Middle Egyptian was a language that used pictures of objects to communicate. These symbols were used to convey meaning in three distinct ways. They could represent sounds much like the alphabet used today (phonographic glyphs), they could represent the item pictured (ideographic glyphs), or they could serve to determine what word is intended (determinative glyphs) when the intended word might be uncertain.

These are the easiest to understand uses for hieroglyphs because it matches the way we use our alphabet today in a rough sort of way. One slight difference is that the Egyptian language left out the vowels. This is similar to other languages in the region. A rough correspondence however can be made with our current alphabet. (See: The Egyptian "Alphabet")

Phonographic symbols differ even further from their English counterparts in that some phonographic symbols represent, 2, 3 or more sounds together. For example, the familiar ankh, which is a picture of a sandle strap, represents the three-sound combination a-n-kh.

Signs that represent one sound are referred to as "uniliterals", signs that represent two sounds are called "biliterals", and signs that represent three signs are called triliterals.

There are many phonographic symbols in the glyph project database. Take a look and see what kinds of phonograms Egyptians used.

Signs that represent the object they depict are, much like phonographic signs, quite easy to understand. The primary difficulty is recognizing an ideographic usage of a sign. To make these signs easier to identify, Egyptian scribes very often followed ideographic signs with a single vertical stroke.

Since ancient Egyptians never wrote vowels, some words were difficult to tell aparts. For this reason, scribes would often follow a word with a determinative symbol, which would allow the reader to determine what word was intended.

There are many determinative symbols in the glyph project database. Take a look and see what kinds of determinatives Egyptians used.