Egyptian Hieroglyphs
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50 free Egyptian Hieroglyphs trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
For more than three thousand years, Egyptian scribes covered temple walls, tombs and scrolls with pictures of birds, snakes, eyes and feet. Then the knowledge vanished, and for fourteen centuries nobody alive could read a word of it. How the script was finally cracked is one of the best detective stories in history. This quiz covers how hieroglyphs actually work: the signs that spell single sounds, the ones that stand for whole words, the way numbers were written and the direction you read them in. It also covers the famous slab that held the key, the rival scholars who raced to decode it, and the symbols that still turn up on jewellery today. The questions suit curious beginners, students working on ancient Egypt, and anyone who has stood in front of an inscribed wall and wondered what it says. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In a row of Egyptian hieroglyphs, which way do the animal and human signs face, giving readers a direction arrow?
Toward the line's start
Toward the line's start is the rule: when the figures look left, you read from left to right, and vice versa. Readers simply read into the faces.
Q 02Which oval ring around royal names in Egyptian hieroglyphs did French soldiers name after their paper gun cartridges?
Cartouche
Cartouche is the French word for a paper powder cartridge, whose shape the ring resembled. Egyptians called it shenu and meant it to protect the name's owner from evil spirits.
Q 03Which sounds did Egyptian hieroglyphic writing normally leave out, so modern readers must guess how words were spoken?
Vowels
Vowels were not normally written, so the true sound of most words is lost. Egyptologists just slip an e between the consonants, which is why nfr is said as nefer.
Q 04Which animal's head, borrowed from Egyptian hieroglyphs by Sinai labourers, is thought to have grown into the letter A?
An ox
An ox is thought to hide in the letter A: its ancestor aleph, a Semitic word for the animal, began as a pictogram of the beast's head.
Q 05Which French scholar announced in 1822 that he could read Egyptian hieroglyphs, helped by the Rosetta Stone?
Jean-François Champollion
Jean-François Champollion showed the signs mixed sounds with whole-idea pictures, a kind of script nobody had met before. He reportedly collapsed from excitement after telling his brother.
Q 06Which Egyptian hieroglyph, a T shape topped by a loop, stood for the word life and was carried by gods?
Ankh
Ankh wrote the three consonants of the word for life, and the same sounds also spelled the Egyptian word for mirror. Gods are often shown holding one out to a pharaoh.
Q 07Which ibis-headed Egyptian god of wisdom was credited with inventing hieroglyphs and served as scribe of the gods?
Thoth
Thoth was so tied to writing that scribes kept his picture where they worked. In judgement scenes he records the result as a heart is weighed against a feather.
Q 08Which institution has shown the Rosetta Stone, the key to Egyptian hieroglyphs, almost continuously since 1802?
The British Museum
The British Museum received it as a spoil of war after British troops defeated the French in Egypt in 1801. Its own records rank the slab as its most visited single object.
Q 09Which general's invasion of Egypt brought the soldiers who found the Rosetta Stone while strengthening a fort?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte brought more than 150 scholars and engineers along with his army, and a lieutenant named Bouchard spotted the slab in 1799 as soldiers demolished a wall.
Q 10The title pharaoh comes from two Egyptian hieroglyphs read per-aa, which together meant what?
Great house
Great house first meant the royal palace, not a person. The earliest confirmed use of it to address the ruler himself is a letter to Akhenaten.
Q 11The word hieroglyph comes from two Greek words that described Egyptian temple writing with which meaning?
Sacred carving
Sacred carving is the literal sense: hierós meant holy and glýphō meant to engrave. The Egyptians' own name for the script meant words of gods.
Q 12What kind of document is repeated in three scripts on the Rosetta Stone?
A decree by priests
A decree by priests, issued at Memphis in 196 BC, set up a cult of the newly crowned Ptolemy V. It ordered a copy in three scripts for every temple, which is why one slab could unlock the others.
Q 13Which collection of Egyptian spells on papyrus, placed in coffins, was known to its users as Coming Forth by Day?
Book of the Dead
Q 21Which baby bird writes the sound w in the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet, where it was often shrunk to a simple coil?
A quail chick
A quail chick wrote w or u. Scribes had a shortcut for the fluffy bird: a quick spiral that counted as exactly the same letter.
Q 22Which snake writes the sound f in Egyptian hieroglyphs and, tacked onto the end of a noun, means his?
