Books by Maria Betro

“This is a wonderful book, full of illustrations. It’s laid out almost like an art book. It is, I think, the best of a number of books that are available to introduce readers to hieroglyphics in a serious way. Betrò doesn’t say much about the grammar or syntax but you can get that elsewhere. What she does do is offer a nice selection of signs from Gardiner’s Sign List, and groups them according to sensible categories. So all the signs for plants are in one place, all the signs for the gods are in another place. Each sign occupies a full page, and the page is laid out in such a way that you can immediately understand the sign’s phonetic value, its function, whether it’s a determinative or not, whether it has a Demotic or hieratical equivalent, and so on. She also discusses the meaning of the sign in its relation to Egyptian religion. So you really get a sense of the role that each sign plays within this theological system.” Read more...

The best books on Hieroglyphics

Diane Greco Josefowicz, Historian