Customer Reviews

Decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphs: How to Read the Secret Language of the Pharaohs

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is not a book for beginners. It is too full of mistakes, contradictions and academic hubris to rely on. The copy editor of this work should be boiled in oil. For example - the glyph for lasso is called a brazier. Albeit, some of the phrases are of value and the pictures are first-rate.

On page 127, an inscription is shown and the author berates the long-dead scribe for having done it 'improperly'! Great heavenly days!

Intermediate and advanced students of ME will delight in testing their knowledge by conducting a mistake 'treasure hunt'. But others should look elsewhere.

If you are looking for something that will build on the topic like a language primer, I suggest you keep looking. This text has topical chapters ('Magical dimensions', 'Trades and Skills'), but this did not come together for me at least.

This may be good for many people, but I had the sense of watching a light discovery channel piece. In such a show, someone tells you the meaning of the sign for plow and field; then they pan across and inscription; then they tell you that it says that "the evil ones came and sowed salt into the fields which then lay fallow for 17 years..."

This could of course, mean that it is at the right level for some interests.

"Decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphs" by Bridget McDermott is a very nice introduction to Egypt and the Egyptian way of life. Every aspect of the Egyptian culture is discussed, in chapters that are from two to four pages long, so the reader does not get bored with any particular subject. The color photographs are superb. The attempt at interpreting hieroglyphs is superficial at best, but the book is not supposed to be an in-depth text book. This book certainly should inspire the neophyte and lead him (or her) into more advanced texts.

I speak from an amateur interest as a linguist-sinologist in-university-training. I've probably leafed through all the mainstream pedagogical grammars and academic linguistic or disciplinary syntheses and even had my hand at the language from time to time over the course of 10 years.

This book is totally awesome! Other writers should take the hint! Sure, Allen's book covers most the relevant syntactic and morphological concerns, but it's boring as hell and readers put it down after Chapter 3 because they can't stand his lifeless drone. This book sings, dances, and even pulls a nice hand of pedagoggery.

What this has and the other lack is pictures, pictures, pictures; and in techni-color! It takes larger-than-life or smaller-than-pixie works of Egyptian art and "pop-up videos" a few choice glyph or glyph-set words. This is what Egyptian should be. It's like somebody's taking hints from the Mayan Glyph-Doctors. Linda Schele was what the picto-semanto-phonetic needed: a friendly face with the ol' "smells and bells" as goyim-na say.

Sigh. Here's what's going on. Unbeknownst to you, probably, there's a host of (about 20) neat historic languages out there which you could learn and use easily and gain immensely thereby. However, scholars just lack the insight (or rather, exsight) to prepare beautiful, engaging, yet palatably scholarly-rigourous works on them. So the voices of the wise Ancients go unheard.

Of these, Latin gets the most press and Egyptian comes in second. Yet all the entries have considerable, scholar-derived flaws. No one's even heard of Hittite Hieroglyphic or Archaic Chinese. Yet they could teach young people (and old) both secular wisdom and grammar ("language arts ability"). But humans are too uncreative to see this. They want their lives to be miserable, on some level. Even the Hebrew and Greek is really just packaged for geezers who are mostly scared by Cuneiform, Modern Japanese, and Classical Mayan.

A guy like Mr. Benner of http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/ makes it fun and irresistable and people like this have their choice of stones, due to their excess of mummy-dust
(The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible, 1-star review).

What we need are coffee-table books with interlinear translation, multi-approach sign lists, English-Language/Language-English glossaries, and lots of fun, beauty, and truth!

So, if you're good at skipping over uninteresting insights, here's a treat:

If thou seekest a pleasant into, this is the book. If thou seekest a more comprehensive treatment of the language which is likewise pleasant and continuable, choose ye Budge's EASY LESSONS IN EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS. Sadly, outside of hopefully me, the world has only one good teacher of ancient languages and it is Budge. If thou seekest a most comprehensive treatment but can dispense with some pleasantries, every dollar is well-invested in Sir Gardiner's EGYPTIAN GRAMMAR. Why is it that Gardiner and this McDermott have an English-Egyptian section and Allen doesn't? Because G and McD are cool and Allen, well, read his book and see how he addresses his readers...

