My drawings of artifacts

Amenemhat, Khnumhotep, Kay, Hatshepsut, and Thutmose III

The Battle of Megiddo (3.7mB PDF)

I began translating in 2002, in a Stanford University Continuing Studies course given by Egyptologist J. G. Manning. The starting place to learn Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs is by translating formulaic texts on funerary artifacts. The beginner's text book is:

How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs - A Step-by-Step Guide to Teach Yourself, by Mark Collier and Bill Manley, with illustrations by Richard Parkinson.
University of California Press
ISBN 978-0520239494

Shortly after the conclusion of the course, a small study group formed to continue under the guidance of Manning, meeting on occasional Saturdays. We acquired a more formal grammar, one that he used for his undergraduate courses:

Middle Egyptian - An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, by James P. Allen.
Cambridge University Press
ISBN 0521774837

Curiosity led me to see if I could read something outside of the books and I started to look for examples in museums and museum catalogs. I made my own drawings and translations:

My drawings of artifacts

Simultaneously, we delved into DeBuck's classic, containing well-known monument inscriptions from historical Egyptian nobility:

Egyptian Readingbook, by Adrian DeBuck
Ares Publishers, Chicago, Illinois
ISBN 0890052131

I started out copying the hieroglyphs by hand, but then switched to scanning the pages so I could make worksheets for my transliterations and translations. Here are several:

Amenemhat, Khnumhotep, Kay, Hatshepsut, and Thutmose III

Once you're this far into translating, the dictionary is a must have!

A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, by Raymond O. Faulkner
Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
ISBN 09004163274

By now our little study group was down to three who still persevered with Manning. We translated this entire book, famous stories that reflect the values of Egyptian culture even though they are fictional accounts.

Middle-Egyptian Stories: The Story of Sinuhe & The Shipwrecked Sailor, by Aylward M. Blackman
Bruxelles 1972
Edition de la Fondation Egyptologique
Reine Elisabeth
ISBN X21806

We were privileged to read from the scholarly German volumes of 100 years ago, now located on the ETANA (Electronic Tools and Ancient Near Eastern Archives) web site:

Urkunden der 18, by Kurt Sethe. Dynastie Dritter Band (Volume 3), Leipzig: J.C. Hinrich'sche Buchhandlung, 1906.

My transliterations and translations of text from
The Battle of Megiddo (3.7mB PDF)

Megiddo is better known as Armageddon, 1479 BCE. The original text is located in the Sixth Pylon at Karnak, and dates from the reign of Thutmose III, 1479-1425 BCE, Dynasty 18.

One last volume needs to be included - a large and weighty tome, an essential cross reference to the newer grammars and dictionaries. I show the title page:

Egyptian Grammar - Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs by Sir Alan Gardiner
First published in 1927.
Third Edition, Revised reprinted in 2001.
Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
ISBN 090041635

After 4 years of reading hieroglyphs, we decided to skip forward in time to learn the final iteration of the Egyptian language, Coptic. Coptic is preserved in some fascinating texts, and still used formally in the Coptic church, analogous to the use of Latin by the Catholic church. Our journey continued...