Hieroglyphs for Travelers: How to Read a Cartouche

Read toward the faces: people, birds and animals in a line of hieroglyphs look toward the beginning of the text. A cartouche, the oval loop, encloses a royal name, and a few are easy to learn, such as the birth name of Ramesses II, which starts with the sun disc of Ra. You will not learn to read Egyptian in a week, but with about 20 common signs you can start to see what a temple wall is saying.

Hieroglyphs cover almost every temple and tomb you will visit in Egypt, from Karnak and Luxor Temple to Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae and the Valley of the Kings. Most travelers admire them as decoration. With a little preparation, you can do more: find the king who built a wall, recognize gods by their symbols, and follow the basic logic of a scene. That small step turns a long day of temples into something closer to a conversation.

This guide gives you the essentials: which way to read, how the writing system works, what a cartouche is, a starter set of signs, how the script was deciphered and what to look for at the temples.

How does the writing system work?

Egyptian hieroglyphs are not a simple alphabet, and they are not pure picture writing either. They combine several kinds of signs:

• Sound signs that stand for one, two or three consonants. A set of roughly 24 single-consonant signs works a little like an alphabet.
• Word signs that represent a whole word by its picture, such as a sun disc for "sun."
• Determinatives that are not pronounced but placed at the end of a word to show its category, such as a seated man for a person or a walking pair of legs for movement.

Vowels were generally not written, which is why modern spellings of names vary, for example Ramesses and Ramses, or Tutankhamun and Tutankhamen. Signs were arranged in neat groups rather than strictly one after another, so scribes could make a line look balanced and beautiful.

Which way do you read hieroglyphs?

Hieroglyphs can run from right to left, from left to right or in columns from top to bottom. The direction is set by which way the human and animal signs face: they look toward the beginning of the line, so you read toward their faces. Right to left was the most common direction.

Within a group, read the top sign before the bottom one. Columns are read from top to bottom. A quick test on any wall: find a bird or a seated figure, note which way it faces, and start reading from that side. Once you have tried this a few times at the first temple of your trip, it becomes second nature. Text often faces the same way as the figures it describes, so a caption next to a god usually faces in the same direction as that god. Symmetry also mattered: on doorways and stelae, inscriptions on each side often mirror each other.

What is a cartouche?

A cartouche is an oval loop with a short bar at one end, representing a loop of rope. It is generally understood to express the idea of everything the sun encircles, in other words the king's rule over the world. Inside it, the scribe wrote a royal name.

By the Middle Kingdom, a king's full title had five names. Two of them were written in cartouches:

• The throne name, taken at coronation and usually introduced by the sedge plant and bee, the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt."
• The birth name, usually introduced by a pintail duck and a sun disc, the title "Son of Ra."

Spotting cartouches tells you quickly who built, decorated or later claimed a wall. Kings sometimes recarved earlier cartouches with their own names, and if you look closely you can occasionally see traces of an older name beneath a newer one. Ramesses II's cartouches appear on many monuments, including some he did not build.

20 signs that recur everywhere

You do not need to memorize hundreds of signs. The following appear on almost every wall:

Once you recognize the ankh, the was scepter and the djed pillar, you will see them in the hands of gods and kings in offering scenes everywhere.

How were hieroglyphs deciphered?

The ability to read hieroglyphs was lost after the end of antiquity, and for centuries scholars guessed at their meaning. The breakthrough came with the Rosetta Stone, found by French soldiers near Rashid, known in English as Rosetta, in 1799. It carries the same decree in three scripts: hieroglyphic, Demotic and Greek. The stone is now in the British Museum in London.

Scholars knew the Greek, and the Englishman Thomas Young made important early progress. The French scholar Jean-François Champollion announced his decipherment in 1822, using royal names in cartouches as a key. The name Ptolemy on the Rosetta Stone, and the name Cleopatra from an obelisk inscription, let him match signs to sounds. He also showed that the system mixed sound signs with word signs.

What to look for at the temples

With these basics, you can approach a temple wall with a plan:

• Find a cartouche and ask your guide whose name it is.
• Look for an offering scene, where the king holds out an object, such as incense, wine or a figure of the goddess Maat, to a god.
• Spot the smiting scene on a pylon gateway, where the king raises his arm over enemies, a classic image of royal power.
• Identify gods by their symbols: Amun with a tall double-plumed crown, Horus with a falcon head, Hathor with cow horns and a sun disc, and Sobek with a crocodile head at Kom Ombo.
• Notice the depth of carving: sunk relief, cut into the wall, is often used on exterior surfaces where strong sunlight creates shadow, while raised relief is common indoors.

Karnak is filled with the cartouches of many kings, including Ramesses II in the Great Hypostyle Hall. At Dendera, a relief on the rear wall of the temple shows Cleopatra VII with her son Caesarion. Temples of the Greek and Roman periods, such as Edfu and Kom Ombo, are rich in cartouches of Ptolemaic kings and even Roman emperors.

How to learn more before you travel

If you enjoy this first step, a little reading before the trip pays off. Introductory books on Egyptian hieroglyphs teach the single-consonant signs and the most common words in a few evenings. Practicing your own name in hieroglyphs is a fun way to learn the sound signs, though remember that a modern name is only an approximation.

At home, look for photographs of the temples on your route and try to find cartouches in them. When you arrive, you will spot them much faster. Ask your guide to read one or two inscriptions aloud; most Egyptologists enjoy showing travelers how it works.

Frequently asked questions

Which way do you read hieroglyphs?

Read toward the faces of the human and animal signs, since they look toward the beginning of the line. Within a group, read the top sign before the bottom one.

What does a cartouche mean?

A cartouche is an oval rope loop that encloses a royal name. Kings usually had two of their five names written in cartouches, the throne name and the birth name.

Who deciphered hieroglyphs?

Jean-François Champollion announced the decipherment in 1822, building on earlier work by scholars including Thomas Young. The Rosetta Stone's three scripts and the royal names in cartouches were central to his success.

Where is the Rosetta Stone?

The original Rosetta Stone is in the British Museum in London. It was found near Rashid, on the Nile Delta coast of Egypt, in 1799.

Can I see Cleopatra's name in Egypt?

Yes. At the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, a relief on the rear wall shows Cleopatra VII and her son Caesarion with their names in cartouches.

Plan it with Nourbelle

A good Egyptologist can make hieroglyphs come alive at every temple. See our Nile cruises or the Luxor destination page to plan a route rich in inscriptions.