James P. Allen (1) (1945–)

These ancient Egyptian texts are starting to fascinate me more and more. This one here perfectly illustrates that even the earliest humans were already confronted with existential issues. This short text (less than 10 pages) shows a weary man in conversation with his soul. The man paints a very sad picture of his life and of the world in general; he longs for death. But his soul (‘ba’ only covers a certain aspect of what we understand by soul) urges him again and again to choose life, "be happy and forget all cares!", because it is uncertain what awaits after death’ . This text, probably from about 1800 bce, is apparently not easy to translate and interpret, but it does indicate how ancient Egyptian people of almost 4,000 years ago already struggled with life. More about the different interpretations of this text, in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5566637635… (mais)

We used Allen (along with Hoch) when I did the first year in Middle Egyptian, but I thought that there were some major issues with it (for example, he introduces the syntax of pronouns in chapter 5 but doesn't discuss the semantics of the various kinds of pronouns until much later on - this is partly because he introduces the morphology of verbs so late, I think). It might be much better as a modern reference grammar (because Gardiner is very old-fashioned) than a teaching grammar, but I'm not really advanced enough in the subject to be able to say anything intelligent about that! A lot of the problems would be solved, I think, if chapter 26 (the summary of the grammar) was moved to much earlier in the book as that's where a lot of the stuff (like the pronouns, and the verb forms) is tied together.… (mais)

Allan's well-written and clear guide is an excellent resource for any student of Middle Egyptian.

Though it is commonly used in university courses on Middle Egyptian, Allen's work is also aimed at the self-teaching enthusiast - for instance, he devotes sections to the standard scholarly pronunciation of transcribed Egyptian, which one picks up automatically in a classroom, but would be very helpful for the solitary student.

I do miss Hoch's early and forceful emphasis on word order, which is so essential to advanced translation. Student with a background in linguistics find Hoch's (occasionally daunting) technical language simplifies instruction and his comparisons of Middle Egyptian words to Hebrew and Arabic are interesting, but there's no denying that Allan's book is much more accessible.… (mais)