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Hieroglyphs for kids: a first lesson

11 October 2026

Hieroglyphs are the picture signs the ancient Egyptians wrote with for more than 3,000 years. They look like pictures, but most of them stand for sounds, the way our letters do. An owl means the sound m. A mouth means r.

A hieroglyph works a bit like a picture puzzle. Learn a handful of sound signs and you can read real Egyptian words and the names of kings and queens.

Four signs turn up everywhere

Say each sound out loud as you look at the picture.

Egyptian scribes did not write vowels like a, e, i, o and u. Experts fill them in when they say the words today, so the vulture's sound is usually said 'a', even though it was really more like a catch in the throat.

Owl: m, as in 'moon'
Mouth: r, as in 'run'
Ripple of water: n, as in 'nose'
Egyptian vulture: a quick stop in the throat, said 'a'

Owl Mouth Ripple of water Egyptian vulture

Two signs write ren, the word for name

Put the mouth over the ripple of water and you have written rn. Add an e in the middle and it is said ren. It is the Egyptian word for 'name'.

Names mattered a great deal in Egypt. People believed that a person's name helped them live on after death, so it had to last. That is why kings carved their names on huge temples. When a ruler wanted an enemy forgotten, workers chiselled that person's name off the walls.

A word that sounds like its animal

The Egyptian word for cat was miw, said 'miu'. It probably copies a cat's meow. Scribes wrote it with four signs: a milk jug in a net for mi, a reed for i, a little quail chick for w, and then a drawing of a cat.

The cat at the end is never said out loud. It is a silent helper sign that tells you what kind of word you just read. Experts call these helpers determinatives. A seated man at the end of a word, for example, tells you the word is about a man.

Milk jug in a net Flowering reed Quail chick Seated man

Read toward the faces

Hieroglyphs can run from right to left, from left to right, or down in columns. To find the start, look at the animals and people. They all face the beginning of the line, so you read toward their faces.

Signs are also stacked in neat little groups. Inside each group, read the top sign before the one underneath.

Cleopatra's name sits in a ring

Kings and queens wrote their names inside an oval loop of rope called a cartouche. Spotting one tells you a royal name is inside.

Cleopatra's name is spelled almost letter by letter. It begins with a sandy hill for k, then a lion for l, which is how scribes wrote the l sound in Greek names. Next come the reed, a coiled lasso for o, a stool for p and the vulture, then a hand for d, the mouth for r, the vulture again and a loaf of bread for t. At the end sits an egg, a silent sign used after the names of queens and goddesses.

To write your own name, pick the sign for each sound you hear, the way a scribe spelled out a foreign name.

Sandy hill Recumbent lion Stool Hand Bread loaf Egg

Write your name in a cartouche

Practise like a young scribe

Egyptian children who trained as scribes copied lessons onto flat flakes of limestone and broken bits of pottery, called ostraca, instead of expensive papyrus. Many practice pieces have been found at Deir el-Medina, the village of the workers who cut the royal tombs near Luxor.

You can practise the same way: copy each sign into a box, say its sound, then try it from memory the next day. A printed sheet with every sound sign works well at a kitchen table or in a classroom.

Print the alphabet worksheet

Questions

What does the word hieroglyph mean?

It comes from Greek words meaning 'sacred carving'. The Egyptians called their writing medu netjer, 'words of the gods'.

How did people learn to read hieroglyphs again?

After the last ones were carved in AD 394, nobody could read them for about 1,400 years. Then the Rosetta Stone, which repeats the same decree in hieroglyphs, a later Egyptian script and Greek, helped the French scholar Jean-François Champollion work them out in 1822.

Did all Egyptian children learn to write?

No. Most children helped on farms or learned their family's trade. Reading and writing were taught to future scribes, in most periods boys from rich and powerful families. At Deir el-Medina, some workers' sons learned from their fathers and grandfathers.

What is a good first project with hieroglyphs?

Write your name in a cartouche, then draw each sign yourself. The Hiero Lens camera can also read signs from a museum photo, so a trip to see Egyptian objects turns into a reading game.

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.
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.
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.
ostracon: A flake of limestone or a broken pot used as a cheap surface for notes, sketches and school exercises.
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.
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.
temple: The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.
tomb: A burial place: a pit, a mastaba, a pyramid or rooms cut into rock. Its chapel was where the family brought offerings.