LINGram 18: An Elementary Grammar of the Ancient Egyptian Language in the Hieroglyphic Type

An Elementary Grammar of the Ancient Egyptian Language in the Hieroglyphic Type

P. Le Page Renouf

The Elementary Grammar contained in this volume is available for all hieroglyphic texts written whilst the old Egyptian was still a living language, and the hieroglyphic system of writing continued in its original purity. It is of the utmost importance that the student should begin with these texts, for although the vocabulary and grammar of the later inscriptions resemble those of the better period, as closely as modern Latin does that of the ancient, and although the contents of these inscriptions are often of the highest historical and archeological interest, the hieroglyphic system which they exhibit is extremely corrupt, particularly in the Roman period; it confounds articulations which the ancient Egyptians scrupulously distinguished, signs originally syllabic are used with purely alphabetic values, the ancient values are sometimes ignored and entirely new ones substituted. When the original System is more thoroughly known, the corruptions which it has suffered will be readily learnt (from the preface of the 1875 edition).

Contents: Hieroglyphic Signs, Hieroglyphic Vocabulary, Nouns and Adjectives, Numbers, Ordinals, Pronouns Prepositions, Adverbs and Conjunctions, Intcrjections, Verbs.

This re-edition has been published as no. 18 in the LINCOM Gramatica (LINGram) series (originally published 1875, London: Samuel Bagster and Sons).

ISBN 9783895861574. LINCOM Gramatica 18. 140pp. 2010.