SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Voices of Ancient Egypt, the podcast for people who don't just want to learn about ancient Egypt, but want to understand it on a deeper, more meaningful level. I'm Melinda Nelsonhurst, an Egyptologist with a PhD in the field and years of experience teaching at the university level, working in Egypt, and training students around the world to read real ancient Egyptian texts. I've spent decades studying the civilization in a traditional academic setting so you don't have to. And so you can access knowledge that's usually locked behind academic walls. This podcast brings ancient Egyptian history, beliefs, and language to life and shows you that learning hieroglyphs is possible no matter your age, background, or schedule. So whether you want to read hieroglyphs in museums, on social media, or on your next trip to Egypt, you'll find the tools, stories, and encouragement to make it real right here. Let's hear the voices of the ancient world together. Hello, hello, and welcome to the podcast today. I'm really excited to be sharing this episode with you because we're going to get into the top three mistakes that I see people make when trying to learn hieroglyphs and that keep you stuck, keep you from reading the Egyptian text that you dream of being able to read. And it almost always comes down to one of these three things. And I hope that's really great news that you're excited about that, because I know that when things aren't working and you're just not making progress with reading hieroglyphs, it can feel like there are a hundred possible reasons for that. Worst of all, when this happens, we often think that the problem is actually us, that we're just not cut out for this. But I want to promise you, it is not you. It honestly comes down to just a few things. And I do think that that is great news because it means that we can fix the problem. And it really is possible to learn hieroglyphs. You can have the thought that if I'm not getting the results I want, I'm not reading the text that I want to read, it's just one of these three things. It could be even a couple of these three things. But the point is that the problem is going to fall into at least one of these categories. You can think of this as kind of a universal diagnostic for figuring out what's going wrong in your learning of hieroglyphs. And in my free class, the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph Fast Track, which is coming up on May 12th at 1 p.m. Eastern, we're going to fix these three mistakes. And in the training, you're going to learn my four-step sesh system that not only fixes these mistakes, but also fast tracks your learning of hieroglyphs so that you can read the hieroglyphic text that excites you. This is, you know, the kinds of things you're going to actually see when you walk into a museum or you go on a trip to Egypt, you're reading books, you're browsing perhaps social media or websites. And there will be a replay. So even if you can't come live, you should sign up at voicesofancientegypt.com slash free class. And I wanted to create this free class because as an Egyptologist, professor, and a hieroglyphs teacher outside the university who's helped hundreds of people learn to read hieroglyphs, these are the mistakes that I see all the time. And let me tell you, the pros make these mistakes all the time too. Yes, people who have PhDs, I see it over and over. I hear stories from people over and over. And once you know what's holding you up the most, everything else just makes sense. And you're no longer in confusion, floundering around, trying to figure out how to make this work, or perhaps even feeling in despair that this isn't something you can do. But it really just comes down to these three things. So let's jump into what those are. So the first mistake I see, and this is really a huge one. I see it so often, is what I call over-optimizing. So, what do I mean by over-optimizing? Well, this can manifest in a few different ways. This can manifest as over-planning or over-preparing for your studies, such as like having to make a whole bunch of materials, having to have the perfect plan, that sort of thing, which really just ends up causing you to not work on it at all because you're spending your time on over-optimizing instead. But the absolute most common way that I see this manifestation of over-optimizing is thinking that the right time will just come along and you'll magically have more time in the future. That you don't have that time now, but at some point in the future, it'll just be different, right? And we all know that's not really how life goes. Anything can happen at any time. So we really can't optimize this in the way that we think that we can. So most of the time, this is how it shows up. And you simply just keep putting it off. You don't get started, right? And this is so normal, by the way. I'm absolutely guilty of this one in many areas of my life. And I see it in my students all the time. I think that they just need to wait until their schedule clears so they can really dig in and spend tons of time on hieroglyphs. But if you're anything like me, this probably isn't your first rodeo, so to speak, when it comes to wanting to get started with something new. And you might notice when you think about how this has worked before that this same experience that I've had, you've had as well, where that perfect time simply never comes, right? We might be really busy with work right now, but then when work lets up a bit, we have other family obligations we have to take care of, or we have an unexpected medical issue, any number of things that come up. Or we might have a lot of travel coming up and so we put it off again. But then when we get back, the time doesn't magically materialize. Instead, other parts of life take over that time. Because the truth is there will always be lots of things waiting to take up your time. But a big part of what contributes to us putting off the learning of hieroglyphs because we're waiting for that perfect time isn't just that we literally have no time or we're waiting for time. It's also that we think that we actually need a lot of time to study for hieroglyphs. And so this is part of why we fall into this over-optimizing of feeling like we have to be in a place where we have these spacious periods of time on our calendar where we can just really dig in and get all excited and nerdy about it and get in really deep. But the truth is you don't need big blocks of time to do