 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | You need no previous experience reading hieroglyphs to benefit from this book. This is a hieroglyphs guide for the layperson, tourist, or museum enthusiast who'd like to have more of a clue when it comes to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs. Focusing on the funerary symbols one would be likely to see in Egypt or at a museum, and illustrated with hieroglyphs that are on display in the British Museum (drawn by Richard Parkinson, curator in the Department of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum), How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs makes possible a deeper appreciation not just of museum displays but of the Egyptian culture that used this writing system. Both experts in Egyptology (Collier teaches Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, and Manley teaches the subject at the University of Glasgow), they explain how most hieroglyphs are used to convey the sound of the ancient Egyptian language, then go on to teach, in easily digestible segments, the basic phonograms (sound-signs) used in inscriptions a traveler or museum-goer would be most likely to encounter. Each chapter teaches a new portion of hieroglyphic script and a new aspect of the Middle Egyptian grammar, with a section to practice the new reading skills and exercises to solidify the lessons taught. It provides a wonderful opportunity to sit at home and learn about the pharaonic administration, ancient Egyptian family life, and the Egyptian way of death, while building a firm understanding of the most common features of hieroglyphs. --Stephanie Gold |
Average Customer Rating:   Not Comprehensive, A Poor Primer, Major Context Errors Make no mistakes about it, this book is not even a primer! It cannot teach you anything you need to know about Kemetan/Egyptian hieroglyphs nor Mdr-Ntr. You will more than likely end up getting additional books. I cannot recommend this one as there are much, much better How-to's on this subject available. If you simply want another source in your Mdr-Ntr library, go for it. If it's a library edition you're going for then I suggest the Griffith Institute's "Egyptian Grammar" by Sir Alan Gardener, hardcover edition over the "How to Read Egyptian Hierglyphs..." book. Also this book is not a "step-by-step" guide. There are major contextual holes in this book. In the first few chapters the information skips from one crucial topic to a totally different one, leaving the student befuddled. There is no explanation or addendum offered so if you don't have an outside resource you could get confused at least or worse discouraged. I cannot recommend purchasing this very small book with its multiple errors. To rely on this book as a resource would truly be a waste of time not to mention a liability to your studies of this very technical, and complex ancient language.
If this is a "revised" edition, it makes you wonder what the previous version contained!
1 star out of 5 at best.
I recommend: Egyptian Grammar (Egyptology: Griffith Institute) The Griffith Institute book is more comprehensive, a bit heavy on the complexity, but well-worth it in the long run as it aims to teach in a scholarly way and achieves this goal given a student's dedication. Good book, but a bit complicated I find this to be an excellent and helpful guide to translating hieroglyphics, but the methods used are a little bit complicated and sometimes tough to follow. I still recommend it, however.
It is very systematic in it's approach to teaching the reader, as it first teaches one letter symbols (the alphabet), then two, and so on and so forth. Also, at the end of each section, it has a small translation that comes from an actual site in Egypt, that focuses what the reader learned in the chapter. In this aspect, the book is very helpful and an excellent guide to the ancient written language of the Egyptians.
It does, however, go into a lot of detail when discussing each topic, and it becomes difficult to follow at some points in the book. This is the lone setback of this book. It is very systematic and methodical, but it does become rather complicated. Even so, if you are ready to get started and have a strong desire to learn hieroglyphics, then this is the book for you.
It has some complicated wording, and thus I recommended it to those who have a higher vocabulary, but no matter what your age, if you want a good, helpful resource, then don't let me stop you.
This may sound like long-winded criticism,but I am just trying to help you get a good feel for what this book is like, because I, myself, hate it when I purchase a book and then it comes, and is not what I thought it was. Overall, though, I really like the book and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in hieroglyphics. Reading the Right way If you have real interest, this is your book. If you are going
to Egypt, not just to sightsee, this is your book. The book
concentrates on reading inscriptions on stelae and coffins from the
Middle Kingdom. You can teach yourself with this book. It helps to
get as many pictures of the places you're going to visit so you can
translate them before you go. It helps to have a list of pharaohs an
their individual cartouches. Lots of Fun If you are interested in reading Egyptian hieroglyphs, this is really a good book to study. There is complete information about the nature of this kind of writing - a mixture of symbolic and phonetic writing - with a dictionary and exercises to test your newly acquired knowledge in deciphering coded message. Lots of fun. Great for a Fast Study and Enhances Egypt Tours This is a great book if you're going on a tour of Egypt and want to learn a little about hieroglyphics so you won't be completely illiterate while exploring the tombs - your guide on any official tour should be able to read them, but won't have time to explain everything. You won't get bogged down for months - it's geared for words and phrases you are likely to find in tombs.
I studied the first three chapters then scanned and combined the tables in the back of the book into a two-sided, one-page cheat sheet to carry with me into the tombs. It made my trip much more enjoyable and people on our tour were always asking me what it said next to an interesting drawing - I could usually get at least the gist of it: "He's making an offering of beer and other things to a god...", etc.
A great example is when our tour was at Luxor, in the Temple of Karnak, and I noticed that on many of those large pillars (it's a "forest" of pillars without a roof) the hieroglyphics for "life" (the ankh) and "give" (a tiny triangle in an isosceles triangle) were repeated over and over at ever higher places as you walked around the pillar. The temple was dedicated to the god Amun Re. Suddenly, I realized the meaning: while following those words, your eyes were being lifted to Amun Re, the Sun god, who "gave life" - it was as if someone from over 3000 years ago suddenly reached out and talked to me. |  |
Select button not working? 
