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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 everyone. Welcome to the MasterCrives Open House. I'm just I'd love to hear where y'all are tuning in from. Well, there's still a few people filtering in, and we'll get started in just a moment. You can use the chat if you'd like to share with us where you're tuning in from. And um we'll get started in just a moment. Got some more people popping into the wait room. Wait, waiting room, rather, here. Oh, Tacoma, Washington. Almost other end of the country from me. I'm on the the Gulf South Coast, basically. Uh Fort Worth, not as far, but uh not exactly next door either, right? Oh, Vienna, Austria. Let's it'll be interesting to see who gets like the prize for furthest away from me. That who knows could be Vienna, could be somewhere in Asia or something like that. Orange County, California. Corpus Christi, Texas. I've got multiple West Coasts in Texas here. Ah, France. So I guess maybe slightly further than than Austria for me, since you're a little further north. All right. So we'll go ahead and get started because I've got a lot to share with you, and I know you want to be able to see and hear about all of it, and I want to use this time efficiently. So um just a little housekeeping before we totally dive in. I want you to know that um I will have a dedicated QA portion a little bit later. First, I want to give you sort of the behind the scenes of like how the program works and all of the parts to it. And then we'll have QA. So if you have any questions, um, in case the chat starts going quickly and it's hard to keep track of, please hold on to those for right now, maybe make a little note, and you can always pop it in when we get to the QA portion. Um, and uh then we can talk about all and every question you all have. So I want to officially welcome you to the Master Scribes Open House. I'm so excited to have you here today. And today we're gonna be talking, of course, about Master Scribes. That's why you're here, right? This is like a VIP pass to the back end of the program and everything that you need to know about it. And if you're here today, you're probably weighing whether this program makes sense for you. And so we're gonna help you answer that today. And at the end of our time together, my goal is that you have all of the information that you need, all of your questions answered, so that you feel really great in taking the next step and sending in your application. So, with that, I'm going to go ahead and share some slides so that you can see some images of some of these things that I am going to be talking about. And as I mentioned, you're going to get to see all of this behind the scenes and everything today, and so that you can have all your questions answered, have a thorough understanding of how everything works in the program. And stay tuned because I will be opening the doors to Master Scribes while we are on this call. Um, and this is the program that takes you from knowing maybe nothing or a little bit or perhaps a bit more about hieroglyphs to knowing how to read next level texts such as historical counts, stories, the book of the dead, letters, medical texts, etc., lots of different things. And there will be a special bonus that you can only get if you're one of the first five to enroll. So we'll talk a little bit more about that later. Um, if you do want to go ahead and apply, you already know you want to apply for Masterscribes. You actually can go ahead and do that now if you'd like. If you go to masterscribes.com, that page should be live. Actually, I think it's going to be another moment and then it's going to be live. And it will be ready to go for you in probably one to two minutes here. And so you'll get a little jump on everybody else if you want to do that, because um the official announcement will be going out at the end of this hour to everybody else. So for those of you here, you can get a little jump on the applications if you want. Um, and that should be live right now if you want to go to masterscribes.com. And I will be reviewing applications after this call. I've set aside time so that I can do that right after this. And I do review them on a first-come, first serve basis. So if you want to be one of the first ones I look at and get back to, then you might want to go ahead and apply right now. And I can also pop that link in the chat in case that might be easier for some of you. All right. So and um, as many of you probably saw in my emails, I will also be sharing the link later on to download the free bonus master's guide sustainable steady habit tracker. Um, and so stay tuned for that. We will get into that in a little while. So, first of all, I wanted you to know that you are in the right place if you are either brand new to hieroglyphs, or you've tried learning maybe from a book or a course before, but found it difficult to fit into your life and make progress, especially when life got busy, or maybe you have already learned some higher how to read some hieroglyphic texts, but you lost your momentum and you're wondering what to do next, or you know, how to make consistent progress, how to move beyond the things that you've done already. Because I find a lot of people get stuck right here. Um, and that is in a couple of places. It might be you've just started, you've learned a few hieroglyphs, like the ones in the in the top left of the screen right now. And but after learning those initial hieroglyphs, it's like, well, where do I go from here? Right. And it can be a very confusing as to what to do next uh and so forth. Or for some people, they have learned how to read some of the most common texts, like say what we call the offering formula or offering prayer, which is on the bottom left of the slide here. But bridging from that to like what I refer to as next level texts, like the ones that are on the slide here on the right, like Tun Hamun's Mask, for example, which has a Book of the Dead spell on it, um, things like heart scarabs, other parts of the Book of the Dead, letters, historical documents like this scarab of Amenhotep III. If you saw my email the other day, you're familiar maybe with those, or you heard the podcast. Uh, and texts like those really oftentimes is where people get stuck, is like going beyond sort of the more formulaic basic stuff, and how do you move on to those sorts of texts that you really want to be able to read? And this really happens because most people do what I would call transactional learning. And this is not, I don't say that to say that it's like anybody's fault or anything, but these are the things that we really commonly fall into because there aren't a lot of obvious options other than that. And so a lot of times what we get stuck on is, you know, looking around on the internet, for example, for different lessons or videos or things to practice on. And this can result in being just overwhelmed by the possibilities. And oftentimes it's because it feels like drinking from a fire hose, you may not even do any learning at all because it's just too much, right? Um, but if you do, it's like you spend so much time trying to find stuff like searching on YouTube, trying to use AI or