Although hieroglyphics are Egyptian, the word hieroglyphics is Greek. 'Hiero' means 'holy' and 'glyphics' means 'marks' or 'writings' - so the word means 'holy writings'. The Egyptians believed there was great power in a name. If someone's name was remembered then he or she would survive in the afterlife. That's why pharaohs' names were written in hieroglyphics in their tombs!

photo from Ancient Egypt Online 

What do the pictures mean?

Most of the pictures can stand for the object they represent, but usually they stand for sounds. In Egyptian, the owl stands for the sound 'm'. The Egyptian symbol for a mouth can mean mouth but it's usually read as the sound 'r'. You can't exactly match our alphabet to hieroglyphics, because they are two very different languages, but historians have come up with a simplified translation of our letters and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Hieroglyphics can be pictures of living creatures, objects used in daily life or symbols. Some are easy to identify, some confusing and some impossible! If you look at the alphabet chart, you can easily spot the foot, the hand, the lion and the owl, but why are there two different kinds of snakes?

From A to Sh, the hieroglyphic symbols are:

A an Egyptian vulture
B a foot
C a basket with handle
D a hand
E a reed
F a horned viper (an Egyptian snake)
G a jar-stand
H a reed shelter
I a reed
J a cobra
K the basket with the handle again (because hard 'C' is like 'K')
L a lion
M an owl
N a zigzag symbol for water
O a lasso
P a square stool
Q a symbol for the slope of a hill
R a mouth
S a piece of linen folded over
T a bun
U a quail chick (which stands for the sound 'U')
V a horned viper
W a quail chick
X a basket and folded linen
Y two reeds
Z a door bolt
CH a hobble
KH a ball of string
SH the rectangle (which is the symbol for land)

Facts about Hieroglyphs

(from Ancient Egypt Online)

• Hieroglyphs originated in Egypt around 3200 B.C.
• The Egyptians used hieroglyphs until the Roman period.
• Only 3% of the population could read the hieroglyphs.
• Hieroglyphs represent sounds and ideas.
• Determinitive signs reveal the classification, like male or female, of a word.
• Jean-Francois Champollion was the first modern man to read hieroglyphs.
• The Rosetta Stone had the same message in Greek, demotic and hieroglyphs.
• This allowed for the translation of demotic and hieroglyphs.