Egyptian Hieroglyphs for Complete Beginners Paperback – Illustrated, January 1, 2012

Such a helpful starter book for someone like me who would like to be able to decipher Egyptian monuments! I finished the book in about 3 weeks. The lessons are not long and each one builds on the last to provide exposure to more types of inscriptions.

I ordered this book to prepare for my trip to Egypt. It is well-written, engaging and fascinating! It helped me to understand better what the hieroglyphics mean and why they were written they way they were. Am I proficient at reading hieroglyphics? No. Did I understand better than anyone in my tour group what I was seeing? Yes!

The book is good! It is a hard topic to learn!

When I saw this book, I thought it would be a good introductory text for one of my daughters who at the time had expressed an interest in learning to read Egyptian Hieroglyphs. I purchased it to see how useful a text it would be for her (I had no need to make use of it for myself, however). While she never went on to pursue the language (though she has informed me in no uncertain terms that she wants all my Egyptian books when I die!), I enjoyed reading through the text. I wish this book had been written 30 years ago. It is an excellent step-by-step guide to learning enough to read monuments for one's self. One definitely should proceed further, however, after completing this guide to the basics sans technical jargon. There is a good amount of memorization still involved, but it is far easier than most all other texts I ever have read, and it is mostly up-to-date. I loved this most about the book.There, however, is a rather serious error (in the edition of the text I read) that shows up on pages 70-74. Errors in drawing and in transcription caused the formulation of an entire argument that was unnecessary. If one takes a closer look at the photo of the original on page 68, one can see the 't' character that the person who drew the illustration missed, that by being missing transforms "his daughter" into "his son." I, at the time, contacted the author about this situation but I do not know whether the error has been corrected or not. So, I provide those corrections here for those who might still see the text as it was at the time I purchased the book.On page 70, insert the 't' "cake" or "loaf" character between the "goose" and "asp" characters on the line designated by the number three.On page 72, the phrase "It is his son who has kept his name alive" should be "It is his daughter who has kept his name alive." The relevant part of the transcription above the English should be sꜢt.f sꜥnḫ rn.f tꜢ.On page 73, draw the 't' character again, near the head but between the "goose" and the "asp," or directly above the "asp." On the same line, add a 't' to the transliteration and change sꜢ.f to sꜢt.f. After that, on the same third line substitute "daughter" for "son" and add an 's' to he and make it "she." On the same page, on the fifth line, change "he" to "she." On the sixth line of the same page, add "or daughter" above the line with a carat, and add "/her" to "his" at the end of the line. Do the same with the eighth line and add "or her" to the ninth line of the same page.Ignore the argumentation on the latter half of page 73 regarding "Ameny" being a "son" in the writing (it most certainly isn't here in the original inscription but is mistakenly so in the drawing of the inscription).On page 74, again add the Egyptian 't' character in the first line of the Egyptian characters, between the goose's feet and the asp character below the goose. On the same page, cross out "son" and substitute "daughter" in the second line, or disregard the argument entirely since it is irrelevant to the inscription. On the 4th line of English text (skipping the caption text of the drawing), change "son" to "daughter," and on the 7th and 14th lines of the same page, do the same.All of these corrections will make the book more consistent both with itself and with the original inscription.I hated that error the most but don't let that glaring error dissuade you from purchasing this book! It was well worth the purchase price and now is part of my collection because of the very useful information which it contains.

Very informative and helpful. Fun.

This is a perfect book for anyone wanting to start reading Egyptian hieroglyphs. It's especially useful if you want to read the writing on artifacts in museums and on monuments. It's beautifully produced as you'd expect from Thames & Hudson and filled with photos and illustrations. Everything is spelled out step-by-step with explanations of background material on the culture.The material covered is from funerary monuments and similar things. You won't be reading The Book of Going Forth by Day based on this but it gives a great into to the language and to the standard formulæ you're likely to see on stelæ, coffins, and similar artifacts. How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs by Manley and Mark Collier is a much more in-depth book but for an introduction to the language used on ancient monuments and artifacts this is most excellent.There is one minor errata on page 97. The numbers for feet and meters are reversed.

This book arrived early and well packaged. Very informative and helpful in my studies.

Like, like that is it easy to read and understand.