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Free on the App Store

Hierolyte for iPhone and iPad.

Learn Egyptian hieroglyphs one glyph a day: a new sign every day, flashcard review that brings back the hard ones, and progress you can see. Five minutes a day, most common signs first.

Download for iPhone and iPad

Requires iOS 26 or iPadOS 26 or later.

A glyph a day, then review.

No firehose of information. Glyphs unlock daily, ordered by how often they appear, so the most useful signs come first.

  1. Reveal

    A new glyph unlocks at midnight: its sound, its meaning, and a real word that uses it.

  2. Learn

    Short articles explain how the script works: sound signs, word signs and determinatives.

  3. Review

    Swipe-based flashcards with spaced repetition. Signs you struggle with come back more often.

  4. Track

    Streaks, progress bars and a calendar of your practice keep the habit going.

What is inside.

Every glyph is rendered with JSesh, the typesetting software Egyptologists use, and the explanations are checked against the standard grammars of Gardiner, Allen and Hoch.

212 glyphs and counting
Starting from the most common signs in ancient texts: single-consonant signs, two- and three-consonant signs, determinatives and word signs, each properly classified.
9 articles in the app
From what hieroglyphs are to phonetic complements and reading direction, unlocked as you progress. (The free lessons on this website are a separate, larger library.)
Example words
Every glyph comes with an attested Egyptian word showing the sign in use, with transliteration and translation.
Gardiner classification
Browse by Gardiner's categories (body parts, birds, plants, sky and earth) and see your progress in each.

Screens from the app.

A glyph screen: the scarab sign Khepri, with its reading, an example word and a short note
A glyph and its example word
A course lesson reading the cartouche of Ptolemy sign by sign
A course lesson
A course exercise asking what the final n in i-mn-n is, answered: a phonetic complement
An interactive exercise
The Khepri glyph screen on iPad
Glyph detail on iPad
The Ptolemy cartouche lesson on iPad
A course lesson on iPad
A course exercise on iPad
An exercise on iPad

Two optional courses.

The app is free. For a structured path, two courses with exercises and quizzes are one-time in-app purchases (£4.99 each on the UK App Store).

  • Reading Royal Names

    5 modules · 20 lessons

    Learn to read the names of Egypt's greatest pharaohs, from Ptolemy to Ramesses.

  • Reading Real Words

    5 modules · 20 lessons

    Learn to read the words the Egyptians used every day: the signs that carry whole sounds and whole ideas, and the silent labels that make a script without vowels read clearly. It ends with a real inscription you will find on stelae the world over.

What each course covers →

Start with today's glyph.

Free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad.

Download Hierolyte