i got this book for class i find egyptian writing intesting plus one of my favorite cultures alittle hard undertanding but a great read

Having just finished a year of Middle Egyptian using this book, I can safely say that this book is utterly confusing. I agree with a classmate that Gardiner's Grammar is actually better organized and easier to understand, albeit somewhat outdated in places. I generally found Allen's text to be confusing in almost every chapter. The comparison/contrast of Egyptian and English seems out of place since the two languages are so different. They need to come up with a way to teach this language like a modern language. I can say that my first semester teacher tried to do this with very good results, but not because of this book. Allen's text lacks a vocabulary list in each chapter and the dictionary part needs to be edited to include all parts of speech for the words, and expanded.

My advice is get Collier & Manley's book, a good Coptic book like Coptic in 20 Lessons, and study them before attempting to learn the ancient language using this book. Also, when you do start I would suggest trying out Gardiner's Grammar and Hannig's Worterbuch (dictionary) as the Allen Grammar/Faulkner Dictionary combination can be quite maddening.

Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs (Egyptology: Griffith Institute)

How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Step-by-Step Guide to Teach Yourself, Revised Edition

Coptic in 20 Lessons: Introduction to Sahidic Coptic with Exercises and Vocabularies

Ägyptisches Wörterbuch 1. Altes Reich und Erste Zwischenzeit.

Dr. Allen has really done a good job laying it all out in this book. Obviously, this is something of an esoteric subject, but for many budding scholars and amateur enthusiasts who are genuinely interested in learning this language, this book is essential reading. The grammer is clearly explained, and compared to contemporary languages, and the hierglyphs are easy to discern after a few lessons.

What is also commendable is the use of essays throughout the book that lay out the broader context of Middle Egyptian. Without that, the book would be noticeably drier. I think the only addition I would make to this book would be use of example dialogue to help reinforce the concepts. Otherwise, this is a good book to own.

PLUS: 1) Strong binding, an important detail in an egyptian grammar, which is subject to a lot of page-flipping. The Gardiner is even sturdier, it is an aircraft-carrier of a book. 2) The exposition is very clear. 3) The grammatical theory is state of the art. MINUS: 1) Incredibly tiny fonts: the myopic student who reads this book will eventually be a blind student. 2) Most of the examples are translitterated: this makes rather hard familiarizing with hieroglyph reading. 3) The examples are not many. Perhaps the best thing for the beginner is to study first the book by Gardiner, and then read Allen to catch on the latest developments. But hear, o Egyptologists: will any of you produce a grammar as sturdy and as full of examples in hieroglyph as the Gardiner, and as up to date as Allen's book?

This is an excellent book, no doubt. Allen is quite obviously an academic when it comes to Egyptian and linguistics. Let me repeat, this is an excellent book: for people with a linguistic background. That said, Joe Blow (read people with the average educational background in grammar) will most likely, as I did, find this approach to Egyptian with its constant, non-stop emphasis on adverbial complement this and noun phrase that approach, overwhelming to say the least. The meanings of the exercise sentences are rather vague and not easy to translate. In 3000 plus years, some Egyptian somewhere must have written a sentence or two more suitable for use in a beginning language learning text. Add to this the fact that each chapter does not have a vocabulary list to prepare the student for the exercises, and doing the chapter-end exercises becomes a futile exercise in page flipping to look up answers in the key in the back of the book. Vocabulary items used in the sample sentences in the texts in the chapters are frequently not included in the dictionary in the back. It doesn't matter how much grammar you know if you don't know what the words mean. As a college text with an instructor, this book is probably excellent, however for the do-it-yourselfer who wants to learn at home, forget it! Like the old saying goes: I just want to know what time it is, I don't need to how to build a watch. Can anybody suggest a book to learn Egyptian, written for educated, interested adults, but who don't have degree in linguistics?

Probably the most pleasant book you will use, not just to learn about hieroglyphs, but also, to learn about ancient egyptian culture.

