Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs [Paperback]

Despite these criticisms, the grammar is very comprehensive and will enable the student to read Egyptian texts. It defines all the necessary terminology for the initiate and covers many exceptions to the rules. In fact, it is rare that this grammar states hard and fast rules. It allows for easy reference since basically everything about a particular grammatical point is contained in one chapter. His so-called "emphatic (abstract) use of the relative forms" is an intrinsic understanding. The beginner may want to start with the grammar by Hoch, move on to Allen, and if still motivated to continue, buy Gardiner's grammar for reference (but keep in mind that his verbal system is far outdated). With these tools in hand, the blossoming Egyptologist can then pick up De Buck's readingbook and begin working through various texts, probably beginning with the Shipwrecked Sailor. These resources should answer basically any question that comes up in the grammar, but it is necessary to remember that often issues of Egyptian grammar are debatable and it is only the student's understanding of the grammatical system that will answer for him/her the pending grammatical predicament. Allen is a great place to begin, but the road is long and it will take much study beyond Allen to become efficient at translating Egyptian texts.

(1) The book is unclear on its audience. It explains things that an experienced language-learner would not need (eg what a noun is), but it buries the reader in special cases and technical details which a beginning student does not need and might not be able to make sense of. (And even so, it doesn't always manage to provide enough detail for an interested linguist.) Allen needs to decide what level of student he's writing for and stick to that.

(2) Details on rare usages should be clearly marked as such and preferably moved to an appendix or late chapter, if covered at all in an introductory work.

(3) Very few examples are provided, and those that are are insufficient to model all the cases found in the exercises. I frequently found myself looking at the solutions, not to check my work, but because I'd never seen a use like that before and needed to reverse-engineer his solution.

(4) The book completely lacks two standard features of textbooks: grammatical paradigms and vocabulary lists. The former is annoying for those of us accustomed to ancient languages; the latter makes it impossible to study effectively, because there's no way to tell which words are important enough to drill and which will never appear again.

(5) The paperback binding is terrible. The spine is completely inflexible, so it's hard to read the inner edges of central pages, and the beginning pages fell out after a few *weeks* of use.

(6) The Chapter 4 essay says that western religion, beginning with the Greeks, differs from Egyptian religion in that it excludes gods from the public sphere and daily life; this is a complete mischaracterization of Greek and Roman religion.

That said, I am actually managing to learn some Egyptian from this book, and, when my class is over, I will probably self-study to the end of the book, but I'd really rather have a better text.

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.