various books and lessons or practice, and it's kind of scattershot, bouncing around that this can like waste, it just can waste a lot of time. And so you don't end up being able to really make a lot of progress with the hieroglyphs themselves. Um, also, if you do find a source you can work with and you're not jumping all over the place, right? So maybe you're working with a book or a particular course. Most of the ones out there really have approaches that are like throwing you in at the deep end. Um, rather than building logically by doing it sort of step by step. Instead, they go like all in, like super deep nitty-gritty grammar and complicated stuff. Um, and they also really honestly seem to go in a seemingly random order and like cherry-picking topics that don't really relate to each other. Um, and I think of it as like, it's like trying to build a puzzle, right? When you build a puzzle, usually you approach it by either starting the edges first, right? And making that outline, and then you start attaching things to that. Or some people like to start in the middle, but they'll start with one area and sort of build out from there. And but the idea is like you start, have to start somewhere, and then you from there, you're building each piece, right, onto that. A lot of these other methods, if you're searching for yourself or you're working through some of these sources that are just really seem like all over the place, scattershot, kind of cherry-picking, is it's like having like one puzzle piece up in the top right and another puzzle piece and maybe left center. And maybe you got another one in the bottom center, and you've got your fourth piece, and you're like, I don't have any idea where this one's gonna go because it doesn't attach to any of these others. Right. And that's that can lead to this feeling of transactional learning where it's like you might have a bunch of little facts, but they're not coming together to make it possible to really do what you want to, which is read the ancient texts. I also see people really staying stuck on one thing for too long, oftentimes with this. And this can be especially acute when you don't have anybody to work with, like you don't have any peers or community or an expert to coach you through these difficult times and answer your questions. And because of all of this, it's transactional learning doesn't create fluency, it doesn't create a transformation, right? It doesn't make you able to walk up to ancient artifacts and read the hieroglyphs on them. And sometimes, though, with this sort of learning, you might feel like it kind of worked with for you before. So maybe you feel like you got a bit out of it, you've got some here and there, but it probably feels like you can't fully hold on to it. This can happen too, where it's like, oh, I learned some things, but then it feels like it slips away. Maybe it feels like it's kind of in one ear, out the other, or you hold on to it for a little while, but then it just like slips away, right? And it's gone. It's not sticking. And that's because of this way that it's taught with this. It's basically surface learning, is another way to say it, right? And what you want is deep learning, the type of transformational learning that gets you reading real Egyptian texts. Texts like these, like temple walls, heart scarabs, book of the dead spells, letters, medical text, tomb walls, um, amulet other amulets, uh, historical accounts, and so forth. Now, to get away from this transactional learning, you really have to have an actual system, a real strategy for it. And so this is why I say you need an updated scribal study system. And the scribal study system, this is what I the method that I use, creates transformational learning. It creates that fluency and it creates that ability to actually pick up the ancient texts and read them. And this is exactly what we do in Master Scribes. I wanted to give this background because I find a lot of people come to me thinking they can't learn hieroglyphs because they've had these experiences before when really it's just about the approach and the resources that they had or didn't have, as the case may be at the time. So there's two parts that make the system effective that gets you reading the ancient texts you dream of. So the first part is actually having a legitimate blueprint that takes you through the learning, right? It guides you in a logical, step-by-step way that is like fitting a puzzle together. Each piece actually connects to others that you've already learned. And like it's just like the puzzle analogy I was talking about before, where you need to have those pieces to connect to rather than just like one over here and one over there and one everywhere, you know, that kind of thing. Because this is actually how our brains work. When we take in new information, our brains try to connect it to things that we already know or things that we've already learned. And it's extremely difficult, if sometimes impossible, to integrate new material when it has nothing to hang on to. It's like it needs, it's almost like it's a piece of velcro floating around, and it needs that other side of the velcro, that hook and loop to stick through to rather. And so if it's just floating around in there and there's nothing to stick to, it ends up floating off the vast majority of the time. Right. And so you need these pieces that that fit together. And it's also essential, really, to work with the real Egyptian text as much as possible. The kinds of things you're actually gonna see in museums or in books that you read on the internet or when you take trips to Egypt, not just like, you know, random topics and signs and like typeset examples, right? So this is so important because it does a couple of things. One, it makes these pieces actually usable, things that you're gonna use in real life, right? Because these are the things you're gonna see. But it also makes the learning so much more fun and vibrant. Because honestly, a lot of the sources out there are like that blank white puzzle that I just showed a moment ago. Super boring, like just black and white. Um, doesn't feel like you're really connecting with the ancient Egyptians and looking at the real things. So I think whenever possible, there are occasionally times maybe where it's not possible, but whenever possible, working from the real objects or like photos of the real objects really makes a massive difference. And this is one of the things that we do in my programs and in Master Scribes is focus on working from the original text actually as much as humanly possible. And the idea is again to have these puzzle pieces, not just any ones, but the ones that actually hook together and create the deepest learning. And so the system really needs to work with how the brain works. And so each level in Master Skybes absolutely works this way. So there's five levels. And level one is what you could call foundations. And so, level one, this is where, you know, some of you might have already learned this, or maybe you need to brush up. Others you might be starting with this. Either way, in this level, you're gonna learn everything you need to unlock reading the most common text that you're gonna see in museums