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

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Cambridge University Press, Apr 15, 2010 - Foreign Language Study
Middle Egyptian introduces the reader to the writing system of ancient Egypt and the language of hieroglyphic texts. It contains twenty-six lessons, exercises (with answers), a list of hieroglyphic signs, and a dictionary. It also includes a series of twenty-five essays on the most important aspects of ancient Egyptian history, society, religion and literature. The combination of grammar lessons and cultural essays allows users to not only read hieroglyphic texts but also to understand them, providing readers with the foundation to understand texts on monuments and to read great works of ancient Egyptian literature in the original text. This second edition contains revised exercises and essays, providing an up to date account of current research and discoveries. New illustrations enhance discussions and examples. These additions combine with the previous edition to create a complete grammatical description of the classical language of ancient Egypt for specialists in linguistics and other fields.
 

Contents

The Sounds of Middle Egyptian
13
Multiliteral Signs
25
Nouns
37
Pronouns
49
Adjectives
61
Adjectival and Nominal Sentences
69
Prepositions and Adverbs
85
Numbers
101
The Stative
205
The Perfect
227
The Subjunctive
249
The Perfective and Imperfective
267
The Prospective and Passive
289
The Other Forms of the Suffix Conjugation
307
The Participles
325
The Relative Forms
353

Adverbial Sentences
113
Nonverbal Sentences
123
Nonverbal Clauses
133
Verbs
151
The Infinitival Forms
163
The Pseudoverbal Construction
179
The Imperative and Particles
189
Special Uses of the Relative Forms
373
Middle Egyptian Grammar
401
Sign List
425
Dictionary
455
Answers to the Exercises
475
Index
497
Copyright

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About the author (2010)

James P. Allen is the Wilbour Professor of Egyptology at Brown University. He is a former curator of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and President of the International Association of Egyptologists. His previous publications include Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts (1989), The Heqanakht Papyri (2002), and The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (2005).

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