Medu Netcher - Egyptian Hieroglyphs

In this course you will be introduced to Medu Netcher (Divine Speech), the Kemetic (i.e. Ancient Egyptian) sacred language and script, commonly referred to as Egyptian hieroglyphs.

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In this course, Dr. Mario Beatty introduces you to Medu Netcher (Divine Speech), the Kemetic (i.e. Ancient Egyptian) sacred language and script, commonly referred to as Egyptian hieroglyphs. The course focuses on a phase of the language conventionally known as Middle Egyptian, dating from around 2100 BCE onwards. Using primarily the book by James Allen, Middle Egyptian (2014), the course will acquaint you with the fundamental elements of grammar and vocabulary in order to provide a unique and innovative examination of this African civilization from the inside through highlighting and translating numerous primary texts.

Mario Beatty, Associate Professor of Africana Studies, received his B.A. degree in Black World Studies at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, his M.A. degree in Black Studies at The Ohio State University, and his Ph.D. degree in African-American Studies at Temple University. He has taught at Morris Brown College, Bowie State University, and he served as Chairperson of the Department of African-American Studies at Chicago State University from 2007 to 2010. From 2004 to 2007, he served as an educational consultant for the School District of Philadelphia where he helped to write curriculum and to train teachers in the novel, district-wide mandatory course in African-American history. He currently serves as President of The Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC). His research interests include the Ancient Egyptian language, history, wisdom literature, astronomy in Ancient Egyptian religious texts, comparative analyses of African cultures, the image and use of ancient Africa in the African-American historical imagination, the theory and practice of African-American Studies, and Pan-Africanism.

In this lesson, you will learn all of the hieroglyphs referred to as uniliterals. These glyphs represent all of the fundamental consonants of the language and are the foundation needed to understand everything else in the course.

In this lesson, you will learn about the four major uses of Egyptian hieroglyphs as ideograms, as phonograms, as determinatives, and as phonetic complements. The primary focus is on the concepts of hieroglyphs as ideograms, phonograms, and determinatives.

Building on lesson #2, this lesson begins with a discussion of determinatives, but primarily focuses on the use of hieroglyphs as phonetic complements. This lesson prepares you to largely complete the important exercise at the end of Chapter 3 in James Allen, Middle Egyptian.

This lesson focuses on special cases in the use of hieroglyphs as determinatives and phonetic complements.

This lecture explains the importance of Coptic as the last stage of Medu Netcher and introduces you to the Saidic Coptic Alphabet. Various Coptic equivalents are provided for Kemetic words drawn from Leo Depuydt's Core Vocabulary Noun List.

In this lesson, you will learn about nouns in Medu Netcher in reference to the concepts of gender (i.e., masculine and feminine) and number (i.e., singular, plural, and dual). This lesson prepares you to complete exercises #1 and #2 at the end of Ch. 4 in James Allen, Middle Egyptian.

This lecture video focuses on special cases for nouns that do not behave as expected in reference to gender and number. This video highlights special cases involving some individual nouns, geographical place names, collective nouns, nouns that are viewed as non-countable, and false plurals. This video is primarily to be used for reference purposes.

This lecture video focuses on noun phrases, i.e., two or more words used to express a relationship. In Medu Netcher, noun phrases are used to express three different relationships: possession (i.e., direct or indirect genitive), apposition, and connection (i.e., conjunction and disjunction). In addition to explaining these noun phrases, the video also highlights a special type of noun phrase referred to as "honorific transposition." This video prepares you to complete the exercise on noun phrases at the end of Chapter 4 in Allen's book.

This lecture video focuses on Exercise #3 at the end of Allen, Middle Egyptian, Ch. 4 on transliterating and translating noun phrases. Through the use of the PAC Method where P= possession (direct genitive, indirect genitive, or direct genitive in honorific transposition), A= apposition (nouns side by side referring to the same entity), and C= connection (conjunction "and"; disjunction "or"), this video concretely demonstrates how to transliterate, translate, and provide the appropriate grammar for examining noun phrases.

This lecture video introduces you to major prepositions in Medu Netcher as a building block for understanding a prepositional phrase (i.e., a preposition + a noun or noun phrase). With the understanding of the prepositional phrase, the lesson provides you with a brief glimpse of what is called the Adverbial sentence in Medu Netcher where the Subject is a noun or noun phrase and the adverbial predicate that follows is a preposition + a noun.

This lecture provides you with a clear sense of the basic structure of an adverbial sentence in Medu Netcher which often begins with an optional particle, and is followed by the subject (i.e., noun or noun phrase) which is, in turn, followed by the adverbial predicate (i.e., an adverb or a prepositional phrase). Since this is the dominant sentence type in Medu Netcher, you need to master its structure. Being familiar with the major prepositions and particles will tremendously assist you in deciphering the elements in this sentence structure, even if you are not familiar with all of the vocabulary.

This lecture introduces you to suffix pronouns and describes their three major uses: 1. as a genitive after a noun with our sense of possessive adjectives; 2. after prepositions; 3. as a noun with the simple tense of the verb. Please note that these uses are taken from Gardiner's Egyptian grammar book because Allen's grammar book does not provide enough clarity in Chapter 5 for the learner. The lecture concludes by highlighting a couple of examples from Allen's grammar book that show suffix pronouns in the context of adverbial.

This lecture introduces you to adjectives and focuses on two major uses: 1. adjective as modifier; 2. adjective as predicate. When adjectives are used to modify nouns in Medu Netcher, they follow them and agree in gender and number. When adjectives are used as predicates they are positioned before the noun (i.e., subject) and do not agree in number and gender with the noun. When adjectives are used as predicates, only the masculine singular form is used. In Allen's grammar book, these two uses are actually found in two different chapters, 6 and 7, but I think it is much easier to explain them together at the same time so that you can see the contrast. As I have indicated on a number of occasions, my approach transcends going chapter by chapter in Allen, but we will eventually cover everything.

The lecture introduces you to a special type of adjectival construction called the Nefer Her construction that, on the surface, looks the adjective as predicate, but various context clues allow us to see the uniqueness of this construction. Medu Netcher uses this construction to describe the characteristics of someone or something. Unlike the adjective as predicate construction, the Nefer Her construction attaches the adjectival quality to the person rather than the thing being talked about. Knowing how to distinguish between the Nefer Her construction and adjectives used as predicates will be very important moving forward.

Medu Netcher - Egyptian Hieroglyphs

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