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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 this 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 back to the Voices of Ancient Egypt podcast. I have an unusual topic for you today that I feel like people just don't talk about enough. And that is how to bring ancient Egypt to you. We tend to talk a lot about going to places, right, to experience ancient Egypt, going to museums or going on a trip to Egypt if you don't live there already. And in fact, that was the topic of the episode last week, right? But the truth is you don't have to go to Egypt to experience the magic of ancient Egypt. And maybe you know that you're not going to be able to travel to Egypt or you aren't sure if and when you will go. And the great news is that you don't have to wait to experience that magic. And you don't have to make big fancy travel plans in order to experience that magic of Egypt either. Because here's the thing: right now, every time you open a book, watch a documentary or an online lecture, visit a museum, or even just go to the store, ancient Egypt is talking to you. And right now, you can't hear it. There's a layer of meaning underneath every Egyptology documentary or lecture, every museum placard, every coffee table book that's simply inexpressible if you can't read the language. Because when you read hieroglyphs, it's like the same content that you've always been consuming for years suddenly gets subtitles that you can read. Everything you already love about ancient Egypt gets deeper. You don't find new things to love necessarily. You fall harder for what you already love. It's like what my student Anne said. Now, when she reads books, she stops and looks at the pictures and reads the hieroglyphs on them. Whereas before, she just appreciated their beauty and then moved on. She said she's always loved ancient jewelry, but now what were once just beautiful pictures of jewelry and other items have a whole new meaning and depth of connection for her. And it's not just in books. That's the thing. When we talk about bringing Egypt to you and experiencing that joy, that depth, that magic, it's not just in books. Not only do you not have to travel, but it's not just in books. You can run into ancient Egypt and read hieroglyphs everywhere you go. Like my student Shelly, who was thrifting one day, she was in a thrift shop. And to her great surprise, she ran into a big framed photo from the Queen Nefertar, from the tomb of Queen Nefertar, and she read the hieroglyphs in the photo. And she really surprised herself and was so excited to share this story. That's why I know about it, because she came and wanted to share it with everybody when it happened. Or like my student Mark, who was talking to an acquaintance, and the acquaintance was wearing a cartouche, and he was able to read the Pharaoh's name, which was Ramses II, it turns out, for her right on the spot there. So there's all these ways that often we don't consider when it comes to sort of bringing ancient Egypt into our lives at home that doesn't necessarily require any kind of travel, even to a local museum. In fact, you might even already have kind of a shrine to Egypt in your home, whether literally or perhaps more figuratively. And it's time to be able to read what's in it, right? Whether it's books on your shelves, a print on your wall, a figurine on your desk, or even just a screensaver of photographs, right? The people who are drawn to ancient Egypt tend to already be surrounded by it. You've probably already brought ancient Egypt to you. You just can't read the hieroglyphs yet and unlock that extra layer. The collection is there, the love is there. The only thing missing is that key, right? And that key is totally learnable starting right now from exactly where you are. And that's because the magic isn't in the location, it's in that moment of understanding. So not just the experience itself of looking at things, right? But the learning as well as the reading and understanding. People tend to think that the magic is in the feeling they imagine they'll have when they're standing in front of, say, the Great Pyramid or in front of the huge pylons at the Temple of Karnak. But that feeling, that shiver of contact with something ancient and real doesn't live in a GPS coordinate, right? You don't have to be in that exact spot. It lives in a moment of comprehension, a moment of connection. And you could have that moment in a library in Ohio, in a thrift shop in London, at a party in Singapore, or at your kitchen table at 8 p.m., looking at a photograph and suddenly reading what it says. The magic is portable. You just have to unlock it. And interestingly, not only is this possible, but it's actually really the way that even scholars learn, not just if somebody who's outside of academia, right? And bringing Egypt to you is actually how the deepest expertise gets built. The scholars who live outside of Egypt, who know Egyptian best, aren't necessarily the ones who visited the most often. They're the ones who've spent time at their desks working through texts, returning to the same passages and photographs and books and images online and so forth. Proximity to Egypt is wonderful. If you plan to go when you want to go, it's wonderful. But it isn't a requirement for mastery. The mechanism for mastery is small blocks of time with sustained focus and engagement with the material over time. And you can do that anywhere and any time. Because while the fantasy version of learning hieroglyphs involves sabbaticals and study abroad programs and years in graduate school, the real version for the vast majority of people looks like studying during your coffee before work, or during your lunch break, or during a quiet half hour before bed. The ancient Egyptians also trained their scribes systematically by repetition, by practice, by showing up, oftentimes actually in homes. They didn't go to huge institutions. They did have a place called the House of Life, which they did sometimes study in as well. But their foundational education happened generally before that in a home setting. So you don't need to have a dramatic life change, a big shift, or clear the decks to make huge room for this greater level of connection and bringing Egypt to you. You just need a small, consistent, tiny little shift. And when you do that, you'll have access. This is kind of wild to think about. I think about things like this sometimes in terms of recent history and also in terms of ancient history. But it's really a wild thing to think about that when you do this, when you do unlock this, you'll have access to more than even archaeologists had access to 50 years ago. And I'm completely serious about this. I'm not, this is not hyperbole, right? Seriously, like high-resolution photography and the availability of images just gave you access to what archaeologists 50 years ago could only have dreamed of. Right now, totally for free and from home, you can access the entire epigraphic survey of the University of Chicago, for example. You could access digitized papyri from the British Museum. The list really goes on and on. I'm not going to name every museum out there, but all of pretty much all of the ones with significant Egyptian collections, or almost all of them at least, have a big online presence. And you can look through some amazing high-resolution images and read the text for yourself on them. So, in addition to, of course, you might have books at home, but even if you don't, there's so much online. Depends on where you live in the world. Books might not be as accessible to you. Or maybe you have a ton of them. Either way, there's so much available to you, whether it's in your local shops or a local museum if you have one, or books you have at home or online. Not only do you have these museum websites, these archaeological projects that have websites, but you also have these incredibly detailed images of tomb walls, temple walls, where you can read every hieroglyph in perfect clarity. And they're not all over the place, not just on these official sites, right? There's so many places where people share photographs, sort of, I guess you could say, informally, right? On social media, on blogs, and really all over the internet. So the ancient world has never been more accessible than it is today. You can absolutely bring it into your home so easily now and experience that magic that my students have had when they had those aha moments in person, whether it's with a book or reading somebody's necklace or running into ancient texts in a thrift store. And you can do this from wherever you're sitting right now. The only barrier left is knowing how to read what it is that you're looking at. And that's exactly why I'm teaching my free class Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs Fast Track on May 12th to remove that barrier. You'll learn my four-part sesh system, that's S-E-S-H system, for learning to read the hieroglyphs that excite you. Once you're actually going to see whether you travel or not, see when you are browsing online, maybe visiting local museums or shops, or reading books at home. To claim your spot in the free class, you can sign up at voices of ancientegypt.comslash free class. That's voices of ancientegypt.comslash free class. I can't wait to see you there.