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 Ancient Egyptian Language (AEL) and GlyphStudy
http://www.rostau.org.uk/AEgyptian-L
AEL has been around since the mid 1990s, which makes it something of a wise old owl of the Internet. As well as the website it offers a discussion list, which is its main attraction for many. It is a nicely organized sites whose stated primary aim “is to provide a virtual meeting place for those studying Ancient Egyptian on their own, to discuss their studies and related issues.” In this it succeeds admirably, supporting all levels of interested student from absolute beginner to professional. The core benefit of the AEL concept is the interactivity provided by the list, but it also has some massively useful transcriptions, transliterations and translations of hieroglyphic texts, which are brilliant for practice.
Its “learning” section includes some great sections including “Learn to read hieroglyphs”, “Exercises for beginners”, “Gardiner exercises” and more. It has a good bibliography, FAQ and its own directory of useful links.
This site and its spin-off partner GlyphStudy (Middle Egyptian Study Group) are the best solutions that I have found to access the expertise of people who are far from beginners. List members are helpful and you can learn a lot from the questions as well as the answers.
Jim Loy’s Home Page
www.jimloy.com/egypt/egypt.htm (with background graphics)
http://www.jimloy.com/egypt/egypt1.htm (without background graphics)
This site looks slightly off-putting because of its background design and numerous bulleted lists, but don’t be put off by this - there is a lot of good and interesting information contained on the site. He provides the basics, which includes a beginner’s grammar, a short dictionary, and Gardiner’s sign-list. Other sections include:
* Egyptian words, names and numbers
* Egyptian language (grammar and other details)
* Some drawings showing hieroglyphs
* Egyptian language (miscellaneous)
* Other Egyptology articles (including his own translations of standard Egyptian texts)
Manuel de Codage
http://www.catchpenny.org/codage/
Manuel de Codage is essential for an understanding for the ability to discuss translation of hieroglyphs via email/lists without the use of special fonts. It uses the standard keyboard characters to build a form of translation which is now in very common usage on lists like AEL. This page contains an introduction to it and explains how it works. You will also need Gardiner’s sign list.
Gardiner’s Sign List
http://showcase.netins.net/web/ankh/gardiner.html
A complete list of Gardiner’s 700+ hieroglyph symbols and the codes he designated to identify them
Ancient Egyptian Calligraphy - A beginner's guide to writing hierogplyphs
http://www.gizapyramids.org/pdf%20library/fischer_eg_calligraphy.pdf
Lovely book, in PDF format, which gives you detailed guidelines on how to draw each hieroglyph, stroke by stroke. Wonderful for those who are calligraphilcally-challenged! It is a large document and it takes time for the page it load.
The Pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian
http://www.friesian.com/egypt.htm
The issue of the pronunciation of the Ancient Egyptian language has recently become confused by popular presentations that ignore some of the essential and undoubted characteristics of Egyptian hieroglyphics, most importantly that Egyptian, just as today is usually the case with Arabic and Hebrew, did not write vowels -- except in late transcriptions of foreign (mainly Greek) words. For a time French (vowels) and German (no vowels) scholars hotly debated this, but the matter was settled more than a century ago. This is typically not explained to people who are told that their names can be written in such and such a way in hieroglyphics (cf. Nom en hieroglyphes), or who are simply told that the name of the Egyptian sun god is "Ra" -- the pronunciation we find in the recent entertaining but historically absurd movies Stargate (1994) and The Mummy (1999). Well, "ra" may be Tahitian for "sun," but it is not Ancient Egyptian.
As it happens, the Egyptian dialogue in those movies, reconstructed by Stuart Tyson Smith, avoids that mistake, for anyone who listens carefully; but the misconception is perpetuated by the English dialogue, despite Dr. Smith's advice. Indeed, although the Egyptians did not write vowels in Egyptian words, there is evidence about what the vowels were in many words. But the evidence is for different stages of the Egyptian language.
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