Is it free to translate hieroglyphs from a photo or PDF?

You can try it free, with no account needed, and signing in gives you a larger daily allowance. Pro and Scholar are there for longer documents and regular use.

Can it read hieroglyphs from a photo of an inscription or a museum object?

Partly, and it depends heavily on the object. Large, clear, carved or painted signs, cartouches and standard formulae are the cases that can work, and even those should be checked. Weathered stone, painted plaster with losses, small signs, cursive hieroglyphs on coffins and any hieratic or demotic text are at most a guess, and a confident-looking result can still be wrong. Photograph straight on, with the light coming from the side so the relief shows, and crop to the text. Wherever a published transcription of the same monument exists, upload that instead: typed or typeset hieroglyphs are read far more reliably than stone.

Can it translate an English document into hieroglyphs?

Not on this page. Document translation into Egyptian hieroglyphs is not offered, so this page only reads hieroglyphs and transliteration into English. For a name, a motto or a short phrase in Middle Egyptian, the text translator produces hieroglyphs with an Egyptological transliteration, and that is the right tool for a tattoo idea, a card or a classroom exercise.

How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?

Reading the signs is the hard part, and neither tier turns a poor photo into a good reading. Fast gives a rough gist of clean typed or typeset text. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the tier to use for anything hieroglyphic, where the reading direction, the difference between determinatives and phonograms, the honorific transposition of divine and royal names and the formulae of stelae and tombs all have to be handled at once. Even so, treat the output as a reading aid. It is not a substitute for a critical edition or a published scholarly translation, and any passage your work depends on should be checked against one.

Will the translation keep my document’s original layout?

The translator produces a translated PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel or EPUB file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. English written horizontally takes more room than a column of hieroglyphs, so text set in columns or beside a photograph is where the layout is most likely to shift.

Which Egyptian is this? What about hieratic, demotic and Coptic?

Middle Egyptian, the classical stage of the language used in the Middle Kingdom and kept for monuments and religious texts long after, is the default and the stage most inscriptions, grammars and editions present. Old Egyptian (the Pyramid Texts) and Late Egyptian (New Kingdom letters, stories and administrative texts) are read as well, with the caveat that their grammar and spelling differ and results are less even. Hieratic is not a language but a cursive script written with a brush or pen, and Demotic is both a cursive script and the later stage of the language written in it; a photograph of either script is not something to expect a reading from, so upload the hieroglyphic transcription an editor has made. Coptic, the last stage of Egyptian, written in a Greek-based alphabet, has its own pages.

What file types can I upload?

PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX (PowerPoint), XLSX (Excel) and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Typed Unicode hieroglyphs, transliteration and Manuel de Codage sign codes inside a Word file or PDF are all readable. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs PDF & Document Translator — Hieroglyphs to English

Read Egyptian hieroglyphs in English from a photo, scan, PDF or typed text while preserving your document’s layout. Upload your file, keep English as the target, and get a translation that follows the sense of the original.

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See “Keep formatting” in action

Real examples of the “Keep formatting” option: original on the left, translated document on the right. Click either page to enlarge.

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A civil complaint filed in Mexico City, Spanish to English. Caption block, numbered pleadings, the evidence table and the signature block all keep their places. — Original — A civil complaint filed in Mexico City, Spanish to English. Caption block, numbered pleadings, the evidence table and the signature block all keep their places.

An Italian birth certificate, photographed rather than scanned. The framed masthead, the field grid, the marginal annotations and the round seal all hold their positions. — Original — An Italian birth certificate, photographed rather than scanned. The framed masthead, the field grid, the marginal annotations and the round seal all hold their positions.

A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact. — Original — A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact.

A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact. — Translation — A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact.

A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged. — Original — A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged.

A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged. — Translation — A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged.

A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register. — Original — A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register.

A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register. — Translation — A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register.

A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place. — Original — A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place.

A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place. — Translation — A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place.

How Egyptian Hieroglyphs documents come out

Upload a photo of an inscription, a scanned page from a grammar or a PDF edition of a papyrus and read the hieroglyphs in English. This page works in one direction: hieroglyphs, or Egyptological transliteration, into English. Clear typeset signs are the realistic case; from a photograph, expect at most the royal names in cartouches and standard formulae such as the offering formula, while weathered, damaged or cursive text is a guess. Typed Unicode hieroglyphs or a transliteration give far better results than a photograph.

