Biliteral signs are signs that represent a combination of two consonants. The following list provides an overview of the most common biliteral signs. It is recommended to learn these signs and their transcription by heart. The column "Sign" gives the actual uniliteral sign.
The column "Transcription" provides the transcription of this sign. The last column, "Nr." refers to the signlist as provided by the Egyptian Grammar of Gardiner.
Different signs representing the same phonetic value are not always interchangeable.
The signs 
and 
,
wn, are interchangeable. 
and 
, mi,
are not, even though they represent the same group of consonants. Likewise,
the signs
and 
,
Xn, are also used in quite different contexts,
as are 
and 
,
mr.
The signs 
and 
,
on the other hand, are interchangeable with each other, but not with 
although all three have the phonetic value sA.
This can be explained by the fact that the s
in the first two signs originally was a different s
than the s in the latter sign.
Biliteral signs