Cartouches of Ramesses III
4 November 2026
To English speakers, cartouches are perhaps best known for their role in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, but it is simply the French word for a roll of paper used as a container or a round of ammunition—originally a paper roll containing gunpowder and shot—that is, to say, a cartridge.
In 1822, Jean-François Champollion was the first modern person to decipher and read Egyptian hieroglyphics. His breakthrough came when he realized that royal names were enclosed in ovals, which he dubbed cartouches. By using the names in combination with the Greek translation of hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone, he was able to deduce the phonetic system underlying the hieroglyphic script.
The English word cartridge, a variation on the French word, appears in a military treatise in 1579:
The Maister Gunner is but an under Officer appertayning to the M. of the Ordinance: And his office is […] To have in store Crosse barres, Chayneshotte, Cases of Haileshot in manner of Cartages, Trunkes and Baules of Wildfire, with Artificiall Barrels of preble stones charged with powder to throwe into ditches, or to defende a breache upon any sodaine attempte.
And from the seventeenth century onward, cartouche in English has been used in architecture to denote corbels and brackets or any ornamental feature that resembles a scroll or roll of paper.
English archeological use of cartouche in the context of hieroglyphics dates to 1822, when it appears in a review of Champollion’s Précis du Système Hiéroglyphique des Anciens Egyptiens.
For it is impossible for M. Champollion to demonstrate the universality of his alphabet, without having previously applied it to the proper names of the Pharaohs. Anxious to see how he works the machinery of his alphabet in this respect, we turned to cartouche 109, the first on the list of the proper names of the Pharoah dynasty.
Sources:
Digges, Leonard and Thomas Digges. An Arithmeticall Militare Treatise, named Stratioticos. London: Henry Bynneman, 1579, 116. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
Eclectic Review, 22, October 1824, 331. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1888, s.v. cartouche, n., cartridge, n.
Photo credit: Jona Lendering, 2012. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.