and on trips to Egypt. And whether it's an eye makeup tube, um, like the blue one here on this slide, or a statue or tomb or temple wall, those things that you're gonna see in those places. The most common texts in those uh are what you learn at this level. But not only do you unlock being able to read those, but you also unlock then the ability to move on to level two. And in level two, this is where you're going to learn the things that you need, all of the parts you need, you know, grammar, vocabulary, et cetera, to be able to read things like heart scarabs and historical texts. So you're gonna learn not only those two things. I name a couple of them, but there's a lot in here. And honestly, it's more than I could tell you in an open house like this. So I'm sticking to sort of high-level highlights here. Um, but in this level, this is where you're gonna learn to read things like the Book of the Dead spell on Tutankhamun's Mask, Amanhotep III's commemorative Scarabs that we were talking about a moment ago, and so much more, including like conversations people are having on tomb walls and the in the pictures there, and so forth. And this in turn not only unlocks your abilities with those, but again, gets you level ready for the next level. Level three, which is afterlife dreams. And I call it that because at this level, this is where you learn to read beautiful accounts of what ancient Egyptians hoped for after death. It's how they wish to be cared for by the living and how they hoped they would be greeted in the afterlife. There's certain common formulaic texts that express this with some variability depending on the person who's having it written. And it talks about all of these things and how they hoped things would be and what they wanted. And along the way, though, we'll also read parts of medical texts, literature, and historical accounts while we're learning to read those afterlife dreams. And this gets you ready for a level four, where we get into stories, letters, and more. So, this is where we'll read everything from parts of the letters that were written by a man named Hekkennacht, which if you've listened to the podcast, you might have heard my episode about him. He was a landowner who was writing home, he's away, and complaining a lot to his family members and uh people who work for him in the letters. So they're really entertaining, but also very humanizing. You can see what real life is really like. And also things like the tale of the shipwrecked sailor. So we're getting actually into literary stories here. And so again, not only do you unlock those things, but once you've got those things, you've done those lessons, you've practiced with the exercises that are in there, this prepares you for moving on to level five, where we get into more of the book of the dead, particularly the negative confession. So you might have heard of the negative confession before. This is also called spell 125 in the book of the dead. And this is this sort of famous spell where the person is denying having done any wrongdoings. It's part of their admission to the afterlife. Um and it's honestly, like I said, impossible to tell you everything that's in all of these levels, but I wanted to give you a really high-level view, a map of where we're going, so you can see how these things fit together and all of the things that we're going to be preparing you to read in Master Scribes. And one of the things that I see happen is sometimes people will try to tackle one of these higher level texts, whether it's like Toon Pommon's Mask or reading the tale of the shipwrecked sailor or the negative confession. And generally that's not going to work because there's a lot of steps for getting there, right? And um, so a lot of times people try that and then just feel defeated because of that. And it's not because you can't learn or anything like that, it's because you were jumping ahead a bit, right? And that's where the scribal study system really comes in with having this set logical progression that's not just cherry picking randomly here. So, and I mentioned there's two parts to this, right? That's the first part in terms of the system. The second part is that learning science is baked into the program. So the way that things are put together is not just that they build on each other, like we were talking about. So those puzzle pieces fit together, but it also is done, you know, in a way that uses the learning science. So there's two sort of major, really big things that have come out in learning science in the last few decades. One of them is what they call, in technical terms, spaced repetition. So this just means repeating, working on something over time. It doesn't mean repeating it over and over until you have 100% down before you move on to the next thing. That is, I I laugh a little bit saying that because it's definitely something I've done and it's definitely something that my students also do oftentimes where they feel like, oh, but I can't move on to the next thing because I didn't get 100% when I worked on this exercise or something. That's not what I mean with spaced repetition. Actually, you do want to move on and work on future things. But the idea is that you do come back and practice those same things again. This creates faster, deeper learning. And this is what they found in the research. And it transfers learning also to long-term memory more easily than just repeating a bunch at once. It's also honestly a lot more fun and motivating because you're not just kind of doing a boring, like the same thing over and over, right? You're getting to work with a variety of things and you're moving on and you're learning new things all the time. And you can, of course, try to piece this together on your own, but this is also built into the Master Scribes curriculum. So I was talking about, you know, the different levels and the things that we do on those levels, but I was talking about it, of course, only on a very high level. But the one of the things I didn't get into is that in each of those levels, we're also seeing things and working on exercises that practice the skills you learned in previous levels as well. So you're doing this spaced repetition automatically as you move on. The second really big thing they found in learning science is they call in technical terms, interleaving. This essentially means mixing up the things that you're studying or practicing. So and this creates deeper, longer-term learning also. It can create also a more applicable learning, the kind of learning you can actually use when you encounter the real thing. So, and you do this by varying your learning. So, for example, practicing with a variety of different Egyptian texts, and this creates mastery and increases your ability to apply your skills to new problems, such as the text you're actually going to walk up to, right? Or that maybe you'll see in a book you're reading or online, that sort of thing. So, like, I don't want to go too deep into this because we've got a lot to talk about, but uh, for example, they've studied this in people with learning math, and they found that when they mixed up the types of math problems that people were studying with, they had a harder time completing