What Sir G's book offers hands-above is a Sign List (Zeichenliste) by topic and shape. This is actually a near-indispensable learning tool for the quick-witted and efficient user of time. Allen has the same thing, but his is painfully small and un-welcoming. Master G's book is like a Family Bible at 9 by 8 and bigger. Compfy.

All these books are terribly out of date, but they'll keep you going. Unlike the death-knell of Egyptian studies, Allen's MIDDLE EGYPTIAN. It's got all the latest grammar, but it's designed for professors who don't know how to teach (which is most of them) and want a big name and semester-schedule organization.

For readers, I highly recommend Budge's THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD : THE HIEROGLYPHIC TRANSCRIPT OF THE PAPYRUS OF ANI. It's got word and morpheme breaks, interlinear and prose translation, and a few kicks (no sign list, but that's okay).

There's a million other books, but they're mostly not so serious (like this DECODING here) but also super boring. If you can spare the extra money, knock yourself out.

I found HOW TO READ EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS to be organized poorly, though replete with neat-o examples. HIEROGLYPHICS WITHOUT MYSTERY is also flashy yet meaningful and third to this DECODING and BUDGE is EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS FOR EVERYONE, which is '70s funky but really engaging, if not even as semi-comprehensive as DECODING.

One last note: Do you want to learn Egyptian pretty good? Find friends and friendly grad students (like me), friendly amateurs. Get a teacher somewhere if you can. If you're a kid, hit up your parents, though likely they're too close-minded. While your interest lasts, feed it. Go for the texts first and find beautiful ones. Use the grammar parts as mere fuel for the fire. The biggest hurdle here is the 150 or so essential hieroglyphs and then not getting hung up on memorizing words. All you need to start is know what order words and word-parts come in and how to look them up in a dictionary. Then find some texts you like, and start a-plowin. Consider starting or joining a "living Egyptian" group. And if it's too much for now, walk away. It's not all about having fun, and you'll eventually have to put up with some boring, but it should be funky and cool. Make it so and buy books like this that share your view!

(Oh, and I've heard that there's coffee-table books with visible inscriptions. They're glossy and beautiful, buy them. Hope you enjoyed my review, here's a random plug for Jesus as Lover of the Human Race, God, and Messiah.)

I was new to hieroglyphics and had no intention of becoming an expert in them. The book gave me insights into how they were used -- I had no idea that they were phonetic based before reading this.

I found it inspiring as an artist. I created bookmarks for friends with their names in my interpretation of hierglyphs.

Covering, as it does, both the historical (household goods, tools, weapons, etc.) and the mythological (temple art, scrolls, legends) in brief but concise detail. This book is the perfect bridge for amature egyptologists who want to further their studies.

This is by far my favorite hieroglyph book. It is easy to read and understand and even has a section in the back that explains grammar and gives you several dozen hieroglyphs for common words and phrases. I have designed several tattoos using this book. :)

The book was fairly obviously designed to be read, not studied. It attempts to give a fairly broad glimps into Egyptian culture, while at the same time teaching the fundamentals of the hieroglyphic system. It's a great book for just picking up and looking through, but if you really want to learn Egyptian I'd recommend "How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Step-by-Step Guide to Teach Yourself" by Mark Collier and Bill Manly and "Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs" by James Allen.

This is an absolutely great book. McDermott goes through ancient Egyptian culture, the meanings of many symbols, basics of the grammar of the language.

VERY heavily illustrated with both superb photos and easy-to-read drawings of the various symbols.

This in not like Introduction to Spanish, etc. It is not a coursebook on reading the language, it is an overview of the writing system and the grammar.

With the descriptions of the culture and related photos, etc., even someone who couldn't care less about the language will still find the book interesting and enjoyable. Anyone interested in ancient history, anthropology, art, or theology will love this book.

This would make a great gift even for someone without those interests because of all the beautiful pictures and all the interesting "tidbits" about Egyptian culture. They can read just 2-3 pages and find SOMETHING they can work into a conversation that will make them sound well-read!

This book is a great book with alot of information I would personaly recomend it to anyone intrested in egypt. It is fairly easy to understand. It gives you beginers look into ancient egyption language and hieroglyphs.