About PharaLex

PharaLex is a community project that aims to make ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs accessible and browsable. It is not an academic publication and its creator is not a professional Egyptologist.

Data accuracy

The dictionary data, hieroglyphic spellings, and sign groupings are assembled from multiple open sources (listed below) through automated pipelines. While we do our best to ensure accuracy, errors and inaccuracies are inevitable. Quadrat layouts are reconstructed algorithmically and may not match every scholarly convention. Translations are primarily sourced from the Vygus dictionary (2018) and Wiktionary, which may be outdated or incomplete.

This resource should not be used as a sole reference for academic work. Always cross-check with established dictionaries such as Erman & Grapow, Faulkner, or Hannig.

Found an error or have a suggestion? Open an issue on GitHub and we will look into it.

Acknowledgments

PharaLex is built entirely on the shoulders of open scholarship. Every glyph shape, every meaning, every transliteration comes from the generous work of researchers, linguists, type designers, and open-data contributors listed here.

8,254

Total Glyphs

100%

SVG Coverage

~32,000+

Data Records

Open Licenses

Glyph Visual Sources

8,254 SVG glyphs drawn from four open-source collections

JSesh

Custom font license

by Serge Jean Paul Thomas & Serge Rosmorduc

6,725

glyphs

Gardiner A–Z + Aa + extended variants

Cloned from GitHub; SVGs live in jseshGlyphs/src/main/resources/jseshGlyphs/. Glyphs by S.J.P. Thomas may be used freely in publications, databases, and websites. The few signs by Rosmorduc are OFL-1.1.

✓ Commercial use

View on GitHub

NewGardiner (hierojax)

GPL-3.0

by Mark-Jan Nederhof

997

glyphs

Unicode 16.0 Extended-A block (U+13460–U+143FF)

Extracted per-glyph SVGs from NewGardiner.ttf using fontTools + SVGPathPen

✓ Commercial use

View on GitHub

Aegyptus 6.17

Freeware (non-commercial)

by George Douros

423

glyphs

Extended Hieroglyphica codes not in JSesh

Downloaded last free release (6.17) from dn-works.com; extracted SVGs from TTF using opentypesvg

✗ Non-commercial only

Visit source

Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs

OFL-1.1

by Google Fonts / Noto Project

109

glyphs

Rare basic-block codepoints (U+13000–U+1342F) not in JSesh

Downloaded NotoSansEgyptianHieroglyphs-Regular.ttf; extracted SVGs using opentypesvg

✓ Commercial use

View on GitHub

Note: All SVGs use fill="currentColor" so they adapt to PharaLex's light and dark themes. Font-based sources (NewGardiner, Aegyptus, Noto) were converted to SVG paths using fontTools and opentypesvg.