those problems when they were studying than the people who did them grouped by type. However, then when they tested them, when they actually took an exam, the people who had had the mixed-up types performed significantly better than those who had had the group types. So this is one of the things that they've learned through repeated studies over time that when you mix up those things, it can feel a little more challenging in the moment, but it actually creates this much deeper, lasting mastery over time. And this is something that is absolutely built into Master Scribes as well. So this is just one example from level five that we were talking about before. So in level five, I mentioned that we're reading the negative confession from the Book of the Dead. But along the way, we're practicing the skills we're getting here that we need for that on a variety of different types of text. So, for example, uh a tomb wall scene that is here in lesson one is one of the practice exercises at in that lesson. And then we work on a biography in lesson three, for example. Obviously, I'm not gonna enumerate every single page of exercise, but just to give you a little preview of some parts. So you've got the tomb wall one, and then in another lesson, we're working on a biography, and then in another lesson, we're going back and working on some pieces of literature, and then after that, also working on texts on the side of a coffin. So this creates this natural built-for you interleaving that's just baked into the curriculum. So you don't have to worry about like trying to, you know, figure out how to like what order to go in or how to mix it or that kind of thing. And um, you just have it all there for you, right? Laid out. And this whole system put together is exactly why my students get results. I help them learn hieroglyphs all the time so that they can read Egyptian text with confidence and maximize their experience, whether it's visiting museums or tombs or temples, or reading the coffee table books that they have, or you know, browsing the social media accounts of uh museums or Egyptology pages, right? And this is exactly why I created this program, why I created Master Scribes. It is the program that I created to address the two parts that we just talked about. It's everything we talked about baked into the program. Um, we talked about these crucial parts that make up a study system. And this is the complete system. It's got the built-in scribal scribal study system that gets results, that has that blueprint. It has everything you need, including all the lessons, exercises, references, et cetera, at your fingertips. So you're not trying to piece this together yourself. And of course, the amazing community, which I haven't even really gotten into yet. There's a small community. It is a space limited program. So this is an intimate community of people who are just amazing. They love this stuff as much as you will, um, or as you do already, really, and really help keep you going and you know, motivated. As well as, of course, the expert support. I'm there for you daily, answering questions in our private community and helping you stay on track. So, in terms of like the nitty-gritty, I want to show you sort of the nuts and bolts of the program, right? We talk about at a high level, the things that the program do and that they it provides for you, but we'll get into the nuts and bolts of it. So this includes all of the hierarchical learning curriculum you could want, all the lessons, references, and exercises. And yes, the vast, vast majority of the exercises are um filled with real Egyptian texts with the photographs, all the stuff that you need to learn everything from the basics to the most common texts that you'll see in museums, and then on to the advanced texts like the Book of the Dead, like all of the things we just went through and and more. Because like I said, it's more than I could fit. There's also two deep dive group coaching calls per month where I will answer all the questions that are submitted. And these calls are recorded. So if you can't make it live, you can catch the replay. And because call uh questions are pre-submitted, I will answer everybody's questions, regardless of whether you're there live or not. You can always get your questions answered there. And you can also, you don't have to wait for a call though, because you can also get your questions answered in our private community. We have a private community just for MasterScribe students, and I'm in there every weekday, every business day, daily coaching in there in the private community, answering questions, um, helping people get unstuck with what they're working on, helping them work through their own projects, things like that. You also get access to everything I create. So that includes other things I've created in the past, various classes and workshops, as well as I add new lessons or practice text to the curriculum every month. It is a continually evolving curriculum. So I'm always adding new things, whether it's a new text to practice on or um a new lesson to teach another aspect of Egyptian. Or I also sometimes incorporate classes on other topics. So, for example, I have just created a class on the book of the dead, and that is going to be a bonus that you will get when joining Master Scribes in this round. And it goes into sort of the history of what leads up to the Book of the Dead, what texts came before it, before it that the Book of the Dead actually evolved out of, and what the Book of the Dead really is, right? Because a lot of times we might be reading these texts, and it's wonderful to be able to read what the ancient Egyptians wrote, but sometimes we're like, okay, but what does this really mean? And like, why was it important to them? Um, you know, what's going on here, and so forth. So having, I like to add these classes periodically when I see a need, because it helps lay that foundation and that context for it to really deeply understand what the purpose of these texts were. So we talk about um all the different purposes for the Book of the Dead, which are many, by the way. Um, we tend to think of it as just like, oh, it just goes in the tune with this dead person and it helps them get to the acrylife. Yeah, that's part of it. Absolutely a big part of it. But it actually does other things as well. It's actually used by the living too. So that's all in that class for those who are interested in that. And of course, in that private community, we also have daily accountability and community. We have, for example, weekly check-in posts where I ask you to share what you're working on that week, which really helps people keep people accountable and on track. And like, like I said, I'm there to answer questions every business day. It is capped enrollment. There are limited spots, and that's very purposeful so that you get all the support that you need. I know everybody in the program and I know what they're working on, and I'm there to answer their questions. And that's one of the things that makes this program truly unique is the support. I mean, honestly, the curriculum is unique too. I've not known anybody else who teaches this the way that I do. Um, but the support is