Easy Lessons in Egyptian Hieroglyphics ( Egypt ) (8TH ed.) by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge
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 Barthelmy 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 in 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.
Budge gives the history of hieroglyphic writing, its evolution into hieratic and demotic scripts, and the fascinating tale of its decipherment by Young, Champollion, Åkerblad, and others.
