Welcome to U.C. Berkeley's Interactive Website for learning Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs!
This site was created especially for students taking Beginning Middle Egyptian (Egyptian 100A) at U.C. Berkeley, but anyone wishing to learn the basics of the ancient Egyptian writing system will also find it useful.
Egypt's pictorial writing system first appeared just
before 3000 BCE, with the ancient language itself
continuing to be spoken for another four millennia.
During this vast amount of time, changes naturally
occurred, leading scholars to divide the language
into various phases. The most highly inflected, but
also perhaps the most elegant, is Middle Egyptian. It
continued to be used for monumental inscriptions long
after it ceased to be the spoken idiom of the
people. Even the wall reliefs of the last ancient
temples, built during the Ptolemaic and Roman Eras
and still standing today, utilize a form of Middle
Egyptian.
Most students begin their studies of Egyptian with
this "classical" phase of the language. It offers a
wealth of interesting literature, ranging from
stories and myths to eyewitness accounts of important
events, opening up a world of the past and letting us
learn about the ancient people in their own words.
It's also especially rewarding to visit a museum with
an Egyptian collection and be able to read the
inscriptions on the ancient artifacts. After
mastering the principles of Middle Egyptian, you will
have a good foundation for further study of the other
phases of the language, including the earlier Old
Egyptian, and Middle Egyptian's successors: Late
Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic. This last phase still
lives on today in the liturgy of the Coptic
Church.
On these pages, you will find tools for learning to
read, write, and transliterate hieroglyphs, as well
as drills for acquiring basic vocabulary.
The first section consists of exercises for learning the alphabetic (uni-literal) hieroglyphs.
If you have never studied Middle Egyptian before, we suggest that you
begin with the first section and work through the lessons consecutively.
If you wish to go directly to the page for a particular hieroglyph, vocabulary lesson, or quiz, check the Site Map for the appropriate link.
In order to see the transliteration font properly displayed on these pages, be sure to download the Transliteration Font on your computer, if you do not already have it: We hope that you will enjoy using this website and will find learning Middle Egyptian to be a very enjoyable and rewarding experience!