really unparalleled. You all get way more access to me than I ever had with any of my professors when I was at university or even in grad school when you work a little more closely with faculty. You also get the bonus of immediate access to the learning portal. So we actually officially kick off on October 26th. However, if you join now and um applications are only going to be open for about a week or so. So if you join during this period, you will actually get um a month or more. If you join today, for example, you could have well more than a month of bonus time to study ahead. So you can use that however you like. If you want to start at the beginning, you're a beginner, you want to go through scribal school, you could absolutely do that and do that level one. That's basically what we call level one in there. Um, or you could pick up wherever you are and make that progress. Um, or if you're traveling over the next few weeks, no problem. When you get back, you can dive in then, right? Because we haven't even officially kicked off yet and you've got plenty of time. So you've got all that bonus time to work with, and there's a special bonus that's going to be available just for the first five to enroll because I did have current clients who were nude and some early enrollees who took up the rest of them already. Um, but there are five of the bonus hieroglyph a day planners. This is an exclusive, by the way, that is not available anywhere else. This is not something you can buy on a retail site or on my website or anything like that. It's only available by becoming one of my students. Um, and the hieroglyph a day planner is um honestly beautiful. It's going to ship in the fourth quarter of this year. And this is a way to hold the power and beauty of hieroglyphs in your hands. So you have this physical daily planner with how which has a small little hieroglyph practice for each day. And it also incorporates um some of the tools, some of the planning tools and study system tools that I share in MasterScribes are also baked into the planner that help you save time and have these science-backed strategies that I only talked about at a really high level here, um, and gives you those tools to help you stay consistent and make progress, even when you just have, say, 15 minutes a day. And you'll always know what to work on, even if you have five minutes, really, because you could use one of these little practices in the planner, like whenever you are, you know, in the school pickup line or on a train, or maybe you've got a little uh short break at work, or you're even standing in line at the store. Um a lot not as many people do that these days, I suppose, with deliveries, but you might be. And, you know, any of those little times where you're just kind of having to wait for something, or you're traveling and you're not the one actually doing the driving, right? You can pull out your planner and uh work on hieroglyphs at any time. And all of this means you don't have to do all these things, um, unless you just really want to spend a ton of time doing any of these, I suppose, which like, you know, you don't have to go and get a PhD unless that's really your plan. You want to get a PhD in Egyptology. Um, you don't have to slog through a thick grammar book that really just makes your eyes glaze over, or waste a ton of time trying to find the study materials that can make some kind of sense, right? You don't have to constantly be Googling or trolling YouTube or social media for answers to your questions, or waste a ton of time just surfing around looking for things to practice on. You also don't have to be left hanging with unanswered questions. I find a lot of my students come to me because they're like, you know, I tried learning from this other thing, whether it was a course or a book, and I learned some stuff, but then I kind of got stuck because I didn't, I couldn't ask any questions, right? Like I had an answer sheet, but I couldn't ask anybody. Well, like, okay, but why? Why is that the answer here and not what I have? And there's nobody to to ask, and like the book doesn't explain it or the course materials don't explain it. And um, so a lot of times my students, oftentimes when they've tried before, they end up quitting because they just don't have any way to get those questions answered. So you can leave that behind and you don't have to have be left hanging with those unanswered questions anymore. And you don't have to give up your dream of reading hieroglyphs. And honestly, all of these parts we talked about, this robust curriculum with everything you need and all the other things, really, I mean, if I uh to try and get these individually and put them together would uh really be, well, first of all, difficult to find because honestly, like I said, the curriculum is unique, the support is unique, all these things are unique. But if you were to somehow find these, you know, you'd be looking at probably around $4,000, if not more, dollars just for like this kind of robust curriculum that's from somebody who has a PhD in Egyptology and understands the learning science here. And to have like two calls with me a month over six months would be at least $2,500. Daily coaching in the private community with me would be $1,500. Access to everything else I created, all those classes and workshops I was talking about, as well as the new things I'm adding to the curriculum every month, would be an additional $2,000. And of course, the daily accountability and community with everybody else would be um at least $400. I mean, honestly, I'm probably lowballing it there a lot. Um, and the immediate access where you have over a month with the material, you're talking about 500 plus two. And I mean, the planner doesn't really have a price tag because, again, it is exclusive. You can't get it anywhere else. But I suppose if I were to sell it publicly, that would be probably about $49 or so. So, really, when you add all of this up, you know, you get a figure like that actually adds up. I had to pull out a calculator and do this, it adds up to $10,949. And the thing is though, I'm not gonna charge that, right? The good news is that the investment for master's guides is only $2,500. And we also have payment plans available. So you can split that over the six months. And you get all of this, all of the things that we talked about, all of the support, all of the science-backed curriculum, the bonuses, everything. Honestly, with all of that, this investment is a steal and it's well worth it because it's really an insane value when you look at all the parts that go into it. And like I meant briefly mentioned before, like my master's grade students get more access to me than I've ever had to any one of my professors when I was at university and even in grad school getting my PhD. The support alone separates this program and really makes it an insane value. But the curriculum really takes it even so much further, following that science fact system that we talked about today. Um, and I would love to see you in MasterScribes for any of you who are ready to submit your application. You can do that at MasterScribes.com. And I can pop the link for you in the chat as well to make that a little bit