Starting Monday, February 17th, 2014.
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It is an Allen study section. The text is James Allen, Middle Egyptian An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Any edition from 2001 to 2010.
And then a list of edition-related caveats that exclude both the earliest and the latest and list small problems throughout with all of them.
It is expect that it will take just under 2.5 years to complete Allen.
What?
I'm sorry, that is too long.
Forget I brought up the whole thing. Apologies.
It is an introduction, it must go faster than that. Here's the thing. I have that book and I don't like it. I should hasten to Amazon and say so. I do not like the physical book. It is ridiculous. It is only 520 pages so not so daunting that it takes 2.5 years, and that is with references, a sign list at the end, sign shapes, as they do but you know those already, dictionary, answers to exercises, and an index back there, so only 400 pages of text. Still, the book is bulky, too heavy, overly dense, too small pages so the typeface is too small, tiny actually, the typeface for hieroglyphs is way way WAY too small. You need magnifying reading glasses plus a proper magnifying glass just to read the glyphs.
It does not do to merely recognize the general shape of a glyph, you must be able to discern one bird from another and sometimes the differences hardly apparent. The tiny typeface is unacceptable. The tight binding of the book is unacceptable. No thought is given to the reader who uses this book.
I tore my copy apart, as I do with such uncooperative books, attempting to tame it, for its separate pieces to be more manageable and the book more utile. But nothing short of a magnifying light-table will suffice. Page by page enlargement of the whole thing.
That is why the class takes 2.5 years, for running a magnifying lens across each line. Line for line, the whole book. Why would a publisher do that?
And it is expensive besides.
And it is expensive besides.