that. So you really can learn in any amount of time that you have. So, for example, my student Mark has been in my programs and worked with me before, and he's studied sort of on and off over time. He hasn't necessarily been the most consistent, and I'm not knocking Mark at all for that. He's a wonderful student and has made tremendous progress. But I tell you this example because I think that so many of you probably can relate to Mark's situation. So, what Mark has done, because he keeps a very full life between a very intense career, family life, and he also has a lot of different hobbies. So when he studies hieroglyphs, he generally has not ever studied more than like one hour a week. So this really can be done in one hour a week. And it doesn't have to even be one hour altogether. That could be 20 minutes, three times a week, or 30 minutes, two times a week, whatever. And yet, even though he has worked only one hour a week and then sometimes had some big gaps in the middle, he's had numerous experiences where he's encountered hieroglyphs in the wild, so to speak. So, like in a museum or on somebody's piece of jewelry, right? And he walked up to those hieroglyphs and read them right away. And during the hieroglyphs fast track class on May 12th, we're going to talk about how you can get results just like Mark did with this real kind of real life schedule, right? Where you're not making these huge blocks of time necessarily available for that. If you have huge blocks of time, that's great too, but it's really not necessary. So we're going to talk about exactly how that works in the free class on May 12th. So you can save your spot at voicesofancientegypt.com slash free class. Now, the second mistake that I see, this of the top three that I see, is that perhaps you've tried learning hieroglyphs before, right? Maybe you stopped putting it off and you tried, but you didn't get very far. And now you're afraid to try again and you haven't tried again because you're worried that the problem is you, that you just weren't able to do it, right? And this can happen for a couple of different reasons. But the good news is that neither of those reasons is you. It's you're not you. You're not the problem. It's most likely one of these two things instead. First, it could be that the system or plan that you were following was flawed because honestly, most of them out there are very flawed. And we're going to talk about that a little bit more in just a little bit. The second possible reason under this umbrella is that you really had just no system or process at all to follow. And when this happens, it can look like essentially kind of floundering around looking for resources, hopping from book to book, video to video, trying to piece together all kinds of things to kind of create your own system or process, but it's really not really a system. It's just a kind of like, here's this piece and this piece and this piece kind of thing. And so you're putting in the time, but then have little to no progress to really show for it. So a couple of specific ways this might look. This could look like, for example, you're surfing YouTube and watching a bunch of videos and you're learning a few things for sure. I'm not saying you can't learn anything from YouTube. I have some videos myself on learning hieroglyphs there, right? But a lot of times what happens is that you watch a bunch of videos and then you learn a few things, but it doesn't really go any further than that, right? And then you just either stop or you keep jumping around from video to video. But either way, you're just really not getting anywhere with it. Or it can look like buying a bunch of books, right? We've probably all been there, trying one after another, but not finding anything that feels like a fit for you, or that feels like it's understandable, past the first chapter or two. It's so, so common for all of us. I actually went through this exact same experience myself before I got into graduate school of you get a book and you're really excited, and the first chapter seems great. You're learning some signs, it's great. And then you get into the second chapter and you're like, okay, this is going all right. It's getting a little harder. We're learning some words, it's going. And then by the time you get to like the third, or maybe you make it to the fourth chapter, it's like, whoa, I don't know what's going on anymore here. This is like just it, I don't get it. It's not working for me. So oftentimes that can be the experience too, where and then you just end up hopping to another book or another set of videos or something like that. And really honestly, the worst part about this particular mistake of not having a system and hopping around is that it can lead to doubting yourself, thinking that you just can't do this, that hieroglyphs are too hard. And if this is you, if you feel like I'm calling you out right now, and maybe I am calling you out a bit right now, trust me, my friend, we have all been there. Everyone I know who's learned to read hieroglyphs, including all of the professional Egyptologists I know who I've talked to about this, doubted themselves too. This isn't a you problem. This is a systems problem, or more accurately, a lack of systems problem. So jumping around from resource to resource with no clear system, no clear path can teach you a few things, right? You can get the a little bit of progress that way, but then you end up stuck with those few things just kind of rattling around in your brain, not fully connecting to each other or to other things, not building your understanding so that you can actually walk into a museum, walk up to ancient artifacts and read the hieroglyphs on them. And to be able to do that, you do need a proven system that you can follow to learn hieroglyphs. And that's one of the things we're exactly going to be talking about during the free class, the hieroglyphs fast track on May 12th. And again, you can go grab your spot for that at voicesofancieneegypt.com slash free class. Now, the third mistake, this is one I just promised you we would get to in a moment, is thinking that all hieroglyph study systems are created equal. So we talked about the problem of not having a system, right? And how that can go wrong. But the sort of sister problem to that is thinking that all systems are created equal and trying systems, maybe one, maybe five different ones, whatever it might be, that really are just seriously flawed. And I'll be honest with you here. The way that Egyptian