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How to read a stela, line by line

25 October 2026

Read an Egyptian stela from the top down. A rounded top holds sun and sky signs, a scene below shows the owner before the gods or at an offering table, and the lines of text at the bottom almost always begin with ḥtp-dj-nswt, "an offering which the king gives". Find that group, read in the direction the signs face, and the rest comes in a fixed order: a god, the offerings, then the owner's name.

A stela is a slab of stone set up in a tomb, a temple or a holy place like Abydos, to keep a person's name and offerings alive for ever. Museums hold thousands. Most follow the same plan, so learning one teaches you most of them.

The rounded top holds the sky

Many stelae are round-topped. The curve stands for the sky. Under it you often see a winged sun disc, the sun spreading its wings over the whole stone, or a pair of eyes, the wedjat eyes, looking out on the world of the living. They are pictures and need no reading.

Below the curve, a scene. In the New Kingdom it usually shows the owner adoring a god, most often Osiris, seated with crook and flail. On earlier stelae the owner sits before a table piled with loaves, meat, birds and jars, with family around. Short columns of signs float between the figures. These are captions: each names the person or god it stands beside.

Sun Eye of Horus (wedjat)

The faces of the figures show the reading direction

Hieroglyphs can run left to right, right to left, or down in columns. People and animals in the text face the start of the line. If the birds and seated men look to the right, start at the right edge and read towards the left.

On a stela the captions often face each other, each turned towards the figure it names. The main text at the bottom usually runs one way only. Check its first birds before you start.

Egyptian vulture Seated man

Find the reading direction

The first line opens with an offering the king gives

The main text almost always begins ḥtp-dj-nswt, said "hetep di nesut". The sedge plant (M23) and the loaf (X1) write nswt, "king". They come first in writing out of respect, though they are read last. The offering mat with a loaf (R4) is ḥtp, "offering", and a triangular loaf writes dj, "gives".

Next comes a god, usually Osiris: wsir nb ḏdw nṯr ꜥꜣ nb ꜣbḏw, "Osiris, lord of Busiris, the great god, lord of Abydos". Look for the throne and eye that write Osiris, and the djed pillar of Busiris. Anubis takes his place on many stelae. Then the request: prt-ḫrw, "an invocation offering", literally "the going forth of the voice", followed by a list: bread and beer, oxen and fowl, and every good and pure thing on which a god lives.

Sedge Bread loaf Bread on an offering mat Djed pillar

Read the offering formula in full

The owner's name comes last, after the titles

The offerings are "for the ka of", n kꜣ n, the owner. Look for the two raised arms of the ka (D28). After them come the owner's titles, then the name. Titles tell you who the person was: a scribe, a priest, a standard-bearer, a lady of the house (nbt pr), as married women were called.

Then two words close the name: mꜣꜥ-ḫrw, "true of voice", said of a dead person who passed the judgement before Osiris. The plinth sign (Aa11) writes mꜣꜥ, "true", and the oar (P8) writes ḫrw, "voice". Once you know that pair, you can pick out every dead person's name on a stela, because it stands right after each one.

Raised arms Platform Oar

Family members follow in the scene and the lower lines

Stelae name families. A duck (G39) is sꜣ, "son". With the loaf t it becomes sꜣt, "daughter". A horned viper (I9) after a word is f, "his": sꜣ.f, "his son". A wife is ḥmt.f, "his wife", often with nbt pr. Each name ends with a small seated man or woman, the determinative that says whether it is a man or a woman.

A typical New Kingdom stela in Vienna shows this layout well: a winged sun disc and an eye at the top, Osiris on his throne before an offering table and the adoring couple, two seated couples below with a man and a woman pouring water for them, and three lines of the offering formula for the ka of a standard-bearer. Every part named above is there.

Pintail duck Horned viper Seated woman

The live camera reads a stela one line at a time

In a museum, frame one line or column at a time. Start with the first group, find ḥtp-dj-nswt, and let the camera box the rest. Where the carving is worn, trace the sign over the photo and the drawing matcher will suggest what it is.

Point the camera at a stela

Questions

What is written on most Egyptian stelae?

The offering formula, ḥtp-dj-nswt, asking a god, usually Osiris or Anubis, for bread, beer and every good thing for the owner's ka, followed by the owner's titles and name.

What does maa kheru mean on a stela?

"True of voice". It follows the name of a dead person and says they passed the judgement of the dead.

Why does the king's sign come first if it is read last?

Out of respect. Signs for the king and the gods were moved to the front of a group in writing, while the words kept their spoken order.

Where can I see Egyptian stelae?

In almost every Egyptian collection. The British Museum, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Louvre have hundreds, many from Abydos, where people set up stelae to share in the festivals of Osiris.

Glossary

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.
New Kingdom: Egypt's age of empire, about 1550 to 1069 BC, the time of Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II.
offering formula: The prayer ḥtp-dj-nswt, "an offering that the king gives", asking for bread, beer and other good things for the dead. It is written on tombs, stelae and coffins.
priest: A servant of a god in a temple, who washed, dressed and fed the god's statue each day. A high priest led the staff of a great temple.
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.
tomb: A burial place: a pit, a mastaba, a pyramid or rooms cut into rock. Its chapel was where the family brought offerings.