Name: _____________________________________ Date: _____________________ Page: ____
ACTIVITY:
Understanding Ancient Egyptian Writings and Records
Ancient Egyptian Alphabet
The ancient Egyptians used
alphabetical signs as part of their
writing system. Not all of the
sounds are exactly the same as the
English sounds we use today. The
signs we give for the letters 'a', 'l',
'o', 'v', 'x' and 'c' are the closest we
can come to the ancient sounds.
But Ancient Egyptian has four
different 'h' sounds and we only
use one!
Hieroglyphic text uses many
symbols to represent entire words,
but it also has symbols for single
letters. These roughly correspond
to the 26 letters of the English
alphabet.
In the box below, practice your
understanding of Egyptian
writing and the alphabet by
writing your name using hieroglyphics.
Ancient Egyptian Words
As well as the signs which stand for single sounds, Egyptian uses many signs that stand for two or three sounds.
Examples include....
ka
Ancient Egyptian also uses meaning-signs, called 'determinatives'. These are
written at the end of a word, after the sound-signs, to tell us the correct
category of meaning for the word. Without the determinative you can't tell
what it means. Here are some examples:
an(k)h
d(e)wa
words to do with movement
words associated with man and his
activities
words associated with woman and her
activities
words associated with water
Sample Egyptian Words include...
Word
How it
sounds
Meaning
er
to
em
in
ankh
live(s)
ha
go(es) down
weben
shine(s)
dewa
worship(s)
mer
love(s)
kha
appear(s)
khed-ef
he goes
es
man
set
woman
per
house
miew
cat
depet
boat
ra
sun
pet
sky
iterew
river
neywet
town
netjer
god
hewet-netjer
temple