Hieroglyphs were written in rows or columns and in either direction: the signs face the start of the line, so an inscription whose birds and seated figures look right is read from the right, and a doorway often carries the same text mirrored on each side. Three kinds of sign share a text: phonograms writing one, two or three consonants, logograms writing a whole word, and determinatives, silent signs that classify a word and mark where it ends. No vowels are written, so a word like nfr or ḥtp is a consonant skeleton, and the ꜣ, ꜥ, ḥ, ḫ, ẖ, š, ṯ and ḏ of Egyptological transliteration are conventions rather than sounds read off a glyph. Signs sit in square groups rather than spaced words, and the words for gods and kings move to the front of a phrase out of respect (honorific transposition). Modern documents add layers of their own. Unicode has encoded the hieroglyphs since 2009, but many PDFs carry Manuel de Codage sign codes (A1, G17) or pictures exported from JSesh instead of text; editors usually publish hieratic papyri in hieroglyphic transcription, so the typeset signs in an edition are the editor’s and not what is on the papyrus; and a photograph of raised or sunk relief depends on the angle of the light. A scan of clean typeset hieroglyphs with transliteration comes through far better than a phone photo of a weathered wall.

Translate your document and keep its structure

The translator keeps your file’s structure while translating the text in context. The downloaded format depends on the source file.

PDFs and scanned pages: The translated PDF follows the page visually, with translated pages rendered as images. Selectable PDF text and identical fonts are not guaranteed.
Word documents and PowerPoint presentations: Start with DOCX or PPTX when you have it. Native paragraphs, table text and slide text can stay editable in the corresponding file format. Translated text inside pictures remains image content; review text wrapping and font changes in your editor.
Excel workbooks and EPUB books: Use the original XLSX or unprotected EPUB for a translated workbook or ebook. Review formulas, numbers and text cells in a workbook; check chapter order, navigation and text flow in your ebook reader.

What people translate to and from Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Museum objects, stelae and tomb walls

Visitors and students photograph inscriptions in museums and at sites and want to know what they say. The parts with a real chance of being read are the formulaic ones: the offering formula (ḥtp-dj-nsw, an offering which the king gives) that opens many stelae and false doors, royal names inside cartouches, titles and epithets such as lord of the Two Lands or given life forever, and the names of gods. Expect an identification of those elements and a reading of the clear signs rather than a complete rendering of every group. Fill the frame with the text, shoot straight on with the light raking across the relief, and note that the museum label’s translation, where there is one, remains the reference.

Grammars, textbooks and exercises

Scanned pages from Gardiner’s Egyptian Grammar, Allen’s Middle Egyptian, Collier and Manley’s How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Hoch’s Middle Egyptian Grammar and course handouts are among the strongest inputs on this page: the signs are typeset cleanly, the transliteration is printed beside them, and the sentences are short. Learners upload exercise sets to check their own readings, sign-list pages to identify a sign by its Gardiner code, and vocabulary lists. The result is an English rendering of the sentences on the page, so compare it against the book’s answer key or your instructor rather than treating it as the last word.

Editions of papyri and monumental texts

Book of the Dead papyri, Coffin Texts, Pyramid Texts, tomb autobiographies and royal annals reach most readers through printed editions that set the text in hieroglyphic type, mark lost passages in square brackets and often print a transliteration alongside. Those editions are what to upload. A photograph of the hieratic or cursive original, the script most papyri were actually written in, is not something to expect a reading from. The translation is an aid for working through a passage, not a replacement for the published translations of Faulkner, Allen, Lichtheim and others, which rest on the whole scholarly apparatus.

Typed hieroglyphs, transliteration and Manuel de Codage

The most reliable input is text rather than pictures: Unicode hieroglyphs typed in a document, a transliteration in the standard alphabet (ꜣ ꜥ ḥ ḫ ẖ š ṯ ḏ, with hyphens and dots separating the elements), or the sign codes of the Manuel de Codage that editors like JSesh use. Word files with transliterated Middle Egyptian and a draft English gloss are common from students and from researchers checking a colleague’s reading. Going the other way, from English into hieroglyphs, is not something the document translator does; the text translator writes short English phrases and names in Middle Egyptian with hieroglyphs and transliteration.

