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Which way do you read hieroglyphs?

5 October 2026

Read toward the faces. Every sign with a front, whether a bird, a snake or a person, looks toward the beginning of its line. If the owls and vultures face right, start at the right edge and read leftward; if they face left, start at the left.

Columns are read from the top down. Right to left was the direction scribes preferred, but left to right is common on monuments, and a single wall can hold both.

The rule of the faces

The vulture (G1), the owl (G17), the quail chick (G43) and the horned viper (I9) make the easiest pointers. All four are one-consonant signs, so they turn up in almost every line.

Take Khufu's name, ḫwfw (Khufu): placenta, quail chick, horned viper, quail chick. The chicks and the viper have heads. If they look right, the placenta at the right-hand end is the first sign. Round or symmetrical signs, like the placenta disc or a loaf of bread, give no direction on their own, so look for the nearest sign with a face.

Egyptian vulture Owl Quail chick Horned viper Placenta

Read Khufu's cartouche

Rows, columns and blocks of signs

Signs are packed into blocks. Inside a block the upper sign comes before the lower one, and two small signs side by side follow the direction of the line.

A column is read downward. When several columns stand side by side, the faces also show which column comes first: begin with the one the signs are looking toward, then move away from it.

Why the direction changes

Writing followed the picture. A caption beside a figure usually faces the same way as the person it names, so in a scene where a king offers to a god, the king's titles look one way and the god's words look the other.

Doorways, false doors and stelae are often built in mirror image. Two matching texts start at the centre line and run outward, or start at the edges and meet in the middle. The Egyptians cared about balance more than about one fixed direction, and it shows in almost every temple gateway.

Cases that trip up readers

Gods and kings come first. A god's name is often written at the front of a group even when it is said at the end. In Tutankhamun's throne name, Nebkheperure, 'lord of forms is Ra', the sun disc of Ra sits at the top of the cartouche, above the scarab, the plural strokes and the basket, and is read last.

Some religious texts are retrograde. In many Book of the Dead papyri the signs face right, yet the columns follow each other from left to right. Why scribes did this is still discussed: scholars have offered both practical and religious explanations.

A mirrored sign keeps its value. The owl facing left and the owl facing right are both m, and the scribe turned the whole sign rather than drawing a different one.

Sun Scarab beetle Plural strokes Basket

Draw a sign both ways

The drawing pad accepts a sign facing either way, because scribes drew both. Draw the quail chick looking left, then looking right: both come back as w.

The camera works the same way on a photo. It names each sign whichever way it faces; finding where the line starts is still your part.

Quail chick

Draw a sign facing either way

Questions

Can hieroglyphs be read from bottom to top?

In practice, no. Columns run downward, and within a block the upper sign is read first, so a line always starts at the top or at the side the faces point to.

How do I find the direction when a line has no animals or people?

Look at other signs with a clear front. Most of them, such as the foot, the forearm or the hand, point toward the start of the line in the same way the faces do.

Why do books print hieroglyphs left to right?

Modern European languages run left to right, so Egyptologists turned the signs to match the text around them. Gardiner's grammar and most textbooks do this; the reading is the same, only mirrored.

Which way does a cartouche read?

The same way as the text around it. A vertical cartouche reads from the top down and usually stands on its tied end; in a horizontal one the tie normally sits where the name ends.

Was hieratic written in both directions too?

Hieratic, the joined-up script scribes used on papyrus, ran from right to left. It was written in columns in early periods and mostly in horizontal lines later.