I'm pretty sure this article uses my transcription of the Shipwrecked Sailor, which is pretty exciting. It even copies a slight error I made in formatting the glyphs.
It's freely available if anyone is interested. The commentary was written when I was still an undergrad, so don't take it too seriously.
I'd recommend History of Ancient Egypt from The Great Courses.
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-ancient-egypt.html
I got it cheaper from Audible and really enjoyed it. A course that covers all of Egypt's history in broad strokes in around 24 hours (48 lectures).
There is a book titled: 24 Hours in Ancient Egypt: A Day in the Life of the People Who Lived There which details the lives of different social classes of Ancient Egyptians based upon archeological research. The book is told as if each narrative was a short story. I found it very educational and you can purchase it or find it In ebook or pdf format all over the internet.
I've been enjoying "How to read Hieroglyphs" by Mark Collier a lot. Only a few chapters in, but the way they teach is very clear and enjoyable.
https://www.amazon.ca/Read-Egyptian-Hieroglyphs-Step-Step/dp/0520239490
Not only does it teach hieroglyphs, there is some background and context as well, although obviously not as much as in a full egyptology course. But you'll be able to read hieroglyphs, which would be pretty cool! Not quite free though, but you don't necessarily need the hardcover either.
For a general history on Egypt, I'd recommend Toby Wilkinson's Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.
The most recent translations aren't going to be free and available online. I'd suggest going to your library or ordering a copy via Amazon. This is an excellent version, but there are less expensive, earlier editions available as well.
> actualy it would help even further. Getting opinions from two,three or more people is good for learning.
No, getting information from two, three or more citations / sources us good for learning.
Asking random people on reddit isn't learning. It's asking them to do your homework for you.
I'm not trying to be a dick - if you read the history of hieroglyphs, it will answer your questions, with provided sources, chapters and reference books.
http://www.ancient.eu/Egyptian_Hieroglyphs/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs
20 minutes reading will get you your answers.
History of Ancient Egypt, great courses lecture series by Bob Brier. It was amazing and it is what got me interested in Egypt.
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-ancient-egypt.html
I listened to it on audible.
You should look at the work of Jean-Claude Golvin. His watercolors are absolutely incredible. Many of them can be found in the three-volume L'Égypte restituée.
If you like those, you would probably also like /r/papertowns.
I think I can safely say that the best source for the Heqanakht Papyri is Allen's book. Granted, I'm biased because he's my doctor father, but I don't think there's any doubt about the claim that his book is an excellent work of scholarship and the goto source on this topic. It's not written for the general public, but if you decide to try to work through it, I would be happy to help.
There are many books about daily life in Ancient Egypt, some more scholarly than others. For that, I would cautiously recommend Meskell's <em>Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt</em>. It is both accessible and scholarly, but also...fluffy. Read it with a critical eye.
I've been listening to "The History Of Ancient Egypt" by Bob Brier, and I highly recommend it for just your stated goals. The entire course traverses from pre-history to Cleopatra. Each 40-minute lecture gives a general overview of one period of Egyptian history, with occasional detours into relevant interesting topics. I think it might be exactly what you're interested in, because Pr. Brier is constantly dropping suggestions to read further about a particular topic that he can only brush on in the course of one lecture.
>And while ultimately the failure to recognise the Egyptian roots of Western philosophy may be considered as a problem largely confined to historical accuracy, the failure to understand its nature and purpose has had – and still has – the most profound, extensive, and worrying consequences for the whole of humankind.
Tim Abbey, Preface to Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth: From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism by Algis Uždavinys, 2008
The Egyptian Foundations of Gnostic Thought also go into your question on the first few pages.
Hi all, I thought this Kindle ebook on Egyptian Mythology might be interesting to members of the community, it's free to download until March 30th. It might be a bit basic for some of the more experienced people here but should make a good introduction to Egyptian mythology for newer readers.
