Ancient Egypt Game

Ancient Egypt Game is a hands-on history adventure in four parts. Build a pyramid block by block, learn to read and write hieroglyphs, farm by the Nile through the yearly flood, and light up painted tomb chambers as an archaeologist. Play it online free in your browser, with no download, on a laptop, Chromebook or phone. Every level you finish adds a page of real facts to your museum journal, handy for a history lesson on ancient Egypt.

How to play

Pick a site on the map. Levels unlock in order, and your stars, journal pages and badges are saved in your browser.

Build the pyramid

• Your team drags a limestone block up the ramp on a wooden sledge. Tap Pull (or press Space) right when the shrinking ring meets the drum. A perfect pull moves the sledge two steps, a good pull one step.
• Pull off the beat three times in a row and the team loses the rhythm: the sledge slides back to the bottom of the ramp.
• At the top, tap where the block goes in the current layer. Blocks are 1, 2 or 3 cells long, and the list at the top shows the ones still to come, so leave gaps they can fill. Hint suggests a slot that works, and Lift takes a placed block back.
• There are three pyramids with 4, 5 and 6 layers, each with a faster beat. Fewer missed beats earn more stars.

Scribe school

• Each lesson has 8 words. In a reading round, look at the signs in the cartouche and pick the word they spell. In a writing round, tap the sign for each letter of the word.
• The game uses a simplified teaching alphabet, the kind used in classrooms: the vulture for A, the foot for B, the owl for M, water for N, the mouth for R, the bread loaf for T, the quail chick for W or U, and so on. The Chart shows all 20 signs.
• Get 6 of 8 words right first time to pass. Switch Letters off to hide the letter labels on the sign keyboard for a harder test.

Nile farm

• Farm six fields for three years. Each year runs through the three Egyptian seasons: Akhet (the flood), Peret (growing) and Shemu (harvest).
• In Akhet, check the Nilometer. A low flood will not reach the far fields, so send your two workers to dig canals to them. A very high flood waterlogs the fields by the river unless you build dikes there.
• In Peret, plant emmer wheat, barley or flax. Black soil means fresh silt from the flood. In Shemu, tap each field to harvest it before the year ends, or the crop is lost.
• Store 40 sacks of grain and 2 bolts of linen (from flax) by the end of year three to win.

Tomb explorer

• You are on a modern dig team recording painted chambers. Sunlight comes in through the doorway, and the team’s mirrors bounce it around.
• Tap a mirror to turn it. Light every covered painting in the chamber to document it. Stone pillars block the light.
• There are five chambers. Solving one in the fewest possible turns earns three stars, and Reset puts the mirrors back where they started.

Tips

• Fill the long gaps first. In the pyramid, a 3-block needs three free cells in a row. Place it early or keep a long gap open for it.
• Learn the birds. Three of the signs are birds. The vulture is the big one with a long tail (A), the owl faces you (M), and the round little quail chick is W or U.
• Plant flax where it costs least. You need only 2 linen. A waterlogged field yields little grain anyway, so it is a good place for flax.
• Trace the light backwards. In a tomb, start from the painting farthest from the door and work out which mirror must send light to it.

FAQ

Is the Ancient Egypt Game free?

Yes. It is free with no account and no install, and it runs in any modern browser.

Are the facts in the game accurate?

The journal sticks to well-established facts: the pyramids at Giza were built as tombs for pharaohs, the Great Pyramid was built for Khufu, the Rosetta Stone helped scholars decode hieroglyphs, scribes wrote on papyrus, and the Nile flooded every year. Where historians still debate something, such as how the ramps were laid out, the journal says so.

Is this how Egyptians really wrote?

Only in part. Real hieroglyphic writing used hundreds of signs, including signs for whole words and sounds, and mostly left vowels out. The alphabet here is a simplified teaching version that lets you spell English words with real sound signs.

Like puzzles with clues and discoveries? Try our Escape Room or follow the map in the Treasure Hunt Game.