Sunday, August 19, 2012

Book Review - Hieroglyphs Without Mystery

I just finished this book by Karl-Theodor Zauzich. The book had some great assets and some less than ideal items. Overall, this book could be used by a beginner but I wouldn't suggest it. While the book walks the reader through signs, phrases and grammar with great precision it has one big downfall. The glyphs in this book are written so small that unless you are familiar with the common glyphs it will be useless in helping you with translation. For someone who is familiar with the basic glyphs then you can get much from this book. One thing I picked up from this book is a quicker, script like form of some of the harder glyphs. (The owl, vulture and chick are the bane of my writing) There are also areas where the phonetics are given without the glyphs. Here again, familiarity with the common glyphs would be helpful.

The book does have some examples of inscriptions that it walks you through translating. However, other books have practice sections for these kinds of translations which this one does not. 

I think this is a great stage 2 book for someone looking to learn glyphs. Anyone who has read a couple books and has a familiarity with the "alphabet" and some of the biliterals and triliterals will do well with this book as a next step.

Find it here on Amazon.com

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