HIEROGLYPHS are pictures that were used to write the ancient Egyptian language. In the beginning hieroglyphic signs were used to keep records of the king's possessions. Scribes could easily make these records by drawing a picture of a cow or a boat followed by a number. But as the language became more complex more pictures were needed. Eventually the language consisted of more then 750 individual signs.

AS in other languages, words in Egyptian were made up of sounds, partly of consonants and partly of vowels. But, the writing of hieroglyphs constantly ignored and omitted vowels. Thus the two signs  which represent "mt", could be read as met, mat, amta, emt or any other combinations of vowels and "mt". Since the ancient language has never been heard, we are not sure how this word would be pronounced. In order to avoid this, we need a method of writing and pronouncing these glyphs consistently . The course usually adopted is to use the English vowel "e" and in a some cases "a" between the two glyphs. So we can pronounce  as "met".



THE pronunciation of a word is the crucial element in using hieroglyphics, how a word sounds is more important then how it is spelled. For instance, the word that is spelled "cat" is actually pronounced "kat". The name that is spelled "Cleopatra" is pronounced "Kliopadra". So, these word would be written in hieroglyphs the way they sound. Because the words "where" and "wear" sound alike they could be written using the same hieroglyphic signs. The same could be said of the words "there" and "their".

List of hieroglyphs Glyph Picture Meanings   an Egyptian vulture a a glottal stop   a reed i/a   a pair of reeds     pair of strokes or river (?) y   an arm a   a quail chick or its hieratic abbreviation w/u   a lower leg b   a reed mat or stool p   the Cerastes, a horned viper f   an owl m   a ripple of water n   a mouth r   a reed shelter h   a twisted wick h   a placenta or a ball of string (?) kh a guttural sound   an animal belly with tail kh a softer sound   a folded cloth s   a door bolt     a garden pool sh   slope of a hill k an emphatic k   a basket with a handle k   a jar stand g   a bun t   a tethering rope ch as in English church   a hand d   a cobra j as in English judge   an ox     a camel     a door     thread     jubilation, celebration     courtyard     Good     water     a snake     a child     dancing