Hieroglyphs are written in rows or columns and can be read from left to right or from right to left. You can distinguish the direction in which the text is to be read because the human or animal figures always face towards the beginning of the line. Also the upper symbols are read before the lower.

Is hieroglyphics hard to learn?

One reason for the difficulty, as scholars learned later, is that hieroglyphic symbols can represent not only sounds (like an alphabet), but also whole syllables, and whole words. ... Another difficulty was that the Egyptian language, and the hieroglyphs used to write it, lasted over 3000 years.

Can hieroglyphics be translated?

Hieroglyphics were elaborate, elegant symbols used prolifically in Ancient Egypt. The symbols decorated temples and tombs of pharaohs. ... Thus, instead of translating the symbols phonetically—that is, representing sounds—they translated them literally based on the image they saw.