Symbols
Egyptian art is not decorated. It is written.
Almost every shape a modern viewer reads as ornament is a sign with a sound value and a meaning, and a scene is composed out of them the way a sentence is composed out of words. A god holds an ankh to a king’s nose because that is a statement, not a prop.
Each entry below ends with what people get wrong, because this is the part of the subject most heavily overwritten by later use.
Ankh
ꜥnḫA loop over a T. What object it originally depicted is genuinely unknown: the sandal strap seen from above is the most-repeated suggestion, and it is a guess. A knot of cloth and a stylised mirror have both been argued.
Isis · Ra · Hathor
Djed pillar
ḏdA column with four horizontal bars stacked at the top. Probably a bundle of reeds or stalks tied together, and in the Osirian reading, his backbone.
Osiris · Ptah
Was sceptre
wꜣsA straight staff with a forked base and an angled animal head at the top, most likely a stylised canid, possibly a Set animal.
Ptah · Set · Amun
Wedjat, the Eye of Horus
wḏꜣtA human eye with a brow, combined with the markings of a falcon's face: the drop below and the curling line to the side are a lanner falcon's cheek pattern.
Horus · Thoth · Ra
The Eye of Ra
Often drawn identically to the wedjat, and often as a goddess: a lioness, a cobra, or a woman with a sun disc.
Ra · Hathor · Sekhmet
Scarab
ḫprrA dung beetle, seen from above.
Khepri · Ra
Shen ring
šnA circle of rope with the ends tied off in a straight bar at the bottom.
Horus · Nekhbet
Cartouche
šnwA shen ring pulled into an elongated oval, with the tie at one end, drawn around a group of signs.
Tyet, the knot of Isis
tjtClose to an ankh, but with the two side arms folded down. Probably a knotted cloth, and often read as a menstrual cloth or girdle.
Isis
Sistrum
sššA handle, often shaped as the head of Hathor with cow's ears, carrying a loop strung with metal discs that rattle.
Hathor · Isis · Bastet
Uraeus
jꜥrtA cobra rearing, hood spread, mounted at the front of a crown.
Wadjet · Ra
Atef crown
The white crown of Upper Egypt with a tall ostrich plume on each side, often with a sun disc and ram's horns.
Osiris
The feather of Maat
mꜣꜥtA single ostrich tail feather, upright.
Maat · Osiris · Thoth
Ka
kꜣTwo arms raised, bent upward at the elbow, on a base.
Khnum
Ba
bꜣA bird, usually a stork or a falcon, with a human head, and sometimes human arms.
Osiris · Ra
The blue lotus
sšnA blue water lily, shown open or as a closed bud on a long stalk. Not, botanically, a lotus.
Nefertem · Ra