How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Step-by-Step Guide to Teach Yourself, Revised Edition First Edition, Revised

If you’re just starting out in ME, you can’t do better than this excellent primer. Be aware, though, that the book you receive may have a different cover than what is shown- mine is the dark purple cover.

I recently received this book and I really must say it is a great book. I am no expert; in fact, I bought this book because I am a complete beginner and I from what I saw in reviews of various books I felt this was the most appropriate text for beginning with the study of egyptian hieroglyphs. I have already gone through the first chapters and I am glad to say it is very pleasant to learn hieroglyphs from this book: the pace is quite natural and slow, they present to you just as much words and phrases as you need in each chapter so you can try to memorize them slowly, and even though the book is short, it presents a lot of information in a very condensed manner, so after just a couple of chapters so feel as though you have learned a lot of things, while never failing to enjoy your reading or getting bored. It is almost as being in class with a really enjoyable professor. The excursus sections are also quite enjoyable to read and they always have much to do with the concepts introduced in their chapter. The exercises, like everything else in this book, were thought up very well, and they really put your grasp on the concepts to the test. I could go on hightlighting specific aspects of this book, but I believe I already said all the important ones. In terms of content, presentation, and overall quality as a educational text I give this book a solid 5/5. I believe that this book should work perfectly as a stepping stone between the beginner aspiring to learn the egyptian language and the more complex/more scholarly text from authors such as Allen, and give him/her the necessary understanding to be able to actually use other drier materials as sign lists, translations books, and dictionaries.Now, something that did somehow take the smile off my face was that a couple of the beautiful golden letters that spell "hieroglyphs" in the front cover started peeling away after three or four days. It's not enough to actually take away some of my fondness towards the book, but it is indeed something that should be noted. However, I know this is not the authors' fault and so I will not take it into account when giving out the stars because this book is really too good to give it something less than 5 stars.

_How To Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs_ is an excellent starting place for anyone wanting to learn the fundamentals of transliterating and translating hieroglyphs. The first chapter is a bit overwhelming, (the authors want students to jump in feet first), but the strucutre of the language is quickly and clearly explained. Each exercise has an answer key at the end of the book for you to check your work, which I found to be invaluable. The vocabulary lists similarly help in working through the translation and transliteration of tombs, monuments and cartouches.The grammar - and the explanation of how it works in ancient Egyptian - is what really sets this text apart from others on the subject. Tenses, verb forms and prepositions are clearly explained and modeled. A cautionary note: if you have not learned another language (or if its been awhile since you last studied language), this will be difficult - perhaps very difficult - to pick up. As with any serious study of language, perseverence, practice and patience will pay off, and Collier and Manley do a tremendous job of breaking down the rules of the language.That is not to say that the book is not without its flaws. Some of the images of inscriptions are of very poor quality - they almost look as if they are third or fourth generation photocopies such is the degeneration of the images; some are of such poor quality to make them illegible. (Fortunately their catalogue number at the British Museum is provided allowing one to look them up on line.) While the vocabularly lists are comprehensive, the authors do have a tendency to provide terms, and especially epithets of gods, outside of the vocab lists, and then expect readers to recollect them for translation much later in the book.In the final analysis, this is far and away the best introductory text on the language. When completed, students should (at the very least) be able to read the funerary inscriptions found on most tombs, (the Htp d nsw) and will be in an excellent position to begin more complex study. Highly recommended.

I was glad that I started this book with a little background (the Great Courses: Decoding the Secrets of Egyptian Hieroglyphs), because I still found the last few chapters of Collier and Manley's book quite challenging, especially the participles and the future forms (sdmty.fy). That last chapter was a doozy.The positives: 1) Organized layout 2) Exercises for practice 3) Answer key in the back (thank goodness!) 4) actual stelas you might find in a museumThe negatives: 1) Tiny, tiny print of the hierogylphs! They could definitely have benefited from a slightly larger font size. 2) A few pictures of the actual stelas were almost unreadable. The second picture that I posted above is an example of this. To read that one, I actually had to google the stela number and print an "easier to read" copy off the internet.

This book is a compact and invaluable textbook for learning Middle Egyptian at an efficient pace. It's NOT overly dense. I also have Sir Alan Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar, which is the "Gold Standard" for Middle Egyptian. But Gardiner's book is TOO steep of a first step. This book can be VERY effectively used as a primer towards eventually being able to chew and digest Gardiner's work. In that regard, this book is a total gem! Short chapters, short lessons. Bite sized meals of an obscure and challenging language. VERY well thought out by the authors. For those looking to steer clear of Budge, yet who also want to eventually approach Gardiner's work, THIS is the book to start with!