To read Egyptian one used to have to be philologist, orientalist and cryptographer at once; readers today may thank 200 years' labor by Egyptologists from Barthélemy to Budge for the privilege of being able to read and study hieroglyphic texts much as one studies any foreign language. The student no longer need compare pictographs with inscriptions in Coptic and Greek on old stones and tablets : this basic guide to the Egyptian language, first published in 1910 and now available for the first time in paperback, remains the standard introduction by perhaps the most prolific, erudite Egyptologist of the century.

Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, late Keeper of the Egyptian and Syrian Antiquities in the British Museum, leads the beginning Egyptologist into arcane hieroglyphic realms with the kind of lucid care that led his predecessors to the secrets of the Rosetta Stone. Budge gives the history of hieroglyphic writting, its evolution into hieratic and demotic scripts, and the fascinating tale of its decipherment by Young, Champollion, Akerblad and others. The phonetic and alphabetic character of the hieroglyphics (the understanding of which cracked the "code") is made clear in lists of hundreds of characters defined by phonetic values and meaning, followed by chapters on grammar - pronouns, nouns, articles, adjectives, numbers, time, verbs, adverbs, conjuntions and particles.

Grammar fundamentals aside, the only way to Egyptian is through the texts, and this book immerses the reader immediately. An elementary extract from Tale of the Two Brothers is followed by more advanced readings from a VIth dynasty inscription of Pepi I, a XIXth dynasty funeral stele of Panehesi, an XVIIIth dynasty inscription of Anebni, and ultimately an extract from the CXXVth chapter of the Book of the Dead.

Prospective Egyptologists, linguists, philologists, anyone intrigued by the mystery of hieroglyphics, will find this a comprehensive beginner's manual, a first sure step to a word only hinted at in the Rosetta Stone.