Customer Reviews

Egyptian Language: Easy Lessons in Egyptian Hieroglyphics

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The works of E.A. Wallis Budge were out of date before they were even published. His sole gift to Egyptology was the popularisation of the field, leading at the least to extended availability of funding. While interesting as a piece of scholarly history, no beginner should work from this book alone; Budge's understanding of the language is fallible to a degree that would forever mar the education of the casual student in the Egyptian language. My suggestion would be James Allen's new "Middle Egyptian", if not Gardiner.

I bought this book with the hope that having a background in Latin and both Homeric and Attic Greek would help me get through any deficiencies in the text. Boy, was I wrong.

It's a very bad sign when a language text doesn't even touch upon the verb until chapter IX, only then to tell the stubborn reader who made it that far that "in the limits of this little book it is impossible to set before the reader examples of the use of the various parts of the verb, and to illustrate the forms of it which have been identified with the Infinitive and Imperative moods and with participial forms."

A paradigm of verb endings is provided (surprisingly enough), but it uses a different verb to illustrate each ending, and is rather buried in the text. The concepts are tricky, and very little is done to clarify them (for instance, citing examples of potential similarities with Hebrew doesn't help me). I like the fact that there are excerpts from actual texts to practice on, but since I never actually managed to acquire any skills, I couldn't exactly practice on the sentences provided.

I sincerely hope that students who are interested in learning ancient Egyptian by themselves won't waste their time with this book as I did.

This book may have some remaining marginal utility for people who just want to learn to write their name in hieroglyphics.

However, if your interest in the Egyptian language runs deeper than that, you will want to pass this one by. Budge uses a system of transliteration that is no longer the standard, and now only found in reprints of books by Budge himself. If you learn it, you will have to unlearn it later on. His presentation of the grammar is also obsolete and incomplete.

More serious students would be better served by Gardiner's -Egyptian Grammar-, or Allen's -Introduction to Middle Egyptian-, or even Mercer's similarly priced paperbacks.

I am an Egyptologist who teaches an online course in Egyptian hieroglyphs to the general public. While this book is widely available, don't let that fool you into thinking it is at all reliable. The one reason it is available is because it is out of copyright and the publishers can print it at will and reap all the profits without paying any royalties. If Egyptologists had any say over it, the book would be banned, as it is completely outdated and wasn't even considered a good book when it was first published nearly 100 years ago. When I first started studying Egyptian myself, my instructor started off the class by writing "Budge" on the board and enclosing it in a circle with a slash through it. That's how bad this book is. In my courses, students use and like James Allen's book on Middle Egyptian. It's recently published so it is up to date, and is written in a way that makes Egyptian comprehensible to the modern reader. It's infinitely better than Budge.

The best part of this book is the beginning, where Budge traces the history of the Egyptian language and then its decipherment. All of these chapters are very interesting and informative. If you want to get a good picture of what the state of Egyptology was in the 1930's, then this is not a bad book for that, although the historical information is rather abbreviated compared to an actual history book.

Which isn't surprising, given that this book's main purpose was allegedly to teach the ancient Egyptian language. Unfortunately, the field wasn't thoroughly developed when Budge wrote this book, so any new student would be better off reading a newer work. And, while I can't speak for others, I found the information poorly organized and impossible to learn from.

Sorry this book is not for the serious student. As an Egyptologist I would recommend Gardiner's "Egyptian Hieroglyphics", it is by far the most comprehensive study of the subject. Budge liked to create his own meanings so that he could instill his religious thoughts into his poorly translated "Book of the Dead".

This is an interesting introduction to the ancient Egyptian language, but the information in this book is from the early 1900s. Also, Budge has a heavy-handed style of writing that is hard to wade through sometimes. The best thing about this book is that Budge provides lots of extended samples of ancient Egyptian writing, which makes for good reading practice.

Ok first off I havent even read this book in its entirety but through the first pages the author doesn't even give credit to the people of whom is writing about for actually creating the language! Stay away!!

Budge was once the by-word in Egyptian Hieroglyphics, but because of advancements in understanding, his works have slipped in promenance. But this is still a good book for the basics.

this book was fairly easy to understand and budge's examples of the ideas introduced were very helpfull. good for the beginer.