Author Description

The tourist who visits Egypt for the first time quickly comes face to face with the ancient hieroglyphs on jewellery, garments, or trinkets, and often purchases something which has upon it his/her name inside a cartouche. As the Egyptian language did not have all the letters of the English alphabet, to make up the shortfall a tourist’s alphabet was developed that adapted other glyphs (a ‘glyph’ is a singe sign), and this alphabet has been included here. However it must not be confused with the academic language that is written on the monuments and used in this work.Please note that the book is intended as a vade mecum for those who can read the hieroglyphs, not as a tutorial for beginners. If an in-depth understanding of the Egyptian language is desired then the reader is recommended to take a course on the subject.Useful words and phrases have been included to assist in the translation of the inscriptions carved on Egypt’s monuments and on museum relics. It should be borne in mind that considerable experience in the language is required before many of the inscriptions can be read on sight, but good photographs of them can always be studied long after the visit is over. A selection of the inscriptions are listed here in alphabetic order. The entries included are those found either useful or interesting, and the sign lists should prove invaluable, being quicker and easier to find any particular glyph than in Gardiner’s book, although all the glyphs are based upon his sign list. Instead of his small uncoloured outline drawings, they are larger scale and derived from tomb paintings. They are as accurately detailed and coloured as possible and were drawn by the author. The full list of larger drawings is unpublished but is available from the author on request.All the information contained herein conforms to Gardiner’s Egyptian Grammar, the book used by most modern Egyptologists. In his vocabulary section Gardiner made the English-Egyptian lists alphabetical, but he did