Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The French linguist who decoded the Rosetta Stone took 14 years to do so; amateur translators would find the task much simpler with Decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphs: How to Read the Secret Language of the Pharaohs by British doctoral student Bridget McDermott. For instance: "a water pot on a human leg, a bread loaf and a flesh sign together" means "meat." The colorful text, a marriage between coffee-table picture book and high school language workbook, offers photographs of ancient inscriptions with sidebars clarifying their meaning as well as pronunciation and grammar guides, magic spells, maps, mythology and basic Egyptian history. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A media consultant on Egyptian archaeology currently working on her doctoral thesis, McDermott offers the reader a delightfully illustrated introduction to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. Egyptian hieroglyphs are not simple pictographs; they form a phonetic writing system, so some knowledge of grammar and vocabulary is essential to deciphering the texts. The author introduces common signs and words in the context of various aspects of Egyptian culture, treating first their origin and then their use as either sounds or determinatives for meaning. The book concludes with a brief overview of the basic grammar of Middle Egyptian (the classical stage of the language), along with a selection of sample translations, a sign index, and a select bibliography. This treatment may be sufficient for those who simply want to understand how hieroglyphics work, but for readers who wish to learn Middle Egyptian, Mark Collier and Bill Manley's How To Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Step-by-Step Guide To Teach Yourself (LJ 9/1/98) provides a more succinct and practical introduction. For a more intensive approach, J.P. Allen's Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language & Culture of Hieroglyphs (Cambridge Univ., 2000) will prove useful.-Edward K. Werner, St. Lucie Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Pierce, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
