Reading the Past

This small presentation of the Egyptian language is very useful for the general public who want to understand the main architectural traits and characteristics of this old dead language. It is also useful to scholars who want to have a general idea of this language or want to penetrate it further later on. This presentation is also very interesting because it connects the old Egyptian writing system with other writing system, antecedent ones that gave the impulsion to Egypt to get into writing, and posterior ones that transformed the Egyptian writing system into other writing systems for other semitic languages and little by little for Greek, the Greeks systematically adding the vowels to the original systems. It also shows the filiation to the Meroitic writing system in Sudan which is still not very well known, especially because the language is different, not consonantic, hence has to write the vowels and the choice gives a writing system that has the same characteristics, as for the vowel attachment to the consonants, as languages like Sinhala. Is the writing systems used in the Indian subcontinent one of the models of Meroitic writing ? W.V. Davies cannot answer this question because he does not know anything about the languages of this Indian subcontinent. We here touch a serious problems with linguists in general : they are obliged to specialize in one particular type of languages and ignore what is outside. This small presentation is yet very valuable. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne

W.V. Davies' book on Egyptian Hieroglyphs (part of the 'Reading the Past' series put out by the British Museum in cooperation with the University of California Press) is an excellent primer to the subject of this ancient language. Like the other texts in this series, the book itself is only 64 pages long, which makes the task of learning an ancient language like Egyptian Hieroglyphs less daunting. Do not be deceived by the low number of pages - there is a wealth of material here.The first chapter gives a 'birds-eye view' of the language - Egypt was a kingdom which existed for many thousands of years; the language changed over time (just as Old English became Middle English became Modern English). The phases are Old Egyptian (2650-2135 BC), Middle Egyptian (2135-1785 BC), Late Egyptian (1550-700 BC), Demotic (700 BC - 400 AD), and finally Coptic. These stages are not set in stone - the development of the language over time was fluid. One of the difficulties of studying any of the language stages prior to Coptic is that there are no vocalic structures we can be sure of for any previous stage. Davies explains in the second chapter that hieroglyphs have been found even hundreds of years older than the oldest known language structures, dating back as far as 3100 BC. The latest hieroglyphic inscriptions date from nearly 400 AD, giving this form of script a 'shelf-life' of three and a half millennia. Much in the way Chinese script is pictogramatic, so are Egyptian hieroglyphs based in pictorial representations, of which more than 6000 unique characters have been documented. Davies talks about the different ways of reading hieroglyphic writing and inscriptions, as well as the development of the script into Hieratic adaptation. The later developments into Demotic and Coptic scripts is also covered, but not fully developed (given the focus of this text, they need only be presented as future developments). Chapters three and four are the heart of Davies' work on the language itself. Here are presented the general principles of writing (logograms, phonograms, determinatives, and basic vocalisation) as well as the introductory issues of grammar (gender, number, nouns and cases, prepositions and articles, proper names and dates). Not much is done with verbs - often people's interest in Egyptian hieroglyphs is to read inscriptions, so much beyond basic sentence structure is not required. Like other ancient languages like Hebrew, vowels are not primarily added to written words, so modern transliterations and vocal rendering are shells, guesses to a large extent.The fifth chapter gives a brief and interesting history of the deciphering of hieroglyphs, dealing both with the personalities involved (principally Champollion, but others, too), the mechanics of deciphering, and of course, the Rosetta Stone. The final chapter deals with developments and influence of hieroglyphs beyond Egypt. Despite Egypt being one of the ancient 'superpowers', its writi

I first found this book at UCD. It was part of a larger course on world languages. I later went on to take a year of Hieroglyphics at UCD using Gardners Egyptian Grammer. I found this to be an excellent introduction to hieroglyphics and use it now as a quick reference. I give it to all my friends who have just a passing fancy for ancient Egyptian. It delivers a lot of information without being too indepth. It gives you a nice overview of the history and structure of the language without being too much like a text book. It also gives you a bit of the beauty of this language. I recommend it for everyone starting out in hieroglyphics.

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I have been interested in the ancient Egyptian civilisation for many years, and am now studying archaeology at university. I bought this book four years ago, and am still learning things from it. It is an excellently written introduction to a mysterious language, and W.V.Davies leads the reader gradually from learning the basic signs, to an overview of Egyptian grammar. I found this absolutely fascinating and can hardly believe that this one book could allow you to write full sentences (even stories!) that could have been understood by people living 3,000 years ago! Coming from Britain, the book was easier for me to get, but I definitely recommend it. For anyone serious about learning more about Ancient Eygpt, this book is vital, as it allows you to read the accounts in the original language. Excellent!!