Middle Egyptian for beginners

*Please note that this course will run only if two or more students enroll.

Course Description: "Objectives of the course are: 1) basic mastering of the Hieroglyphic writing with both active and passive competency (drawing and reading abilities), 2) basic mastering of the fundamentals of middle Egyptian grammar and lexicon, 3) ability to read and understand simple passages from ancient Egyptian literature.

Methods of the course are: stimulation of the student’s meta-linguistic reasoning skills applied to language learning through 1) active use of the new language’s writing system, 2) reasoned grammar learning departing from the minimal fundamentals of morphology (morphs and their combinatorial laws), with constant application of the new grammatical rules and lexicon learned via formulation of new sentences in Egyptian by the student led by the teacher, 3) recognizing of the grammatical laws and lexicon learned in the samples from the original literature which are offered to the students in the final part of the course. In fact, my method starts with the two active skills (writing and speaking) and ends with the two passive ones (reading and listening).

The program of the lessons is the following:

First cycle: writing system and lexicon.

Lesson ONE: The uniliteral signs: signs which stand for one phoneme. Learning of the substantives which are represented in the uniliteral signs. Each student creates a document which contains a dictionary of their own, inserting the new vocables in semantic categories (men and their tools, gods and religion, animals, plants, body parts, landscape and its components with relative partitions.

Lesson TWO: The biliteral signs: signs which stand for two phonemes. Learning of the substantives and verbs represented by the biliteral signs, inserting them into the personal dictionaries.

Lesson THREE: The triliteral signs, the fundamental ideograms, and determinatives: signs which stand for three phonemes (roots), signs which stand for particularly important substantives, signs which help the reader recognizing the semantic area of a word. Learning of the relative substantives and verbs, inserting them in the dictionaries.

Second cycle: grammar and lexicon.

Lesson FOUR: The noun: substantive and the pronouns, personal and demonstrative, and the prepositions: the singular, the feminine, the plural, the dual. Categories of nouns: human beings, deities, animals and plants, body parts, realia.

Lesson FIVE: The verb: the prospective, the perfective, the stative. Categories of actions: link with the categories of nouns, attributing its verbs to each category.

Lesson SIX: The verb: the imperfective, perfective, and prospective participle, together with the relative and the interrogative pronoun.

Lesson SEVEN: Summarizing of writing and grammar in order to proceed to literature.

Lesson EIGHT: reading and translation of a short sample of the Pyramid Texts

Lesson NINE: reading and translation of a short sample of the Coffin Texts

Lesson TEN: reading and translation of a short sample of the Middle Egyptian literature."

DETAILS

Level: The course is for beginners. The language of the course could be English, but, if there are people, who already studied Latin, and are interested in learning a new ancient language in Latin, I would be more than happy to teach in Latin.

Textbook: Provided by the instructor. P. Grandet & B. Mathieu's Cours d'égyptien hiéroglyphique is, however, a good basis to follow my method.

Sections capped at: 5 students. If the course is sold-out, please fill out this waiting-list form.

When
Wednesdays, 2:00-4:00 U.S. Eastern Time

Cost
$500

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Payment amount

Middle Egyptian for beginners ($500)

Payment method

ACH Credit Card (3% convenience fee)

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Instructor

Stefano Vittori

I had my Bachelor Degree in “Lettere Classiche” at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 2011 with a thesis of Latin language and literature on the rendering of classic metrics in Italian language (supervisor prof. L. Gamberale). Subsequently, I had my Master’s Degree in Orientalistics at the University of Pisa in 2014 with a thesis of Egyptology on the “Dialogue between a Man and his Ba” (pBerlin 3024) (supervisor prof. M. Betrò). At the same University, I completed my Ph. D. summa cum laude and with rights of publication in 2018 with an Egyptology thesis about the orthographic variations in relationship with morphology occurring in the Pyramid Texts (supervisor prof. M. Betrò, prof. A. Loprieno, and prof. A. Stauder).
During my Ph. D., I published for specialized journals both in the field of Egyptology and more generally in those of Linguistics (es. “Egitto e Vicino Oriente”, “Latinitas”). In Latin, on “Latinitas”, I wrote an article about the similarities between the ancient Egyptian Lamentation literature and the Roman Satire (“Latinitas” 2014).

Since 2018, I have translated popular songs, mostly Disney’s, into Latin, to be sung by Luke Amadeus Ranieri on his channel ScorpioMartianus, and recently partly re-published in my own channel “Rumak”: “Duce me” (“Be prepared”), “Nocte amica amantibus” (“Can you feel the love tonight”), “Et nil est” (“You’re welcome”), “In igni” (“Hellfire”), “Triumphus Aladdini” (“Prince Ali”), and the whole corpus of songs from “Nightmare before Christmas”, some of which have been already released: “Mundus pateat” (“This is Halloween”), “Quid est?” (“What’s this”), “Questus T. Taphii” (“Jack’s lament”), “Regillae carmen” (“Sally’s song”), “Ululonis carmen” (“Oogie Boogie song”), “Furiate” (“Poor Jack”). Some of these have reached a considerable audience. Two of my last pieces, “the Wellerman’s song” and “Bohemian rhapsody”, are totally or partly in ancient Egyptian and Coptic: in particular, the former adapts the content of the middle Egyptian tale of “The Shipwrecked Sailor” (pLeningrad 1115) using the reconstructed vocalization based on Vergote’s, Osing’s, and Vycichl’s studies; the latter adapts the old Coptic content of PGM IV to the notes of Queen's famous song. In another of the most recent pieces, “Dormi dormi”, I adapt Simonides’s Fr. 38 to Vasco Rossi’s homonym song.
On my own YouTube channel, I deal mainly with metrics, publishing recitations of both prose and poetry, and, since 2022, I began with Marina Garanin a cycle of lessons held in Latin about ancient Egyptian language and writing.

Since 2021, I have taught ancient Egyptian language in the Athena Nova private school and Latin and Greek in the Italian public High School “A. Meucci” of Aprilia (Latium), where I developed a method strongly based on historical and comparative linguistics, which is focused on morphology and on etymology as a tool for memorizing lexicon, producing didactic materials of my own.
Some of my original poetic compositions have been published in the international review “Vox Latina”, Tomus 57 (fasc. 225 and 226) and 58 (fasc. 230).

In 2022, I wrote a Latin tragedy in iambic trimeters and lyrical meters, “Medeae daemones” or simply “Medea”, which was awarded two prizes in the international contest “Thalia” (Vicenza, August 1st-7th, 2022), corona aenea (‘bronze crown’ for the third best piece) and persona aurea (‘golden mask’ for the best protagonist actress, Marina Garanin, in the role of Medea). The recording of this piece has been released with Latin, Italian, and English subtitles on my YouTube channel.
In 2023, I was awarded three prizes in international contests devoted to Latin poetry: Certamen Sarbievianum, Certamen Nubicentauricum, Certamen Apollinare Poeticum; and I published “Medea” in book format with Contubernales and as a graphic novel with Nubes.
In 2024, I wrote a second original Latin tragedy, “Agauē”, soon to be published in my channel as a video, in book format and graphic novel by Nubes. With this piece I participated in the second edition of the contest “Thalia” (Vilnius, August 4th-11th, 2024): the piece has also been awarded two prizes: calamus aureus (‘golden pen’ for the best text) and persona aurea (‘golden mask’ for the best protagonist actress, Marina Garanin, in the role of Agave).