Using other cartouches from the Rosetta Stone and various reliefs and inscriptions from ancient Egyptian temples, he began to build a table of the various symbols and the sounds they represented. The Language of Hieroglyphs From Champollion s work we now know Egyptian hieroglyphs are a mixture of symbols and phonetic signs representing sounds. Some hieroglyphs are pictures representing an object such as a hand or bird. But that doesn't mean the pictogram means what is represented in the picture. For instance, the t sound in Cleopatra's name is represented by a picture of a hand.
Hieroglyphs rely heavily on context to determine whether an image is read as a sound or symbol.
It s also interesting to note hieroglyphs are not always read from left to right or right to left. They re read both ways, with the characters flipped when read in the opposite direction. Back to the Present Because the key to finally unlocking the meaning behind hieroglyphs came from the Rosetta Stone, today its name is used as an euphemism to represent the key or clue to a mystery. The original Rosetta Stone eventually ended up in Britain s hands and is displayed in the British Museum. Small-scale reproductions can be purchased from various museum gift catalogs.