted with spells, names and gods. Rich burials nested several coffins inside a sarcophagus.
- demotic
- A fast joined-up script that grew out of hieratic around 650 BC, used for everyday documents. It is the middle script on the Rosetta Stone.
- hieroglyphs
- The picture signs of ancient Egyptian writing, used from about 3200 BC to AD 394. A sign can stand for sounds, for a whole word, or for the kind of thing a word means.
- Middle Kingdom
- The age when Egypt was united again, about 2055 to 1650 BC. Its texts became the classic form of the language that later scribes copied.
- papyrus
- A writing sheet made from strips of the papyrus reed laid in two crossing layers and pressed. Sheets were glued into long rolls.
- Rosetta Stone
- A stone slab of 196 BC carrying one decree in hieroglyphs, demotic and Greek. It helped Jean-François Champollion decipher hieroglyphs in 1822.
- sarcophagus
- A large stone coffin. In rich burials it held one or more coffins of wood.
- sphinx
- A statue with the body of a lion and the head of a king, a guardian of temples and tombs. The Great Sphinx at Giza is the largest.
- temple
- The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.
- throne name
- The name a king took when he came to the throne, written in the first cartouche after the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt". Egyptologists also call it the prenomen.
- tomb
- A burial place: a pit, a mastaba, a pyramid or rooms cut into rock. Its chapel was where the family brought offerings.
People in this article
Where to see it
- British Museum, London museum
- Rosetta Stone object
- Abydos site
- Temple of Hatshepsut (Deir el-Bahari) site
Sources
More to read
- The Abydos King List: 76 kings in a row The Abydos King List: 76 kings in a row in Seti I's temple at Abydos, from Menes to Seti himself. Where it is, which kings it skips and how to read it.
- The Osireion at Abydos The Osireion at Abydos: Seti I's sunken tomb for Osiris, its granite hall, the oldest Book of Caverns and a sky ceiling. What it says and how to read it.
- Reading the tombs of the Valley of the Queens The Valley of the Queens at Luxor: Nefertari's tomb, the tombs of Ramesses III's sons and the guardian gods of the gates on their walls, read in place.