If you enjoy it, an honest review on Amazon would be appreciated. But if you have any criticism, I would prefer you let me know via PM or leave a message here instead of leaving a negative review, so I can get it corrected right away for future readers.
Thanks!
The link above is for the US Amazon site, for your country's regional equivalent, you can change the URL suffix such as:
Canada - https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B06XSBT13X
I live in Houston and we're pretty close to the same latitude. I was thinking about Thebes though. Also, the moon rises and sets at all different times in the day. Often it's not during the night at all. This chart for Cairo shows that.
Edit: Actually Houston (29°) is closer to Cairo's latitude (30°) than Thebes (25°). /irrelevant
Reading "The Giza Power Plant" right now and one thing that annoys me the most is that "egyptologists" are usually not skilled practicioners of any other science other than archeology.
And anything that questions their beliefs is ruthlessly mocked and attacked.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_big_was_a_pyramid_block
Obviously the pyramid builders transported 80 tonne stones using their hands and copper hammers...
Egyptologists right now do not admit ANY question or view which questions their unproven, guessed at assumptions.
Lets start with the fact that the pyramids were not tombs and go from there...
Not Egyptology-related as such but there's a very effective technique that I use called active recall. This consists of reading a text, breaking it into important sections, writing questions on those sections and then answering them at the first available opportunity, and on a regular basis until full understanding and memorization.
The software I use for this is called "Anki" (maybe Ankhi would be a better name in this scenario!) and it's free and has desktop and mobile versions that sync. You can insert images into it as well as text, it's very easy to use. I use it regularly, I'm a software engineer, but the majority who use it are medical students. I've no vested interest in this, I just found that this way of study drastically improved my ability to memorize things and learn large amounts of new information very quickly.
Lauren Haney's books. You will love Lieutenant Bak. If there were more books, I'd pay most anything for them. https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/lauren-haney/lieutenant-bak/
The singer From Memphis by Gary Corby is a fun read.
Eugen Strouhal’s <em>Life of the Ancient Egyptians</em> is a good book on the lives of the common people in ancient Egypt. It’s out of print but you can probably find used copies on Amazon.
This book’s really good. It’s written by a professor at the University I studied at https://www.amazon.com/Pyramids-Greenwood-Guides-Historic-Ancient/dp/0313325804/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Jennifer+Hellum&qid=1622377776&sr=8-1
I've recently started learning myself and I found "How To Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs" by Mark Collier extremely helpful.
I am planning on getting Bill Manley's Egyptian Hieroglyphs for complete beginners too but can't say anything about it other than it was recommended in a Youtube video together with the first book.
There's also this pre-order on Amazon: The Black Kingdom of the Nile by Charles Bonnet
I've really enjoyed Red Land, Black Land by Barbara Mertz. It has a heavy focus on daily life in Egypt, less on specific dynasties. She is clearly very knowledgable but not academic. She writes about what we know for certain, and which is still an on going debate.
https://www.amazon.com/Red-Land-Black-Daily-Ancient/dp/0061252751
You can get a great copy on Amazon. I have this exact copy. https://www.amazon.com/Egyptian-Book-Dead-Integrated-Full-Color/dp/1452144389/ref=sr_1_2?crid=ZJKGG79TMZRB&dchild=1&keywords=the+book+of+the+dead+egyptian&qid=1601058837&sprefix=the+book+of+the+dead%2Caps%2C165&sr=8-2
The tiny, tiny ones :) Taschen - Description de L'Egypte: publiée par les ordres de Napoléon Bonaparte (English, German and French Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/382283775X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_N3MvFb74YAWH6 straight from Amazon... Hard to see but still interesting for me
There's a Nefertiti version as well:
By the way, if anyone's thinking of getting one of these, they are a bit cheaper on Amazon.
Creation and the Universe books available on Amazon for free for kindle check it out
Checkout and share the creation and the universe book series on Amazon
Miriam Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature is a must-have for anyone interested in the culture. It's a collection of English translations of texts from all the periods of Egyptian history, and while reading later summaries, commentaries, and analyses is fine, all good scholarship includes primary sources. Short of learning to read hieroglyphics, this is the next best thing.
