Student Article

Long ago, people didn’t know how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. This is the story of how they cracked the code!

The lost language of hieroglyphs

Ancient Egyptians used pictures called hieroglyphs to write. But when their civilization ended, no one knew how to read them. That was until 1799, when a group of French soldiers in Egypt found a special stone called the Rosetta Stone.

One stone, three languages

It had writing in three different scripts: Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphs. Since scholars could read Greek, they used it to help figure out what the hieroglyphs meant.

Champollion cracks the code

A scientist named Thomas Young made the first big discovery. He saw that some hieroglyphs spelled out the name Ptolemy, an Egyptian ruler. Later, a man named Jean-François Champollion found even more clues. He realized that hieroglyphs could stand for sounds, not just pictures. This helped him translate many names and words.

Opening the door to ancient Egypt

Thanks to their hard work, people could finally read the stories, laws, and secrets of ancient Egypt. It was like opening a time capsule from over 2,000 years ago!

© Andrew Robinson / Our Media