November 11, 2025
Hello, Pharaoh! Internet loses it
Welcome, the entire land - "Hello, world!" in hieroglyphics
Nerds, Egyptologists, and quiz fans clash in the comments
TLDR: A resurfaced 2009 blog tried “Hello, World!” in hieroglyphs and got “Welcome, the entire land.” Commenters battled over missing glyph-by-glyph details, quibbled about translation accuracy, dropped tools and AI links, and cracked Only Connect jokes—proof that ancient scripts plus coder culture equals instant internet spectacle.
“Hello, World!” just got pharaonic. A 2009 blog post about translating the classic coder phrase into hieroglyphs—ending up as “Welcome, the entire land”—resurfaced, and the internet dove headfirst into the sand pit. The loudest gripe? Where’s the breakdown of each glyph? One reader demanded the “most important part” the author skipped. Another swooped in with a DIY vibe, dropping a hieroglyphics translator and a mic-drop “Oh, wait, there is,” as if the Rosetta Stone had a search bar.
Then came the accuracy wars. A commenter shared a ChatGPT explanation plus Wikipedia, noting a slight difference from the post’s translation—cue the classic “actually” energy. The time-police chimed in with a curt “(2009),” while others joked that an ancient topic deserves an ancient timestamp. Meanwhile, TV nerds flexed: one recognized the “horned viper” glyph thanks to quiz show Only Connect, asking if that earns them a spot in the Venn diagram of coders who read hieroglyphs. Between laughs over Egypt not having the letter “L” and riffs like “Hello, Pharaoh,” the thread turned into a surprisingly wholesome mashup of curiosity, pedantry, and meme magic. Verdict: the community wants receipts, a glyph-by-glyph decode, and maybe a T-shirt.
Key Points
- •A visit to an Egyptian exhibit in Brighton prompted interest in translating programming’s “Hello World” into hieroglyphs.
- •Ancient Egyptian originally lacked the letter “L,” complicating a direct transliteration of “Hello World.”
- •The group consulted Egyptologist colleagues in UK museums to find an appropriate rendering.
- •Alternative, semantically equivalent phrases were considered to fit ancient Egyptian usage.
- •The final translation provided was “Welcome, the entire land.”