A horned viper
A horned viper wrote f, and since f was also the ending meaning his or him, the little two-horned snake is everywhere. A cobra stood for a different sound, dj.
Q 23Which zigzag sign writes the sound n in Egyptian hieroglyphs and, standing alone, spells to and of?
A ripple of water
Book of the Dead is a modern label for what Egyptians called the Spells of Coming Forth by Day. Its scrolls were often illustrated with scenes of the owner's journey into the afterlife.
Q 14Which object, read as ra, did Egyptian hieroglyphs use to write both the word for day and a chief god's name?
The sun
The sun sign was read ra and also wrote the word for day. The spelling Ra is a modern convention, since the script recorded only its consonant sounds.
Q 15Which civilisation's script, decoded with help from Yuri Knorozov, did explorers call hieroglyphs after Egypt's?
Maya
Maya writing struck 18th and 19th century explorers as looking Egyptian, so the name stuck, though the two systems are unrelated. Its signs turned out to spell syllables.
Q 16Egyptian scribes wrote most of a funerary papyrus in black, but which colour marked spell titles and demons' names?
Red
Red ink, made from ochre, flagged spell titles, ritual instructions and the names of dangerous creatures such as the demon Apep. The black ink was based on carbon.
Q 17Which bird writes the sound m among the 24 single-consonant Egyptian hieroglyphs often called an alphabet?
An owl
An owl wrote m, one of 24 signs that each stood for a single consonant, much like English letters. Scribes mixed them freely with signs worth two or three consonants.
Q 18Which queen's name on an obelisk shipped to an English estate helped confirm the first Egyptian hieroglyphic letters?
Cleopatra
Cleopatra shares the letters p, o and l with Ptolemy, so signs guessed from one name could be tested on the other. The obelisk still stands at Kingston Lacy in Dorset.
Q 19The spread of which religion closed Egypt's old temples and left nobody able to read hieroglyphs by the fifth century?
Christianity
Christianity spread through Egypt, and in the early 390s the Roman emperor Theodosius I ordered the temples of the older faith closed. With them went the last people trained to read the signs.
Q 20Which English polymath, who showed that light behaves as a wave, picked out the name Ptolemy in Egyptian hieroglyphs?
Thomas Young
Thomas Young identified sound signs in the royal name ring of Ptolemy V on the Rosetta Stone. A considerable rivalry with his French counterpart followed.
A ripple of water wrote n and, standing alone, the small words to, for and of. Stack three of them and you get mw, the Egyptian word for the liquid itself.
Q 24Which part of the face writes the sound r in Egyptian hieroglyphs and may be the distant ancestor of the letter P?
A mouth
A mouth wrote r in Egyptian, yet the sign possibly fathered the Semitic letter pe, whose name means the same body part.
Q 25Which food, drawn as a small half circle, writes the sound t and marks feminine words in Egyptian hieroglyphs?
A loaf of bread
A loaf of bread, seen from the side, wrote t. Feminine words in Egyptian ended in that sound, so the half circle doubles as a feminine marker.
Q 26Which reclining animal sign, first read rw, later came to write the letter l in Egyptian hieroglyphs?
A lion
A lion lying down first spelled rw, an Egyptian word for the animal itself. Later scribes reused it for l, a letter with no sign of its own in the classic 24-sign set.
Q 27Which term names a silent Egyptian hieroglyph added after a word to show its category, such as animal or plant?
Determinative
Determinative signs helped in reading but were not pronounced. They sorted look-alike spellings into categories such as divinities, people, animals and plants.
Q 28Which principle, also behind picture puzzles, let Egyptian hieroglyphs use a duck drawing to spell the word son?
Rebus
Rebus writing borrows a picture purely for its sound: the Egyptian words for duck and son shared the same consonants, so one bird could spell both.
Q 29Which cursive Egyptian script, brushed in ink on papyrus, was everyday handwriting while hieroglyphs filled monuments?
Hieratic
Hieratic arose in the third millennium BCE and stayed Egypt's principal handwriting for over two thousand years. Its signs are cursive forms of the hieroglyphs themselves.
Q 30Which Egyptian script, whose Greek name means popular, fills the middle band of the Rosetta Stone?
Demotic
Demotic was at first mistaken for Syriac by the French experts studying the slab. Egyptians called it document writing and used it for legal and business records.