This free Primer and free downloadable Exercise Drill Program are intended for the student of the ancient Egyptian language who does not have working knowledge of French and German. In addition, references to many other languages including Greek, Latin, Arabic, Coptic, Akkadian, and Hebrew are often found scattered throughout most of the text books on how to read Hieroglyphs. This book is written for the individual who is interested in the ancient Egyptian language but has no prior knowledge of any foreign language, nor a thorough grounding in English grammar. Therefore, each Egyptian grammatical point is introduced by first explaining its English equivalent. Moreover, each chapter contains a COMMENTARY which discusses the grammatical point presented.
Initially, Egyptian words are shown with spaces between the signs, and not until the student has had a feel for the language are the spaces reduced in size, eventually being eliminated altogether. Similarly, the phonetic pronunciation is omitted once the student has learned how to sound out the words. To help the student, there are exercises at the end of each chapter, which review both the new and the previous material learned.
Each chapter contains an ARTICLE concerning some aspect of ancient Egypt. Thus, the student is introduced to the Egyptian civilization as well as its language. The articles cover a broad range of topics and are not arranged in any particular order.
In order to help learn the various time periods, dates are provided throughout. In addition, locations are geographically defined and maps provided to enable the student to develop a physical perspective of Egypt and her neighbors.
At the end of the PRIMER are six APPENDICES: A LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS commonly used in the field of Egyptology; A GLOSSARY; A CHRONOLOGY; A DICTIONARY; A LIST OF WHERE EACH SIGN WAS FIRST ENCOUNTERED; and ANSWERS TO THE EXERCISES. The PRINT BIBLIOGRAPHY represents the source books used and provides a reference list for those students who desire more information on a particular topic or wish to expand their knowledge of ancient Egypt. As there are a large number of websites on ancient Egypt, I have not attempted to list any of the ones I consulted in the bibliography.
THE EXERCISE DRILL PROGRAM replicates not only the set of exercises found at the end of each chapter but also many of the words and phrases found in the chapter studied. These drills may be used sequentially or randomly and they obviate the need to make flip cards for vocabulary drills. The Exercise Drill Program is downloadable and free. It is programmed to log off after 2 hours should the student forget to do so.