Write a short phrase in hieroglyphs on the text translator

What to watch for in Egyptian Hieroglyphs document translation

The first trap is direction: an inscription whose signs face right reads from the right, and a text on a symmetrical doorway or lintel runs in opposite directions on its two sides, so a reading that starts at the wrong end produces fluent nonsense. The second is the determinatives, which are never pronounced; a tool that reads the seated-man sign as a word adds phantom people to every sentence. Because vowels were not written, the familiar spellings are conventions (Egyptologists insert an e to say nfr as nefer), and royal names come in competing forms: Ramesses, Ramses and Rameses are one name, and Amenhotep and Amenophis are one name in Egyptian and Greek dress. Formulae compress: ꜥnḫ wḏꜣ snb after a king’s name is the wish may he live, be prosperous and healthy, printed in editions as l.p.h., and an offering list is a list, not a sentence. Dates run by regnal year, season (ꜣḫt, prt, šmw) and month, numbers are tally strokes and higher signs, and the words for god and king jump to the front of a phrase regardless of how it was spoken. Editions mark lost and restored text in square brackets, and a translation of a restored passage is only as good as the editor’s guess. Finally, hieroglyphs on souvenirs and jewellery usually spell modern names letter by letter with a tourist alphabet that writes out vowels no Egyptian scribe wrote, and no translator can turn those into Egyptian.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs document translation FAQ

Is it free to translate hieroglyphs from a photo or PDF?: You can try it free, with no account needed, and signing in gives you a larger daily allowance. Pro and Scholar are there for longer documents and regular use.
Can it read hieroglyphs from a photo of an inscription or a museum object?: Partly, and it depends heavily on the object. Large, clear, carved or painted signs, cartouches and standard formulae are the cases that can work, and even those should be checked. Weathered stone, painted plaster with losses, small signs, cursive hieroglyphs on coffins and any hieratic or demotic text are at most a guess, and a confident-looking result can still be wrong. Photograph straight on, with the light coming from the side so the relief shows, and crop to the text. Wherever a published transcription of the same monument exists, upload that instead: typed or typeset hieroglyphs are read far more reliably than stone.
Can it translate an English document into hieroglyphs?: Not on this page. Document translation into Egyptian hieroglyphs is not offered, so this page only reads hieroglyphs and transliteration into English. For a name, a motto or a short phrase in Middle Egyptian, the text translator produces hieroglyphs with an Egyptological transliteration, and that is the right tool for a tattoo idea, a card or a classroom exercise.
How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?: Reading the signs is the hard part, and neither tier turns a poor photo into a good reading. Fast gives a rough gist of clean typed or typeset text. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the tier to use for anything hieroglyphic, where the reading direction, the difference between determinatives and phonograms, the honorific transposition of divine and royal names and the formulae of stelae and tombs all have to be handled at once. Even so, treat the output as a reading aid. It is not a substitute for a critical edition or a published scholarly translation, and any passage your work depends on should be checked against one.
Will the translation keep my document’s original layout?: The translator produces a translated PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel or EPUB file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. English written horizontally takes more room than a column of hieroglyphs, so text set in columns or beside a photograph is where the layout is most likely to shift.
Which Egyptian is this? What about hieratic, demotic and Coptic?: Middle Egyptian, the classical stage of the language used in the Middle Kingdom and kept for monuments and religious texts long after, is the default and the stage most inscriptions, grammars and editions present. Old Egyptian (the Pyramid Texts) and Late Egyptian (New Kingdom letters, stories and administrative texts) are read as well, with the caveat that their grammar and spelling differ and results are less even. Hieratic is not a language but a cursive script written with a brush or pen, and Demotic is both a cursive script and the later stage of the language written in it; a photograph of either script is not something to expect a reading from, so upload the hieroglyphic transcription an editor has made. Coptic, the last stage of Egyptian, written in a Greek-based alphabet, has its own pages.
What file types can I upload?: PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX (PowerPoint), XLSX (Excel) and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Typed Unicode hieroglyphs, transliteration and Manuel de Codage sign codes inside a Word file or PDF are all readable. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

See “Keep formatting” in action

Real examples of the “Keep formatting” option: original on the left, translated document on the right. Click either page to enlarge.

1 / 6

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