How to read a cartouche
The oval ring, the signs inside it, and which of a king's five names it holds.
A cartouche is an oval ring, closed at one end by a short bar, drawn around a royal name. The Egyptians called it a shenu, from a verb meaning to encircle. The ring is a loop of rope with the ends tied off, and it said that the king ruled everything the sun circles. French soldiers in 1798 thought it looked like a gun cartridge, and the French word cartouche stuck.
Which name is inside
From the Fourth Dynasty a king had five names, but only two ever went inside rings. The first is the throne name, taken at accession and often built on the sun god Ra. The second is the birth name, which usually follows the title "son of Ra". Khufu's birth name is Khufu; his throne-style name, Khnum-Khufu, is longer and was used less. The Horus name, written in a rectangular palace frame, never goes inside a ring.
That is why a pharaoh can look different from one monument to the next. Ramesses II is Usermaatre Setepenre on his throne-name cartouche and Ramesses Meryamun on his birth-name one. Each ruler's page on this site lists the names that survive.
The reading order
Hieroglyphs face the direction you should read from. If the birds and people look left, begin at the left. Signs are grouped to fill a square, so two flat signs often stack on top of one another and you read the upper one first. Most cartouches here are laid out left to right, but you can switch the Desk to right to left or to a column.
Inside the ring the signs are mostly sound signs. A reed leaf gives an i sound, a water ripple gives n, a mouth gives r. Some names add a sign at the end that carries no sound but shows the type of word, such as a seated man or woman. The alphabet sheet lists every sign this site uses.
What you can and cannot trust
Many kings' cartouches survive on stone and are well attested. Others on this site are modern phonetic renderings from a conventional spelling of the name, and each page says which it is. A rendering that is marked as such is a good guide to the sounds. It is not a photograph of an inscription.