๐ฅ BOOM! The door slams shut...
The year is 1922. You're an archaeologist exploring a newly discovered pyramid near the Nile River. You step through a dark doorway... and a giant stone door slides shut behind you!
By the light of your torch, you see hieroglyphs carved into the walls. Ancient Egyptians wrote with these picture symbols for more than 3,000 years. If you can read them, maybe you can find a way out... and the pharaoh's lost treasure!
๐ Golden amulets
Chamber 1: The Sealed Entrance
A message is carved above the door.
Egyptian writing used hundreds of symbols. Some stood for sounds, like our letters. Use the hieroglyph alphabet below to decode the message. Tap a symbol to see its letter.
๐ช The door has a stone slot. What word do you speak?
๐ Hieroglyph alphabet
Egyptians didn't write vowels the way we do, so this chart is a modern "code key" to help us read their symbols.
Chamber 2: The Hall of Kings
Three royal names, carved in cartouches.
A cartouche is an oval with a line at the bottom. Egyptians carved the names of pharaohs inside cartouches to protect them forever. Read each name from top to bottom.
๐ช The door asks: "Speak the name of the pharaoh who built the GREAT PYRAMID."
โ๏ธ Carve YOUR name in a cartouche
๐ Hieroglyph alphabet
Chamber 3: The Number Lock
A heavy door with three stone dials.
Egyptians had symbols for numbers too! They added them up, like tally marks. A number could be written in any order, but they usually wrote the biggest symbols first.
๐ Read each dial and type its number to open the lock.
๐งฎ Scribe practice: write this year in hieroglyphs
Tap the symbols to build .
Chamber 4: The Canopic Chamber
Four jars guard the way.
When Egyptians made a mummy, they removed some organs and kept them in four special jars called canopic jars. Each jar's lid showed one of the four Sons of Horus, a god who protected what was inside. (The heart stayed in the body, because Egyptians believed it would be needed in the afterlife.)
๐ The door will only open if each jar is matched to the organ it protects. Use the clues!
Chamber 5: The Rosetta Chamber
The final riddle. Which way do you read?
For over 1,000 years, nobody could read hieroglyphs. Then in 1799, the Rosetta Stone was found. It had the same message in three scripts: hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek. Using it, a scholar named Jean-Franรงois Champollion cracked the code in 1822!
Here's a secret scribes knew: hieroglyphs can be written left-to-right OR right-to-left. The animals and people always face the beginning of the line. So you read INTO their faces!
๐ช Read the message the RIGHT way. The last word is the password!
๐ Hieroglyph alphabet
A giant golden door blocks the way...
It has 5 empty slots shaped like amulets. Solve all 5 chambers to collect them!
Tap the golden key!