The original publication was in three volumes (Vol. I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms, Vol II: The New Kingdom, and Vol. III: The Late Period), but it looks like the latest edition has them all in one volume.
Raymond Faulkner and Ogden Goelet's <em>The Egyptian Book of the Dead</em> is another great addition to a library. It's an English translation of the Papyrus of Ani with full-color reproductions of the papyrus.
The Letters could be depictions of certain seasons , wheat = harvest season bird, the migration seasons etc...
These appear to be based on outdated translations (Farangi, in particular, is using Budge. Who was good in his day, but now effectively useless for Egyptologists).
Based on the revised edition of The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Faulkner and Goelet, Jr), the translation is closer to "my name has not reached the offices of those who control slaves" (p. 129). In this case, the deceased has not become embroiled in any dispute or issue relating to property, specifically captive labourers.
Go to 10:58 in this YouTube video. The text the video maker is working with is the Papyrus of Ani, possibly the beautiful color edition of the complete papyrus from Ogden Goelet Jr., and Raymond O. Faulkner. The video creator has cleaned up the hieroglyphs for the horizontal row across the top of the video and used the more traditional look, but the strip down the side is definitely the Papyrus of Ani.
I faced this same question recently. I was looking for a good, short introduction to Egyptian mythology for a summer course. I had a fully-stocked egyptological library at my disposal, and I asked a number of other egyptologists, but I didn't really find what I was looking for. I decided to assign an excerpt from Egyptian Myth: A very short introduction, which is available online here. That's where I would start.
For your purposes, Wilkinson is also good to have. It's not presented in a narrative style, so not very well suited for reading from cover to cover, but it is thorough and full of beautiful images.
What we really need is a book in the style of Gaiman's Norse Mythology, which focuses on storytelling rather than the strict facts, but that doesn't exist for ancient Egypt (yet).
Here's the relevant page from <em>The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day</em>.
Let me know if you have any questions about the text.
For a really fun take that is fairly accurate check out Patheon graphic novel about the Egyptian gods. You might be able to get it at your local library.
I used this to get started. If the interest continues i suggest for some self study.
Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs https://www.amazon.com/dp/1107663288/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_9MN1G8TZA8RNR8N4B49E
And
Middle Egyptian Literature: Eight Literary Works of the Middle Kingdom https://www.amazon.com/dp/110745607X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_Q777SC445XKB1N7NYX55
Also the Egyptian Exploration society has some guided translations through zoom every few months.
...
In Rome, Caesar also erected a statue of Cleopatra as Isis, suggesting her divinity. Obsessed with dreams of grandeur, Caesar was assassinated, leaving Cleopatra in a difficult situation. With the death of Caesar, Cleopatra became like Isis, the grieving widow with the divine infant (Horus) to protect. She depicted herself and Caesarion on the wall at Dendera temple as gods.
● Bob Brier, "The History of Ancient Egypt", The Great Courses Plus, Lecture 47. The series is old but it's great.
Suggested reading for that lecture which I haven't read:
● Robert Bianchi, Cleopatra’s Egypt
● Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Cleopatra
I love this audio (video also available) course on Egypt's history. It's taught by the very entertaining Bob Brier, an Egyptologist. He will explain, in interesting detail, why some pharaohs were "removed" from history—and who probably did it.
This is well worth checking out.
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-ancient-egypt.html
I'm gonna go with Year 2615 of our Lord Psamtik II (may he rule in the fields of Aaru for all eternity!).
In all seriousness though, it seems that they got the date 6262 from here (actually here but my link explains why).
> Censorinus's placement of an apocatastasis on 21 July ad 139 permitted the calculation of its predecessors to 1322, 2782, and 4242 bc. The last is sometimes described as "the first exactly dated year in history" but, since the calendar is attested before Dynasty XVIII and the last date is now known to far predate early Egyptian civilization, it is typically credited to Dynasty II around the middle date.