I am writing this review simply to clarify and answer a few of the questions and comments that the previous reviewer had about the textbook.

1) This is a textbook intended for college students and self-study and assumes no previous encounter with English or Middle Egyptian grammar; therefore, as one might expect, the book presents descriptions of nouns, as well as more complicated aspects of grammar such as prospective, subjunctive and relative forms. However, if one is privy to the definitions, than one can simply skip over the descriptions of these grammatical aspects and continue learning Middle Egyptian.

2) Rare usages or unusual translations are covered in the book and although they do not appear in an appendix, they do contain astericks or other diacritics or concise descriptions.

3) Enough examples are provided so that an intelligent person can build upon previous examples and construct the answer to the exercise, similar to a math book that provides some examples and then offers more complicated, but solvable exercises.

4) Although the book does lack grammatical paradigms (mostly since no one really knows what inflections Middle Egyptian contained) and vocabulary lists, it does provide references, a sign list, a dictionary, the answers to the exercises, and an index.

5) The paperback binding is actually quite good. I have used it for a while and, although borrowed from the local library (most of those books are usually mistreated or handled periodically), it has shown little signs of deterioration. More importantly, there is at least a half inch spacial blank gap between any word or hieroglyph at the inner edge any page, making the inner edges easy to read.

6) Although the chapter four essay argues that the "Western notion of religion [...] has seperated religion from spheres of [...] government, social behavior, intellectual pursuits, and science" p.43, it never states that this is how the western notion of religion always viewed and continues to view these concepts. The Egyptian religion embraced most things as the Gods themselves. For example, two people falling in love in Greek and Roman religion was an act of Eros, and love making a gift from Aphrodite; however, an ancient Egypian might argue that two people falling in love and making love is the personification of the love between Osiris and Isis.

That said, this is a wonderful textbook that will leave any serious student or amateur the craving for more since, unfortunately, it does not cover all there is to know about Middle Egyptian. A second step would be to purchase Sir Alan Gardiner's "Egyptian Grammar" a little outdated but unmatched in depth and coverage of Middle Egyptian. His book remains the "BIBLE" of Middle Egyptian of and for most egyptologists.

If you want to learn the basics of hieroglyphs. Dont buy this book first. Buy "How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Step-By-Step Guide to Teach Yourself". Then buy the text book by Allen.

Allens book is more a book for those that seriously wants to learn the language, not good as an introduction. But as a tool to learn hieroglyphs it is excellent and very detailed.

The main problem with Gardiner is that it presents information but makes little attempt to *teach* it. Data is shown context-free, with no awareness of the common errors likely to be made by students. It's a brilliant piece of work, and it is possible to learn to read hieroglyphs from it, but while it's a fabulous reference work, it's simply not a *teaching* book. It's a magnificent piece of work, but in such need of a pedagogical update as to render it as much a daunting obstacle as a real asset. Granted that learning to read Egyptian hieroglyphs will never be easy, a good teacher can certainly make it easiER.

Allen does it, without sacrificing one scrap of rigor. Allen is the Gardiner grammar written with a desire to actually meet the dedicated, intelligent student halfway. It presents the information with a real sense of ... stepping back first and examining what is about to be presented, for want of a better way of putting it. It places the grammatical rules that it demonstrates in context, and relates them to one another, thus enabling the student to learn the *language* as a coherent, related thing and not simply a list of unrelated rules to be memorized. Most valuably, it also anticipates common errors and corrects them before they have become engrained as habit to the student.

Granted, if the student happens to be gifted with languages and able to contextualize the grammatical and phonological rules themselves, Gardiner is quite adequate. But even a gifted student will appreciate Allen's desire to teach hieroglyphs as a derived whole as opposed to a disjoint set of rules presented rapid-fire like baseballs out of a pitching machine.

Allen is the sort of book that people learn from. Gardiner is the book they buy and use constantly *after* they've learned from Allen.