Customer Reviews

Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction

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This is the first time that the insight of modern linguistics has been applied to the long and careful investigations into the decipherment of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The hieroglyphic system and its different varieties (with its phonology, morphology and syntax) are explained. It is an excellent book but hard to follow if a person has little or no knowledge of linguistics. Otherwise, it is perfect for learning about the language - not for translating hieroglyphs. Lots of examples have been taken from actual Egyptian texts (ie, The Tale of Sinuhe, The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, etc.). As the back cover says, it is "essential reading for linguists and Egyptologists alike."

Somehow it looks like the Loprieno had a hard time with the publisher or not much time because it looks like the book should be much larger.

Namely, although he praises interlinear translations he admits that the translations have "enough information" (pp. xii-xiii) as they are presented, but it could be much easier to follow the narrative if all the translations could be grammatically parsed or at least italicized in main points.

Indeed, Loprieno sometimes uses parsing (pp147,159), or true interlinear (pp160 ex.(75), (84)), or italicization of key points addressed in texts (pp 198 (ex.(66)) and underline (pp.116) and is very easy to follow on that spots, and it shows a true language professional.

On other places you must break the thoughts and delve into translation and grammar parsing and also there are sometimes long chunks of texts where you could get lost and need to reread. This becomes impediment at times.

Loprieno also admits that he has no room for elaboration of Negation patterns (ch. 5.7) in detail. But if you want to understand it you must get his articles on the subject on Negation (in reference) - those are excellent explanatory material left out which should be included in the introductory book.

On the other side, the grammatical tables are invaluable as they summarize whole chapters and are easy to follow.

Indexes at the end of the book are excellent cross-information, especially index of topics, morphemes and lexemes.

Minding space shortcomings the book is very well organized (considering space allotted), extremely thorough and above all very modern.

For specifics on "tech talk" in linguistics, the most useful book to have with you when reading Loprieno is David Crystal: Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (The Language Library). Without good dictionary like this it is much more difficult to follow the discourse.

Regarding contents:

Ch.1,2 and 3 are nice introductory material and is a summary of all the work done in the phonetics field published in books and periodicals of relevance to Ancient Egyptian.

Ch.4 Is a true morphological summary of Ancient Egyptian and it looks like half the Gardiner ( Egyptian Grammar (Egyptology: Griffith Institute) ) compressed. The verbal morphology ch. 4.6 is a very modern and unexplored field not touched much by classics and very interesting (it also need some time and heavy use of Crystal).

Ch 5,6, and 7 are true anatomical atlas of Ancient Egyptian language and Ch.7 is slightly theoretical as the verbal approach is only recently taking ground.

I suggest NOT to read chapters on Later Egyptian (i.e. 5.11, 6.7, and 7.9) at a first few rereads until you are completely familiar with Middle Egyptian because it is just too much information on a small space.

Such a wide scope of the book on such a small volume is sometimes nauseating even after numerous re-readings. But after some time, resisting the plateau of learning everything would fit and you can even sometimes enjoy such minimalistic writing. After completely familiarizing with contents it can be an excellent study reference and prime source on Ancient Egyptian.

This work is probably the best exposition on the Egyptian language available to the general public currently. The chapter on phonology is highly commendable for the presentation of believable reconstructions of original pronunciations of Egyptian words, including inflections, which one sorely misses in most other works. However, without sound grounding in linguistics, the contents are often difficult to comprehend, especially the sections on grammar. Nevertheless, the book is certainly an indispensable and authoritative reference on this subject matter for every serious student of Egyptology and/or Egyptian language.

According to my knowldege this book is the first comprehensive and comparative grammar of the old Egyptian language from its roots down to the Coptic language. It gives an excellent insight of how men and languages develop over a period of nearly 4000 years,unique in history.

THIS GREAT BOOK IS IDEAL FOR AVANCED STUDY ABOUT EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE...ITS CONTENS ARE VERY USEFUL, MORPHOLOGY, SINTAX, A GREAT GRAMMAR...WITH A LOT OF EXAMPLES. A ANCIENT LANGUAGE HISTORY: EARLY, LATER EGYPTIAN, AND COTIC. VERY...VERY...GOOD... EXCELENT....

The author stumbles and falls early.....he uses the flawed, out dated classification of African languages by the late J. H. Greenberg. Hebrew mythology supplied the "Hamitic" and the "Semitic" "language groups" for the Greenberg approach to the classification of African languages.This was all based on the so-called "sons of Noah"!! As incredible as it sounds, Hebrew biblical fantasies supplied much of the early Euro-centric intellectual conceptual frame work. The untutored has been led astray. Any linguistics that rest on religious mythology is certainly not science. "Afro-Asiatic" is just as flawed as "Hamitic-Semitic".

This was essentially formulated to support the Hegelian theories of ancient history. For Hegel,Black Africa and negro Africans played no part in human civilization. Any cultural advance in Africa came from "waves of immigrants " from Asia or even Europe. Yet no one knew exactly where these "invaders from the East" came from. Exactly who were these people,where was the center of the civilization of this mysterious civilization? What language did they speak? These questions faded away under the heavy weight of religious dogma, European nationalism and the neurotic need to prove that the Hebrew and Christian scriptures were true. Out of this human mixture rose the flawed classification of African languages that this author chose to base this book.

We now know that no competent linguist can demonstrate that the language spoken by the "ancient Egyptians" is GENETICALLY related to ANY SEMITIC language or to Berber(Siwa or Rif). Nor to any Indo-European language.

It has been consistently demonstrated over and over again that language spoken by the ancient Egyptian people and the later Coptic versions, is genetically related to various modern black African languages. For example, Wolof, spoken mainly in Senegal, West Africa is genetically related to ancient Egyptian on all levels of the grammatical structure!!!!! For a start, see UNESCO General History of Africa Vol ll.p44-49. Or the linguistic works of Theophile Obenga or C. A. Diop.

This author has produced a typical euro-centric work that is deeply and fatally marred by racialism, ideology and dogma.

Euro-centric scholars labor under a vicious intellectual tyranny. Few of them have the courage to risk careers, tenure, peer review, money publication, etc,etc... Thus they stick to the "PARTY Line"! If the PARTY LINE states that the language of the "Ancient Egyptians"(Negro-Africans)was a "Semitic" language, then that's what it was. Forget all of the indisputable evidence of modern comparative and historical linguistics that demonstrates that ancient Egyptian is genetically related to many modern day black African languages......you know what will happen to you if you don't!!

This author has led the untutored astray by basing his work on the racist assumptions, dogmas and ideologies of the distant past.........THUMBS DOWN!!