Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs Review

Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs
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First, a couple of admissions. #1: I'm not an expert on Egypt, nor am I an academic, so I have no professional qualifications to judge this book. But I enjoy learning languages, and I know what works for me. #2: I'm only on lesson 7; I have not worked through the whole book.
This is one of the finest teaching grammars I have ever seen. It consists of 26 lessons, with exercises at the end of each. (The answers to the exercises are given in the back of the book.) The early lessons cover the sounds and the script, and Professor Allen moves on to the grammar beginning with lesson 4. The author does not assume ANY grammatical knowledge on the part of the learner; before getting into the Egyptian forms he explains, for example, what an adjective or an adverb is, and how they are used in English.
Each lesson introduces several related points of grammar, and there are plenty of examples given (Almost all the examples are given in hieroglyphs, with the transcription and a translation.). The short sample sentences at the end of each lesson illustrate and reinforce the grammar from the current lesson, as well as previous ones. And as I said, the answers to the exercises, and translations of all sample sentences are given so you can gauge your progress and understanding. Each lesson ends with a short essay about one aspect or another of the culture of Ancient Egypt. At the rear of the book there is a sign list modelled after Gardiner, and a dictionary of most of the words introduced in the lessons.
This is not "Hieroglyphs for Dummies"; you're going to need a lot of stamina and determination to work through this entire book. (It's a large book; I figure it's going to take me over six months of hard work to get through it, and I'm no slouch.) But if you're seriously interested in the language and culture of Ancient Egypt, and are willing to invest the time and energy, this is the textbook you want.

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Middle Egyptian introduces the reader to the writing system of ancient Egypt and the language of hieroglyphic texts. It contains twenty-six lessons, exercises (with answers), a list of hieroglyphic signs, and a dictionary. It also includes a series of twenty-five essays on the most important aspects of ancient Egyptian history, society, religion and literature. The combination of grammar lessons and cultural essays allows users to not only read hieroglyphic texts but also to understand them, providing readers with the foundation to understand texts on monuments and to read great works of ancient Egyptian literature in the original text. This second edition contains revised exercises and essays, providing an up to date account of current research and discoveries. New illustrations enhance discussions and examples. These additions combine with the previous edition to create a complete grammatical description of the classical language of ancient Egypt for specialists in linguistics and other fields.

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