Egyptian Glyphary

Book excerpt: The Egyptian Glyphary is part of Museum Tours' series "The Essentials" ... books that anyone serious about the study of Egyptology will find useful.This unique Egyptian language dictionary is called a Glyphary to distinguish it from dictionaries that list entries in strictly alphabetical order. Rather, it lists words based on the hieroglyphic signs that they contain, resulting in easier word look-up. One can find a word without knowing its beginning letter or its transliteration. A word can often be found even if part of the word is missing or unreadable.It has been created to fill a need for a low cost, yet comprehensive, translation aid to hieroglyphs that is convenient to use. Its emphasis is on words found in monumental inscriptions, as opposed to words found strictly in papyri. The words it contains are most likely to be encountered on the monuments in Egypt or in museums. It contains a total of about 8,000 total entries, of which about 4,000 are unique. This compares favorably to the 2,500 entries in the vocabulary of Alan Gardiner's "Egyptian Grammar", and the 5,000 plus entries in Raymond Faulkner's "Dictionary of Middle Egyptian". The volume's convenient size makes it ideal for everyday use anywhere one happens to be, a local museum or the monuments in Egypt. It is a "must have" for any serious student, Egyptologist or Egyptophile.From Museum Tours Press.