Introduction to Late Egyptian
& Hieratic

Keywords: Ancient Egyptian language, Hieratic script, Late Egyptian, Egyptian literature, paleography

These two courses represent hands-on training in reading ancient Egyptian texts in their original scripts, offered as separate advanced-language courses for students who have already gained a foundation in Egyptian grammar.

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Introduction to Hieratic teaches students to read Middle Egyptian literary and documentary texts written in hieratic, the cursive script used for everyday writing on papyrus and ostraca. Working directly from photographs and facsimiles using Möller's Hieratische Paläographie, students tackle classics of Egyptian literature – the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, the Eloquent Peasant, the Story of Sinuhe – alongside quarry graffiti, medical texts, royal hymns, and private letters, building the skills to decipher hieratic hands from other periods independently.

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Introduction to Late Egyptian shifts focus to the vernacular language of the Ramesside period, immersing students in vivid primary sources: the Tomb Robbery Papyri, court petitions, the Turin Strike Papyrus, and the Late Ramesside Letters, alongside literary tales like the Doomed Prince. Students transliterate and translate directly from original texts, developing the fluency to approach unseen Late Egyptian documents using standard grammars and dictionaries.

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Together, these courses train the close philological skills at the heart of Egyptological scholarship.