Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols can be divided into four categories: alphabetic, syllabic, word-signs, and determinatives.

Hieroglyphic writing, system that employs characters in the form of pictures. Those individual signs, called hieroglyphs, may be read either as pictures, as symbols for objects, or as symbols for sounds. Hieroglyphics on a temple wall at Karnak, Egypt.

Hieroglyphics

Jean-Francois Champollion

The ancient Egyptians believed that writing was invented by the god Thoth and called their hieroglyphic script “mdju netjer” (“words of the gods”). The word hieroglyph comes from the Greek hieros (sacred) plus glypho (inscriptions) and was first used by Clement of Alexandria.

Hieroglyph, a character used in a system of pictorial writing, particularly that form used on ancient Egyptian monuments. Hieroglyphic symbols may represent the objects that they depict but usually stand for particular sounds or groups of sounds.

By accident, a stone that exhibited three different scripts—hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek—was discovered by members of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1799 near Rashīd (French: Rosette; English: Rosetta) on the Mediterranean coast.

Champollion and others used Coptic and other languages to help them work out other words, but the Rosetta Stone was the key to hieroglyphic. This picture shows us how Champollion worked out what all the hieroglyphs in the two names were. This made it a lot easier to read other Egyptian words now.

Originally Answered: Can anybody on Earth read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs? Several people can, though not large numbers. There are, of course, still controversies over subtleties of meaning, exact sounds which are represented (vowels are a minefield), and so on, but hieroglyphs can be read.

Hieroglyphs are written in rows or columns and can be read from left to right or from right to left. You can distinguish the direction in which the text is to be read because the human or animal figures always face towards the beginning of the line. Also the upper symbols are read before the lower.

The writing on the Stone is an official message, called a decree, about the king (Ptolemy V, r. 204–181 BC). The decree was copied on to large stone slabs called stelae, which were put in every temple in Egypt. It says that the priests of a temple in Memphis (in Egypt) supported the king.

Pharaonic symbols were numerous in the life of ancient Egyptians and varied in their symbols, rituals, and use. The Symbols for Egypt usually relate to Religion and daily life, death, and love, power, and weakness this symbols such as the key of life Ankh, The Lotus flower n soul and spirit The Ka and Ba.

Eye of Horus

Eye of Horus, in ancient Egypt, symbol representing protection, health, and restoration. Eye of Horus. Eye of Horus, a symbol of protection. © juliars/Fotolia. According to Egyptian myth, Horus lost his left eye in a struggle with Seth.

The eye of Ra represents the right eye, and the eye of Horus the left eye. Ra is the sun god, his power is quite close to the almighty gods of the monotheistic religions.

Throughout ancient Egypt the ankh was shown as a staff or ‘djed’ column. The djed column represented strength and stability and was thought to be a symbol for Osiris. Since it meant the key of life, it was thought to bring good luck to the owner.