hieroglyphs are taught is broken. It absolutely is. The traditional methods make it extremely difficult to learn. I won't mince words. This is exactly what I experienced myself when I was learning. It took way longer, it was way harder than it needed to be. And just like the last mistake, this can be so dangerous because it can make us think that the problem is us. I know I thought this when I was starting out. I thought it was just me, that I was the problem with why I was finding this so difficult to understand. But I've since learned from my colleagues that they all felt the same way. And here I'm talking about people with PhDs in Egyptology here, right? Who have told me that they felt this exact same way. And in fact, some of them have come up to me at conferences and told me that they want to join my programs because the university courses that they took when they were in learning Egyptology and they were in graduate programs actually didn't teach them to read hieroglyphs very well at all. And they can't just walk up to objects in museums and read them. And that's what they, that's one of the things that they want to be able to do. They're very good at what they do. They specialize in some other areas of Egyptology. And that don't get me wrong, they really know what they're doing. They can go really deep in those things and they make wonderful contributions to the field. But this is an area where their programs really failed them and they just don't have those. And that's because the traditional systems that you find in books and the vast majority of courses and things on hieroglyphs usually have multiple things actually that make them unnecessarily complicated and difficult. But one of the biggest mistakes that I see in these traditional systems really is that they take these really big leaps forward in the teaching, right? This one keeps so many people stuck. And it's another one that plagues both those learning outside of the university setting and those learning in the university setting. This often looks like once someone has found something of a plan, like a system to follow, whether it's from a book or maybe even from AI or from a course, then they get lost after the first couple of introductory chapters or lessons. And like in problem two, this is a sneaky one because it can make us think that we're the problem and that we're just not cut out for this. But here's the truth: the plan that you're following is skipping major steps. And I see this all the time. This is exactly what happened in the way that I was taught as well. That instead of going from A to B to C to D to E to F and so on and so forth through the alphabet, instead, it's trying to take you from A to F to M to Q to Z. And if you're counting along at home, that's five letters out of 26 in the English alphabet. They're just skipping over the whole rest of the steps in between, right? And trying to just jump into the next much further topic that has no grounding, no connection to what you've done before, and is just extremely confusing. And this is exactly what you're gonna see in almost every book, course plan, et cetera, that there is out there, websites, study groups, all of those things. I hear it from my students over and over again with the different things they've tried. They just jump way ahead, ignoring the learning science that is out there, which actually shows us how brains work and how people actually learn. And learning is in fact somewhat like building scaffolding up the side of a building. Or you could visualize this also as sort of putting a puzzle together. When you bring in new information, it needs to connect to something that you already have in your brain. It can't just go in there like in a vacuum with nothing at all, no reference. It doesn't mean anything to you that way. So just like how you can't put scaffolding halfway up the side of the building without first building the lower levels below it, that's how learning is as well. And just like with a puzzle, you can't find the exact spot where you need to put a piece until you have another piece that you can connect it to. And whether you're just starting and working out from the corner or you're further along in the puzzle and you're filling in the middle, the principle is the same. No matter how beginner or how advanced you are, the steps need to make sense. They need to be the right size, they need to link to other things. So if you've encountered this, this is not a you problem, right? This it's not you that's the problem. It's this system that you were trying to use and it's skipping lots of steps. It's trying to build your scaffolding halfway up the building rather than building level upon level. And what happens when you try to build something without connection or support? It comes crashing down. Because each thing that you're trying to learn feels completely disconnected from everything else and just impossible to wrap your brain around, to be honest. And you just end up confused or with your eyes glazing over and your brain checking out because it's just not making sense. The great news is that there is a system that you can follow that does build this solid foundation that goes step by step building upon itself. And that's exactly what we're gonna get into that I'm teaching in my ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs Fast Track class on May 12th. And we're gonna solve not only these three problems, but we're gonna go through the four steps that you need to have a system that actually works. These three mistakes are exactly why I wanted to create this free training, the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs fast track, because as an Egyptologist, professor, and hieroglyphs teacher who's helped hundreds of people read hieroglyphs, I see these mistakes all the time. And I see how they're holding people back and making way too many think that they can't learn this. So on May 12th, we're gonna fix all of these problems with the fast track. And you'll learn the four steps to the fast track of learning hieroglyphs that make up my SESH system. That's an acronym for the four steps of the system. And this is built specifically so that you can learn how to read the hieroglyphs that excite you, the ones that you're actually going to see on ancient artifacts online, in books, and in museums. So you can go save your spot at voices of ancientegypt.comslash free class. So we can get you up and running with a system for learning hieroglyphs that really works. I can't wait to see you there.