Customer Reviews

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

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James Allen has written a comprehensive grammar covering all the basics one needs to know to work with Egyptian texts. While Allen often defines the basics for a beginner or someone teaching themself, this grammar is really designed as a reference grammar. It seems that he had in mind the idea to replace the grammar, standard for so long and still valuable in many respects, written by Alan Gardiner. The lay-out of the grammar is not conducive to self-study. Each chapter covers one basic concept, i.e. nouns, adjectives, prepositions, infinitives, etc. In this sense, the student does not begin to read "real" Egyptian sentences until very late in the book and it is hampered by not introducing the student to the verb until later in the book. While Allen graduated from the University of Chicago - the veritable home of the so-called "standard theory" of Egyptian grammar based on work by J. Polotsky - his grammar reflects what he calls an improved understanding of Egyptian grammar. While this theory - very much a "verbalist" approach - may turn out to be the new "standard theory," it is actually more confusing for the beginning student (especially telling certain verbal forms apart). Another flaw is the lack of vocabulary lists for each lesson which would allow the student to further become acquainted with the Egyptian lexicon, something which doesn't really happen when simply looking up the words (though he is to be commended for forcing the student to comprehend the dictionary). The last real problem with the book is that nowhere does Allen give an integrated look at how the system works as a whole - that is, no verbal paradigms or essays on the overall "syntax" of Egyptian.

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.

Ah, Allen, how do you annoy me? Let me count the ways...

(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.

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.

This book is remarkably thorough and has enough practice exercises to keep a budding egyptologist busy for years. Well-grounded in linguistic theory and including many essays on Egyptian culture and history, this is THE book to buy if you wish to start learning to read Egyptian.

This superb massive book includes 25 grammar lessons, each alternating with an essay on history, society, chronology, poetry, geography, religion, Maat, literature and much more. Grammatical topics discussed are articles, nouns, pronouns, numbers, adverbs, prepositions, plural, adjective, clauses, participles and several other subjects. The answers to the exercises are provided after the sign list and dictionary. Highly recommended for any serious person interested in reading Egyptian hieroglyphs.

First, a couple of admissions. #1: I'm not an expert on Egypt, nor am I an academic, so I have no professional qualifications to judge this book. But I enjoy learning languages, and I know what works for me. #2: I'm only on lesson 7; I have not worked through the whole book.

This is one of the finest teaching grammars I have ever seen. It consists of 26 lessons, with exercises at the end of each. (The answers to the exercises are given in the back of the book.) The early lessons cover the sounds and the script, and Professor Allen moves on to the grammar beginning with lesson 4. The author does not assume ANY grammatical knowledge on the part of the learner; before getting into the Egyptian forms he explains, for example, what an adjective or an adverb is, and how they are used in English.

Each lesson introduces several related points of grammar, and there are plenty of examples given (Almost all the examples are given in hieroglyphs, with the transcription and a translation.). The short sample sentences at the end of each lesson illustrate and reinforce the grammar from the current lesson, as well as previous ones. And as I said, the answers to the exercises, and translations of all sample sentences are given so you can gauge your progress and understanding. Each lesson ends with a short essay about one aspect or another of the culture of Ancient Egypt. At the rear of the book there is a sign list modelled after Gardiner, and a dictionary of most of the words introduced in the lessons.

This is not "Hieroglyphs for Dummies"; you're going to need a lot of stamina and determination to work through this entire book. (It's a large book; I figure it's going to take me over six months of hard work to get through it, and I'm no slouch.) But if you're seriously interested in the language and culture of Ancient Egypt, and are willing to invest the time and energy, this is the textbook you want.

Allen's grammar being the most up to date and comprehensive thus far is indeed an invaluable resource to both students and scholars alike. The text covers everything you want to know about Middle Egyptian from the good old stative up to the current theories on the dreaded nominal forms. And best of all, there is a sign list in the back (huzzah!) which greatly aids in the translation process. However this is no "Egyptian Grammar for Dummies." At times incredibly dense this book is not intended for the beginner or casual Egyptophile. If you are looking for a beginner's guide, so to speak, I whole heartedly suggest Mark Collier's "How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs."

I'd rather agree with M. Gunther than with the anonymous reader from USA, TN, (who uses a lot of exclamation marks). I started with Collier and Manley "How to read Egyptian Hieroglyphs". Their extremely well-written & didactic book was a great help to read Allen afterwards. Allen is great, complete, but a little bit too difficult for the absolute beginner. I would have liked this book to contain larger text fragments.

Allen's grammar of Middle Egyptian is greatly to be commended. Based on a life of scholarship and teaching, his book has much to offer to students, specialists, and anyone who is fascinated -as I am - by the language and culture of Ancient Egypt.

Beginning students will appreciate his explanation of basic grammar, which is much more understandable and thorough than most other textbooks. The exercises, at the end of each chapter, are the best that I have ever seen. Scholars, and advanced students, will be grateful for the detail and completeness of Allen's work.

As one who has read through the book and worked all the exercises, I can recommend it without hesitation as a reference book for scholars, and as a textbook for university students. My only reservation is that the information presented is very detailed and complex, and likely to be overwhelming to a beginner. So, if you are a beginner, I would recommend that you read through an easier book, such as Collier and Manley ("How To Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs"), before you tackle Allen.