One of the questions I get asked most often on tour is some version of: “Can you actually read this?” The honest answer is yes — and it’s far more learnable than most people assume. Hieroglyphs aren’t a mystery language full of secret meanings. They’re a writing system, with rules, just like any alphabet.

Hieroglyphs Aren’t a Mystery, They’re a System

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs combine three types of signs: phonograms (sounds, like letters), logograms (whole words, like a picture of a house meaning “house”), and determinatives (silent signs added at the end of a word to clarify its meaning). Once you know that, the wall stops looking like decoration and starts looking like a sentence.

The Cartouche: Your Fastest Win

The single easiest thing to spot on any temple wall is a cartouche — an oval loop with a line at one end, wrapped around a royal name. Egyptian scribes used it specifically to protect and highlight the names of kings and queens. On any tour, I always stop at the nearest cartouche first, because within two minutes you go from “I have no idea what I’m looking at” to reading an actual pharaoh’s name off the stone.

Three Symbols Worth Memorizing

You don’t need years of study to enjoy this. Just three signs will change how you see every temple in Egypt:

• The ankh — the key-shaped symbol of life
• The was-scepter — a staff representing power and dominion
• The sun disk with a cobra — representing the god Ra and royal protection

Spot these three on your next temple visit and you’ll already be reading more than 90% of visitors around you.

Try It Yourself on Your Next Tour

Every temple from Karnak to Abu Simbel is covered in these signs, and once you know how to look, you can’t stop seeing them. That’s exactly why I built my tours around this idea — not just showing you a wall, but actually teaching you to read a few lines of it yourself.

If you’d like a guide who genuinely teaches hieroglyphs on-site rather than reciting a script, I run private Egyptology tours through Whispers Egypt, also bookable via Viator and TripAdvisor.

Most visitors walk into the Valley of the Kings expecting gold and treasure. What they actually find is something quieter and, honestly, more powerful: a series of underground corridors covered floor to ceiling in text and imagery that were never meant for tourists at all. They were meant for the dead.

A City for the Dead, Not a Cemetery

Unlike a modern cemetery, the Valley of the Kings was never meant to be visited. For over 500 years, from the 16th to the 11th century BCE, this was the burial ground of Egypt’s New Kingdom pharaohs, hidden deliberately on the west bank of Luxor, away from the temples of the living. More than 60 tombs have been found here so far, ranging from tiny undecorated shafts to sprawling, multi-chambered tombs like that of Seti I.

Reading the Walls: The Book of the Dead in Stone

The paintings and carvings inside these tombs are not decoration. They are functional texts, drawn from the Book of the Dead, the Amduat, and the Book of Gates, meant to guide the king’s soul safely through the underworld and into rebirth. When I walk a group through a tomb, I’m not just pointing at pretty colors; I’m reading a manual for the afterlife. Every falcon, every scarab, every line of hieroglyphs is doing a specific job.

Which Tombs Should You Prioritize?

Your standard ticket usually grants entry to three tombs, and Tutankhamun’s is almost always a separate, additional ticket. If you only remember one thing, remember this: KV62 (Tutankhamun) is famous mostly for what was found inside it, not for its wall art, which is modest compared to others. If it’s your first visit, I usually recommend prioritizing Ramses IV or Merenptah for scale, and Seti I (when open) for sheer artistic quality — it’s arguably the finest tomb in the entire valley.

A Guide’s Tip

Go early. The valley has no shade, temperatures climb fast, and the tombs are far more atmospheric when they’re not crowded. And resist the urge to rush — most visitors spend 90 seconds in a tomb that took decades to carve. Slow down, and it starts to speak.

Want to experience the Valley of the Kings with a guide who reads it like a book, not a checklist? I lead private Egyptology-focused tours through Whispers Egypt, bookable directly or through Viator and TripAdvisor.