easier. As I mentioned, I did block time on my calendar after this call today to go over applications and I process them on a first come, first served basis. So if you know you want to apply, you can go ahead and jump over to there and fill out the quick application. It only takes about five, maybe 10 minutes to fill out. Kind of depends on um how much background you're sharing and stuff like that. It might be an extra couple minutes if you've got more background to share with me. But it typically is gonna be definitely, definitely under a 10-minute kind of thing, more like five. Um, and so when you do go over there, this is what's gonna happen. You head to masterscribes.com, fill out that five-minute application. I will personally review your answers. And if it's a good mutual fit, you will receive an invitation from me to join the program or to book a call from with me. So you'll have the option to book a consultation call with me where we'll build your custom study plan. Um, and that we can do that so you can see how you can reach your goals in Master Scribes and help you feel that much more confident in your decision when whether to join or not. And we kick off, as I mentioned, on October 26th. So when you do join now, you get well over a month of bonus time with the curriculum. So you can start working ahead now if you like, or if you've got travel plans coming up, you know, here in the States, schools have a fall break coming up in a few weeks. So if you have travel plans or something, no problem. Um, and honestly, if you have travel plans in the middle of a six month, it's also no problem. It is a very flexible program. I'm there for you, so is the community anytime that you need it. It's meant to work with modern life and our busy schedules. And of course, the first five people to enroll will get the hieroglyphic day planner. Just to let you know, enrollment is capped and it's the program does typically sell out. And applications will fully close on September 29th or when the program fills, whichever comes first. So at the latest, September 29th. There will not be another chance to apply until April of 2027. That's when I anticipate plans aren't totally firm yet, but at the earliest, that is when the next round would start. Um, it might be later than that. And um just, you know, fair warning that like pricing and other details, of course, are subject to change. So um, you know, next time around, there might be some different things in this in terms of um whether it's the crisis or different things that we talked about here. So, in terms of like the real like nuts and bolts of each part, we did talk about it already pretty thoroughly, but just to summarize and give you a little bit more um detail and a little bit more visuals here. This does, of course, give you that whole blueprint, that roadmap that really has been honed over many years of both learning and teaching with me. This is not the method I learned with, by the way. And so when I got out of grad school, one of the things I knew is that I wanted to come up with a different way to do this because we don't need to get into the details, but let's just say I and all of my fellow students did not feel like the method that was used with how we were taught was effective. Um and so it took a lot longer for me to learn things than it could that it could have been had there been a more effective system. And so I knew I wanted to translate, no pun intended, um, how to learn this language into a way that was really doable for real people and would have you reading real Egyptian texts. And this is a system that I came up with with from over a decade of teaching and learning the learning science, but also experimenting in the classroom and really learning what works. And in the program, I mentioned it's flexible. So part of the flexibility here is that it involves instruction that really meets you where you are. So whether you're a beginner or you have some experience with some common text already, for example, or maybe you took university courses, but it's been a long time and you're rusty or something, whatever your situation is, you can start in the curriculum wherever it is that you need. So on demand, and this is just a short list that I have here that I'm going to that I have on a slide and then I'm gonna say for you because I cannot fit everything on a slide. But at a high level, this is a a decent number of the things that are in there. So you have access to, for example, my my program Scribal School, which is incorporated as level one in Master Scribes. This is this foundational level that gets you reading the most common text and really lays the foundation for you to move into the main part of the Master Scribes curriculum, which gets you into all the lessons and exercises on everything from the book of the dead and tomb scenes to historical texts and parts of literature, exercises on you know medical text, afterlife wishes, and so many more things. It's um, like I said, it's more than I can fit here. We will, for those who want to see it, we can get a behind the scenes in a few minutes if you want to see what the back end of the curriculum looks like. It also includes the program includes um lots of other bonus workshops, some of which I've got here, like the group. Greco-Roman hieroglyphs workshop, which was done by a special guest, Dr. Luigi Prado, who's a sp specialist in that area. And it gives you like a nice introduction overview of it with some exercises, also. It's Greco-Roman hieroglyphs are quite a field unto themselves. They're a quirky, quirky bunch. And it's really amazing, fun, and kind of mind-blowing to learn about them, actually. Even for me as an Egyptologist who specializes in earlier periods. I also have a bunch of other bonus exercises, like ones that are based around a bunch of artifacts that are in the Turin Egyptian Museum that traveled for a while as Queen Nefertari's Egypt, and workshops like the Book of the Dead one I was talking about before, ones on how to read ancient Egyptian art to help fill in the greater context and culture of ancient Egypt. And of course, I'm adding to the curriculum all the time, like I mentioned. It's an evolving curriculum. And of course, the support alone, as I said, really separates this experience from the rest. There's so many ways to get your questions answered and to get coached and master scribes. And I don't just answer questions on exercises, by the way. I answer questions about, you know, anything to do with ancient Egypt, really, that people decide they want to post in our community. Some of my students like to do little independent projects where they work on like a photograph of something that they they photographed when they were in a museum, for example. And so they will try to work on it, work through it on their own, and then they'll post in the community to ask me for feedback on it. Or also they come to me when they have questions about, like, you know, I'm having difficulty with this particular piece. Like, what can I do study-wise to get this down better? So we talk about also study habits and what are the best practices, things like that. So I coach, that's why I say it's not just answering questions, it's coaching