How do we decipher hieroglyphics?

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on the ceiling of Hypostyle Hall within the Temple of Hathor in Egypt.

Some ancient societies had written languages, but deciphering their texts can be a Sisyphean task. So, how do experts figure out how to translate ancient words into modern ones?

The answer is multifaceted, but one famous example embodies some of the best practices: the decoding of the Rosetta stone, discovered by a French military expedition in Egypt in July 1799, which helped pave the way to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. 

The stone contains a decree of Ptolemy V that was inscribed in three writing systems: Egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic script (used by the Egyptians between the seventh century B.C. and the fifth century A.D.) and ancient Greek. Written in 196 B.C., the decree stated that Egyptian priests agreed to crown Ptolemy V pharaoh in exchange for tax breaks. At the time, Egypt was governed by a dynasty of rulers descended from Ptolemy I, one of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian generals. 

“The Rosetta inscription has become the icon of decipherment, in general, with the implication that having bilinguals is the single most important key to decipherment. But notice this:

although copies of the Rosetta inscription were circulated among scholars ever since its discovery, it would take more than two decades before any significant progress in decipherment was made”

Andréas Stauder, an Egyptology professor at École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, told Live Science in an email. 

Hieroglyphic writing contains signs that represent sounds and other signs that represent ideas (like how nowadays people use a heart sign to represent love) said James Allen, an Egyptology professor at Brown University.

Live Science