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Cleopatra's name in hieroglyphs: her cartouche read sign by sign

13 October 2026

Cleopatra's name in hieroglyphs is spelled out sound by sound, almost like an alphabet: a sandy hill for q, a lying lion for l, a reed leaf, a quail chick, a stool, a vulture, a hand, a mouth, a second vulture and a bread loaf, closed by an egg. Said aloud it gives something like "Qlioupadrat", the Egyptian way of writing the Greek Kleopatra, "glory of her father".

Cleopatra VII ruled Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, the last of the Greek-speaking Ptolemies. Several queens of her family carried the name before her, and their cartouches are spelled much the same way, so the ring on its own rarely tells you which Cleopatra you are looking at.

Sound signs spell her name

Greek names had no Egyptian meaning to draw on, so scribes wrote them with sound signs. The site's spelling, transliterated qlwpdrꜣt, runs like this, from the top of the oval down.

Sandy hill (N29): q, the K of Kleopatra
Recumbent lion (E23): rw, used for L in Greek names
Reed leaf (M17): i, a vowel sound here
Quail chick (G43): w, written for the Greek o
Stool (Q3): p
Egyptian vulture (G1): ꜣ, written for the a after p
Hand (D46): d, standing for the Greek t
Mouth (D21): r
Egyptian vulture and bread loaf (G1, X1): the final a and the feminine t
Egg (H8): a silent determinative after the names of goddesses and royal women

Sandy hill Recumbent lion Flowering reed Quail chick Stool Egyptian vulture Hand Mouth Bread loaf Egg

Her epithet calls her beloved of her father

In her cartouche the name is often followed by an epithet, nṯrt mrt it.s, said "netjeret meret ites": "the goddess, beloved of her father". It echoes her Greek title Thea Philopator, "the goddess who loves her father". The cloth on a pole (R8) writes nṯr, "god", made feminine with the loaf and the egg. mrt, "beloved", and it.s, "her father", follow.

Her other names were Egyptian through and through. One of her Horus names, for example, calls her "great lady of perfection, excellent in counsel". Those names stand outside the cartouche, in the long string of titles that every ruler of Egypt carried.

Cloth on a pole

Her name helped Champollion crack the code

A Cleopatra cartouche played a part in reading hieroglyphs again. An obelisk from Philae, now at Kingston Lacy in Dorset, names Ptolemy VIII and the queens Cleopatra II and III in Greek on its base. Champollion had worked out how Cleopatra ought to be spelled in hieroglyphs, and a copy of the obelisk's inscription showed he was right.

Both names have a p, an l and an o. The stool and the lion turn up in both, each where the Greek puts that letter. The o is a lasso in the Rosetta Ptolemy and the Philae Cleopatra, though the copy shown here writes it with the quail chick. With that comparison and the Rosetta Stone's Ptolemy, Champollion announced his decipherment in 1822.

Compare Ptolemy's cartouche

Temple walls show her as an Egyptian ruler

Cleopatra was Macedonian Greek by descent, and her court spoke Greek. She was the first of her family known to have learned Egyptian. On temple walls she appears as an Egyptian ruler, crowned and offering to the gods, her name in an oval like any pharaoh's.

She shared the throne in turn with two brothers, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, and then with her son by Julius Caesar, Ptolemy XV, called Caesarion. After Mark Antony and she lost at Actium, she died in Alexandria in August 30 BC, and Egypt became a Roman province.

Dendera shows her with Caesarion

On the outside of the back wall of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, north of Luxor, Cleopatra VII and Caesarion are carved large, offering to the gods, their names in cartouches beside them. It is one of the few images of her made in her lifetime.

In London, the Petrie Museum keeps a stela with the cartouches of Cleopatra and Caesarion. At Dendera, many of the other ovals belong to earlier Ptolemies and to Roman emperors, so read each one before you decide it is hers.

Cartouche

Her signs stack two or three to a row

Her name is long, so the signs stack two or three to a row: the hill above the lion, the reed beside the chick, the stool with a vulture, then the hand, the mouth, the last vulture, the loaf and the egg at the bottom.

Drawing it once teaches most of the alphabet signs used for foreign names. Alexander, Ptolemy and the Roman emperors are spelled with the same set.

Write Cleopatra in a cartouche

Questions

What does Cleopatra mean?

It is Greek: kleos, "glory", and pater, "father". The hieroglyphs only spell the sounds, so an Egyptian reader saw no meaning in them.

Why is there a lion in Cleopatra's name?

Egyptian had no separate letter for l. Scribes used the lying lion, read rw, for the l of Greek and Latin names, as in Ptolemy and Alexander.

Can I tell Cleopatra VII's cartouche from earlier Cleopatras?

Rarely from the oval alone. Look at the scene and the ruler beside her: at Dendera, the boy king with her is Caesarion, which places it in her reign.

How do you write Cleopatra in hieroglyphs?

Use the sound signs in order: q, l, i, o, p, a, d, r, a, t, then the egg. Spellings on monuments vary a little, with a sign added or left out.

Glossary

alphabet sign: A hieroglyph that stands for one consonant, such as the horned viper for f. Egyptian has about 25 of them, used beside signs for two or three sounds.
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.
determinative: A sign at the end of a word that is not read aloud. It shows what kind of thing the word means, such as a seated man for men and their jobs.
epithet: A title or phrase added to a name, such as "beloved of Amun" after a king's name or "true of voice" after the name of someone who has died.
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.
obelisk: A tall, four-sided stone pillar with a pointed top, usually set up in pairs before a temple and carved with the king's names.
pharaoh: The king of Egypt. The word comes from per-aa, "great house", a name for the palace that came to mean the king himself in the New Kingdom.
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.
scribe: A person trained to read and write, who kept accounts, wrote letters and copied texts. Few Egyptians could write, and scribes were well respected.
stela: An upright stone slab carved with words and pictures, set up in tombs and temples or to mark a border.
temple: The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.
transliteration: Writing Egyptian in Latin letters, one letter for each sound sign, such as ꜥnḫ for ankh. Egyptologists say the words with an e between consonants.

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Where to see it

Dendera Temple Complex site
Rosetta Stone object