because I help with all of those kinds of things. Um, whether it's a just a practical, like, what is this hieroglyph, down all the way from that to mindset stuff and study strategy, study strategy things, like um, some of which we talked about on a high level here today, but we get into more nitty-gritty with in Masterscribes. So in addition to the community that I was talking about, we also, of course, have those twice-monthly calls, group calls, where um you can join live or catch the replay, and everybody submits questions in advance. So your questions will get answered regardless of whether you can make it live or not. Um, and plus, you learn so much by hearing other people's questions and hearing me answer those. A lot of times people don't believe me with that because they haven't experienced it before. And honestly, I didn't believe it until I joined a program with a similar format. But there's so many things that people ask that you're like, oh yeah, I never even really thought about asking that, but that is something that I don't know. And that like now I really wonder about like that's gonna be really useful knowledge to have, but I just never would have thought to bring it up, right? That happens, happens all the time for my students, and it happens for me in programs also. Um, and so I always try to go to coaching polls, even in my programs that I'm in, even if I don't have a question, because I get so much out of hearing other people's questions and what they're talking about. And of course, this also kind of touches on the best community ever that we have. You don't want to do this alone. Um, not only do you always have a place to ask questions, of course, all the burning questions you have, but you'll be supported also by all your new Egyptiphile friends in a way that'll make you feel really validated and confident and motivated to continue. So I would love to do this together. And you can again submit your application at masterscribes.com and I will read your application myself personally. This is not something that's handed off to anybody else. This is entirely me. Um, and if it's a good mutual fit, I will reach out to you to invite you to join. And you'll have the option if you want to. It's not mandatory. You don't have to book a call if you don't want to, but you will have the option to book a call with me to build that study plan um to see how you can best utilize the program to reach your goals if you would like. And we officially kick off on October 26th. Again, you get early access so you can work ahead. Um, and you have the special Higher Glove a Day planner bonus just for the first five who and roll. And I would absolutely love to see you all there. And now I would love to, if you have any questions, feel free free to go ahead and pop them in the chat. I know I did ask you earlier to sort of hold for a while just because I, in case people sort of got, you know, really talkative in the chat. I don't want to lose any of your questions. I want to make sure I can get to all of them and address them. So any questions you have about anything related to this, about master scribes or where you are on your hieroglyph journey, what you know, maybe you want to know something about like what would be the next best step for you on your journey with hieroglyphs or anything you've encountered, maybe that um you feel like you've maybe hit a roadblock of some kind that you'd um like to get a little bit of advice or coaching on, you can feel free to pop those in the chat live and um I will answer those as they come in. And in the meantime, I can show you a bit of behind the scenes of the like real nitty-gritty day-to-day, what you're going to be using in the program. So, any questions, go ahead and and pop them in the chat and we will talk about those. Um, in the meantime, this is uh a screenshot for those of you who are are watching the video or here live of our private online community. It is currently hosted on a platform called Slack. And one of the things that I love about this platform is that it's really easy to organize our conversations. So one of the things that can happen with um sometimes with you know groups on social media, well, A, some people are not on social media and don't want to be on social media, right? So that's one thing. And then um the the other thing is is that on groups that are on like social platforms, a lot of times um can be uh it can be hard to find things in them, right? With the way that the flow of posts goes and so forth. So one of the things I love about this setup is that we have um basically six categories of posts, and so you can um so you can uh go to exactly where you need it. So for example, we have get coaching, and this is where you go if you have a question for me. And um then um I will answer them in here. So this is the place you go anytime you have a question you want me to answer, as opposed to maybe something you want to ask other people in the community or something you want to share with others, those things we have other channels for those. We have other places for those. But the get coaching is where I'm in there every day answering questions. Um we also have just a you know basic updates and reminders one that's where I post updates and reminders. So that's a pretty simple one. That's just where um where I post to let you know about those things that are going on. And um then we have our weekly check-in channel. So this is I mentioned the weekly check-ins that help keep you accountable and also help keep me up to speed with what you're working on. So every Monday I post in there and I ask you to share what you're working on that week so that we can have that group accountability and um I can help cheer you on. And also it helps me with coaching because it helps keep me up to date with where you are. Then we also have um three other places that are really fun. So um one is general discussion. This is a place for kind of anything ancient Egypt related, but that you don't specifically want a question, I answer from me about, right? So maybe um, so for example, some of my students, one of the things they love to do is have their own little informal book club. So, um, and this is absolutely not mandatory, not everybody does this, but there's um usually at least a few people each around who love to have this book club, and they read sometimes they'll read nonfiction related to ancient Egypt, and sometimes they read uh historical fiction related to Egypt. And then oftentimes they'll read books that actually feature some hieroglyphic texts in them and then work on those as well when they do it. So this is like a little fun addition that some of my students do, that this is one of the things that they'll do, like in the general discussion area, for example, and they have a whole thread going there for the people who want to join the book club. They just participate in that particular thread. So um, this last round, for example, um, some of the students read um of they read fiction this time. Sometimes they've done nonfiction. So this time they went with fiction, they'd read a book called The Scarab Murder Case, and then they read um Elizabeth Elizabeth Peters' book, A Crocodile on the Sandbank, uh, both of