Middle Egyptian

Book excerpt: This grammar provides a comprehensive overview of Middle Egyptian and illustrates its grammatical features with extensive examples from various sources. Exercises at the end of each chapter, along with a sign list and a hieroglyphic word list, provide the reader with the means to apply and practice the content, enabling this book to be used as both a grammar reference and a textbook. The book’s structure and detailed outline facilitate its use as a reference, making it easy to find information on any particular grammatical feature. At the same time, the extensive content of the forty chapters provides a suitable basis for self-guided study and enables the student to read and understand Egyptian inscriptions and literary texts in hieroglyphic transliteration. Recent developments in the understanding of Egyptian are exemplified in numerous quotations from Egyptian texts, and exercises at the end of each chapter provide further opportunity for considering the grammatical phenomena discussed in the chapter, allowing for both practice and review. For reasons of convenience, the vocabulary necessary for the exercises, along with the words used in the examples, are arranged into a word list at the end of the book. Similar and alternative grammatical constructions are compared, and in addition to the “classical” language of the Middle Kingdom, the book considers both Old Egyptian and Late Egyptian influences. As a hybrid reference and textbook, this volume introduces the reader to the grammatical features of Middle Egyptian and illustrates the means of expression used in ancient Egyptian.