Customer Reviews

Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Practical Guide - A Step-by-Step Approach to Learning Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs

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Kamrin's Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs is a great introduction to the subject, and is designed to be eminently usable. This is the ideal book for someone who has time to really sit down and work with it, someone who has always wanted to know what it might be like to actually read hieroglyphs.

The ideal audience is a college student or even a high school student who has always wanted to know more about Egyptology than what he or she could get on the Discovery Channel. While it would not replace a year of university-level language study, it is not designed to do so.

The exercises are clear and doable (and there is a section of answers at the back!), and each section builds carefully on the section before. It is a beautiful book as well, nicely designed, with clear readable font and lovely coloured illustrations.

I have a recommendation, however -- you may not want to actually write in the book itself -- the paper is too nice quality for a workbook, which this is in a way. I recommend that you get yourself a notebook and copy out the exercises as you attempt them (a good way to really familiarize yourself with hieroglyphs), or photocopy the more complicated ones and work them on a photocopied page (you may well want to keep the book in better condition than erasing pencil or writing in ink may allow). Otherwise, this is a great book, and would be a lovely gift for someone who is really into ancient Egypt and ready to move beyond the really pretty picture books to see what Egyptology might really be like.

This is a great guide to learning to read from actual monuments and objects. I used the knowledge from the book to translate the faces of some Egyptian obelisks I saw while on vacation in Europe.

I recommend this book unequivocally.

I really enjoyed learning hieroglyphics with Dr. Jan. Do not be fooled: they are not for the faint of heart. For those who are affrighted at Chinese and Japanese, hieroglyphics go even further toward multiplexing umpteen systems atop a single character set. But Dr. Jan endeavors to make it easy by using lively examples, color-coding some of the solutions, etc. If you have a strong memory and strong impetus, go for it. You will have a lot of fun and feel a tremendous sense of achievement.

Buy this book, you'll find nothing better to get you started, but I do wish there was someone here with me with whom I could dispute. You're given the vocabulary and you're given the rules as they're understood, and you're given instruction to remain flexible, really flexible, but honestly, there's not a single exercise that isn't frustrating. Matching the solutions to the problems often left me wondering how the author managed to get to that solution with the material provided. I do wish there had been clearer examples. Also, I didn't much care for new material being sprung within the exercises ostensively for practicing the fresh martial just provided, on matter how minor, that sends the student scrurring scrounging the indexes and online for something that resembles the apparently new shape that appears within the example and stops the transliteration dead in its tracks.

I have gone through all the exercises and carefully studied each of the solutions, compared them with my own replications of the exercises and my solution, I have hand-copied every single symbol onto index cards, and used those cards, every title, every phrase, and I've copied each exercise into a separate notebook. I've copied the Gardiner's sign list onto cards as well as the vocabulary provided in the book, that's including the indexes, on both cards and, using Photoshop, I've copied another more extensive set onto computer files for cross-referencing and for extra symbol handling, so that's twice. I'm saying that I re-wrote by hand the symbols in the book twice. My index cards and computer files number in the low thousands. Throughout all of the exercises, I have failed to get one single exercise 100% correct, and that has been frustrating. Now finished with the book I feel unqualified to interpret with confidence the text on any given painting, carving, or object because my answers have not once matched precisely the solutions.

But they've come real close.

So I could probably b.s. my way through a museum tour convincingly and along the way display a depth of understanding that is real, pretending a confidence I do not possess, but I'm not like that.

I understand there was no codified standardized uniform spelling that endured through the ages, I get that language evolves, and I understand abbreviation and their habit of odd redundancy and I do appreciate the love of puns and I understand individual artistry will not match exactly typeface, but I just flat do not accept that a scribe, an artist, and a craftsman would go to all the trouble of carving an elaborate bird into stone that is not a part of a phrase, a word, or a phoneme so I'm forced to challenge the solution provided even though I unqualified to do so, nor would they omit a symbol that is required to distinguish it from something similar, nor would they be so silly as to confuse through carelessness a sloppily drawn eye with a mouth or with a handleless basket, all of which have similar but distinct shapes. I mean, come on! An eye is not a mouth, and a sun is not a placenta, a wren is not a sparrow, and a vulture is not an owl, which in turn is not quail chick, just as a seat is not a loaf of bread, all signs that can appear similar depending on who drew them or what damage has come to them, their presence means something just as their absence means something and conflating them means arriving at divergent interpretations. Honestly, in the end I conclude that a large part of all this is pure guesswork, educated guesswork for sure, and advanced extrapolation certainly, but still opinion. In the end, and now I've finished the book so for me this stage is ended, the most I can hope for is to extrapolate with others in accordance with what I've learned here, but I'm hardly prepared to aver with confidence that I know for certain exactly what the text on any given object is attempting to convey.

Having said all that, and having done all that I've said, I must hasten to add that going through this book has advanced my appreciation for the language immeasurably, and to me that is important. I do recommend this book. You should buy it. It's a bargain at twice the price, and if you would go through it as I have then I'm certain your appreciation will advance considerably for all things Egyptian, and if you would just flip through it an eighth as thoroughly as I have gone through it then you'll still get your money's worth.

I would like to thank Janice Kamrin for producing this book. I've found nothing that comes close.

I think it is a very good book above all for beginners. If you are interested of learning about hieroglyphs and you know nothing at all about them this book is a good way to start learning. It is clear, interesting and funny indeed.

Bought this for my mother that studies foreign languages as a hobby and she absolutely loves this book I gave it to her for Christmas and she is still thanking me for it.

I think it's the best book for any one that wants to learn ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and lot's of history and culture
along the way.
It's organized perfectly and never gets boring.
The pictures are in high detail so you won't miss anything, and brings real stories from inside the mysteries of ancient Egypt.
The grammar and vocabulary is produced in an easy way of learning for anyone.
this book convinced me that I want to be an Egyptologist.
I loved it!

Excellent resource - learned a lot about different ancient languages and the ties between them.

I have just received this book. It is very well written. I read books about Egypt, but none dedicated entirely to hieroglyphs . After the first two chapters when I read some names (which I did not see before!) in the exercises area , I felt like a little Champollion . I like logic and this book makes possible to learn basic things in minutes!