But yeah, it would make no sense to use it seeing as it predates Narmer by 1000 years.
I'm very happy that you appreciated my comment. It's a privilege to be able to help out other followers of the Egyptian gods.
"Eternal Egypt" and "Everlasting Egypt" are both available on Amazon and some other online shops.
Here are the links to the Amazon pages:
Eternal Egypt https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eternal-Egypt-Ancient-Rituals-Modern/dp/1440192464
Everlasting Egypt https://www.amazon.co.uk/Everlasting-Egypt-Kemetic-Rituals-Gods-ebook/dp/B07FTGHNWY
It may be available under a different title:
https://www.amazon.com/King-Tutankhamun-Treasures-Zahi-Hawass/dp/0500051518
There isn't but if you are interesting in Ancient Egyptian Medicine and what they used to treat certain conditions, there is a wonderful book you can see if your library has it as it is expensive (I actually paid $85 for it new).
It is awesome!!! It tells you history of medicine and how they treated disease, illness and injuries, giving the exact "recipe" they used in the medicines they gave the patients. They always had an answer up front to every patient, this is an illness I can treat, this is an illness I will try to treat, there is no treatment to cure you.
They even had a pregnancy test that actually told you with 70 percent accuracy if you were going to have a boy or a girl. You peed on barley and wheat. If one of them grew, you were pregnant. If the barley grew, you were having a boy.
There is a 2nd edition medicine book coming out soon, on internal medicine and you can pre-order it and it is very expensive.
Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt by Erik Hornung is a good introduction to the topic by way of religious/cultic practice.
Read Early Dynastic Egypt by Toby Wilkinson. Highly recommended.
This is my favorite textbook and author Barry Kemp: https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Egypt-Civilization-Barry-Kemp/dp/0415827264/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=barry+kemp&qid=1605366624&s=books&sr=1-1
I had this book when I was younger, Tales of Ancient Egypt, I really enjoyed it. Is mostly a background of mythology, and some interesting stories, I guess like fables or fairy tales people at the time recorded.
That course is really good.
This link worked better for me.
There's a book on translations of Egyptian tales and monuments coming in January. I'm planning on getting it. Looks good for the price.
I have a delightful edition (vol 2 only of an originally 2 volume set, unfortunately) printed in 1971 of W. M. F. Petrie's Egyptian Tales
You can try this. Not sure how reliable it is, but the author is a known egyptologist.
PBS Empires – Egypt’s Golden Empire is a good series as well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfKz9z_SLZc&list=PL0Jv8zaqRPeb810WWghpTR1ImF_PmPaZ6
And John Darnell's Conflicts that Shaped Pharaonic Egypt is another essential audiobook on Audible. http://www.amazon.com/The-Modern-Scholar-Conflicts-Pharaonic/dp/B004FLVWHK
I get how difficult it will be. I have read medieval grimoires and alchemical texts. I can force my way through Ovid in Latin. Finnegans Wake is my favorite book. (Surprisingly, the Papyrus of Ani runs all throughout Finnegans Wake.) After finishing Finnegans Wake, I realized that the only remotely comparable experience would be reading books in foreign languages, so that's what I've been doing!
Of course, I was planning on reading some other texts first. Do you have any suggestions for reasonably easy ME texts to start with? I'd love to hear your favorite Egyptian texts in general, too!
Also, is this the book you mentioned? http://www.amazon.com/Middle-Egyptian-Introduction-Language-Hieroglyphs-ebook/dp/B00J8LQI26/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
I couldn't find something with the exact title you mentioned, but it was the only thing on Amazon about Egyptian that had a third edition.
I just pre-ordered a new book;
It is a new version of the same book, which you could likely get at less cost. Has the whole papyrus published above the English. Pretty good. Fun to read, and fun to use if you are also learning M. E. grammar.
Edit: Searching for information on the "Book of Going/Coming Forth by Day" will get you better results.