Hieroglyphics Translator

How to use it

1. Choose English to hieroglyphs, or hieroglyphs to English.
2. Type a name or word. The default is Cleopatra.
3. Tick or untick "Draw a cartouche around the result" to frame the name in the oval.
4. Click "Copy hieroglyphs". The copy has the signs only; the cartouche is drawn on the page.

People searching for a hieroglyphics translator usually want one of two things: their name in Egyptian signs, or a way to read a sentence from a museum photo. This tool does the first. It cannot do the second, and it is worth knowing why before you put a result on a tattoo or a school poster.

What an Egyptian hieroglyphics translator can and cannot do

Hieroglyphic writing mixes three kinds of signs. Some signs stand for a whole word or idea, some for one to three consonants, and some are silent markers that tell you what kind of word you are looking at. A true translation from English needs the Egyptian vocabulary, grammar and those markers.

What a browser tool can do honestly is spell sounds. The Egyptians did that too, mainly for foreign names and for royal names written inside a cartouche. This translator works the same way: it looks at your word, breaks it into sounds, and picks one sign per sound.

How the tool spells your name

The alphabet used here is the set of single-consonant signs, often called uniliteral signs. Wikipedia counts 24 of them, each standing for one consonant, and notes that the Egyptians never turned them into a true alphabet. The signs are catalogued in Gardiner's Sign List, which Sir Alan Gardiner published in his Egyptian Grammar in 1927. Each sign has a code such as G1 or N35.

The tool then applies a few spelling rules for English:

• sh, kh and th get their own signs. ch is treated like kh and ph like f.
• c becomes s before e, i or y and k otherwise. x becomes k plus s.
• e uses the reed sign used for i. o and u use the sign used for w, and v uses the sign used for f.
• Accents are stripped. Spaces, digits and punctuation pass through unchanged.

Hieroglyph alphabet: common signs

Open "Show the alphabet used" under the tool to see every sign it uses, with its letter.

Worked example: Cleopatra

The default word shows how the rules combine.

1. C comes before l, so it becomes k.
2. L stays l.
3. E becomes the reed sign used for i.
4. O becomes the sign used for w.
5. P, a, t, r and a map directly.

The tool writes it as nine signs: k, l, i, w, p, a, t, r, a. If you convert them back you get "kliwpatra", not "Cleopatra". That is expected. The round trip loses the vowels we invented. It is a spelling of how the name sounds, not a record of how a scribe would have written it, and Wikipedia shows Cleopatra among examples of names written in cartouches.

Cartouches and reading direction

Tick the cartouche box to draw an oval around the signs. The oval is drawn by the page, so the copied text contains only the signs. If you need the ring in a document, add a shape around the pasted text.

Hieroglyphs were mainly written right to left, with left to right and columns also found. Signs that show people or animals face toward the beginning of the line. This tool writes left to right for convenience, so a name reads in the same order as your typing.

Why the signs may look like boxes

Hieroglyphs live in the Unicode block U+13000 to U+1342F, added with Unicode 5.2 in 2009. A device needs a font that covers that block. Windows 10 and later, macOS, iOS and Android 12 and later include one. On Linux, install Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Without a font you will see empty squares, but the characters are still there, and they appear correctly once pasted on a device that has the font.

Common mistakes

• Treating the result as a translation. A phrase typed in English is spelled by sound, so it will not read as Egyptian.
• Trusting the vowels. They are approximations. Different scholars transliterate the same name differently.
• Using it for a permanent mark. Check a name with an Egyptologist or a museum reference first.
• Expecting symbols to match every font. Sign drawings vary by font. The meaning stays the same.

A short history

Hieroglyphic writing developed from earlier symbol systems around the 33rd century BC, and glyphs found at Abydos date to roughly 3400 to 3200 BC. The script then fell out of understanding. French soldiers found the Rosetta Stone in 1799. It carries one text in hieroglyphs, demotic and Greek. Jean-Francois Champollion described the phonetic and symbolic system in 1822 and completed the decipherment in the 1820s.

Related tools

For a symbol script that is a pure font mapping, try the Wingdings translator. For codes that turn letters into dots or numbers, see the Morse code translator. For ciphers with a clear rule that you can solve by hand, try Atbash or the Caesar cipher.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Egyptian hieroglyphs (uniliteral signs, vowels, Unicode block, cartouche, direction, Rosetta Stone, Champollion)
• Wikipedia: Gardiner's Sign List (compiler, 1927, sign codes)
• Unicode Consortium: Egyptian Hieroglyphs code chart (code points and names)

Checked October 2026.