which actually had some ancient Egyptian texts quoted in them. And then so then they worked on finding those texts and trans and are working on translating them themselves. So again, it's totally optional, but it's like a fun add-on for people who want to participate with that. Um we also have a water cooler channel. So that is like for anything else that you'd like to share with a group that's not really directly related to ancient Egypt and what we do in the program, um, that goes there. So sometimes people just are like, I found this really cool t-shirt that I thought you all might be interested in. So I was gonna share it here. Or we've had discussions also in these channels about um movies and uh video games and things that relate to the ancient world in some kind of way, usually ancient Egypt, but sometimes they might be like we had a whole big discussion on the movie The Odyssey recently. So we have a lot of conversations like that going on um in these channels as well. And then finally, we have our wins and celebrations channel, which um is uh a favorite of mine because I love to see you all celebrating your wins. This is one thing that I think in general people don't do enough of, which is really really, really celebrating everything that they do. So it's I think honestly, every time you complete an exercise for a lesson, you should be celebrating that. And this is not for my gratification, so so I can be like, oh, my student finished an exercise. No, this is for you because they've actually, this is another thing that's science fact, they have found in psychology that celebrating your small wins on your way to your bigger goals actually helps get people people get better results. So when you hold off on celebrating, a lot of times it people slow down, they don't get as much done actually on their way there, or they even stop completely. So by celebrating those small wins, it really keeps up the momentum. It really is a study strategy. It's not just fluff or something. You know, it's not a nice to have, it really is part of the study strategy to do that. So we have a dedicated place for sharing your wins and celebrations. Um, and this is just a couple of examples of recent ones that were shared in there. Um, you might have heard some of these guys on the podcast. So, like Rick, for example, who's been on the podcast, said that he said, I finally made it to a museum with an ancient Egyptian collection recently. I had a long weekend in Richmond, Virginia, and um I went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I was happily pleased um with what I was able to translate and many of the things on display. Um, and I took photos of several other pieces that I want to work through as extra uh there. He said, Melinda's program works. Uh, and another student of mine who will be on the podcast in the uh near future also um recently uh visited a museum too, and he shared this in here when he went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And he said he'd been there like well over a hundred times, but this was the first time he could read a large portion of things. And he wasn't, let me tell you, he was not new to hieroglyphs when he came into MasterScribes, okay? He had actually taken an academic correspondence course before, like heavy duty working in a grammar book, like getting feedback from a professor. Um, it was done remotely, like correspondingly, but he did all of this. He actually told me, you'll hear this on the podcast, he actually told me like his wife never wants to talk about hieroglyphs again because um they both feel like they have some form of PTSD from that actual experience of like slogging through that grammar book and like having everything marked up and read when it came back from the professor and all of that stuff. So he had learned a lot, actually. In a lot of ways, he felt like he'd learned a lot, but he still couldn't go into a museum and read things, right? Um, like he could read some exercises in the book. So he said, you know, this was once he was just a couple months into master's guides, he said, Well, I've walked through the Metz Egyptian collection well over a hundred times. This was the first time I could read a large portion of what was written. My view of the whole collection changed dramatically. It was like one of those posters from the 1980s of random dots. And if you stared at it too long and crossed your eyes a little, something like the space shuttle would suddenly emerge and you would be like, wow, or something. Or he said it's like kind of like the moment in The Matrix when um Mio has an epiphany and says, I know kung fu, right? Yeah. Um he said it was just like he just totally blew his mind, in other words. And he said, a big hat's off to Melinda for cracking the code and allowing me to hear what the ancient Egyptians were saying. So this is one of the I I love to hear all your wins and and stuff, not just, you know, to know the programs were working, but it's like these are people that because they share these wins, they also keep going, right? And they keep learning more things. All right, so let's go to the chat and answer some questions. Um, Celine was asking, so after the six months, do we still have access to the materials? So no, it is a six-month program. So access to all of the materials and the support and everything is for the six months. After the six months is over, you can keep any of the downloadable resources that you have downloaded. So the exercises, for example, are in downloadable PDFs. Um, there's also some various resources that are in downloadable PDFs. So those you can keep for your personal use. Um, and also after the six months is over, you will have the option to renew if you would like to continue into the next cohort. And I do have, I have some people who like to do this for six months and they get a ton out of the program and they feel like they're complete and they're ready to go, and they continue on, you know, to uh use their skills and practice and and so forth. And then I have others who really want to just keep going and they want every bit that I add to the curriculum. Like I said, it is an ever-evolving curriculum. So I have also some students who keep renewing. And honestly, I feel like that is the biggest testament to um what I've created here, too, is that I have people who just want to keep going and feel like this works so well for them that that's something that they want to keep doing. They may work on their side projects and things as well, but they're also working on any of the new curriculum as I add it as well. So that's there's always that option. So um, Neil says, This is so interesting and exciting. Can you do it without a laptop or books available? Um, would we need to learn to write them too? So that's a great question, Neil. Thanks so much for asking that. Um so for the most part, I provide pretty much everything you need in the program. So you don't need like a grammar book or you know, any of the textbooks. When you get to a certain level, I do recommend having a dictionary on hand. However, these days there there are some or at least one really good online dictionary. So you don't necessarily always have to get like a print one. Um, but a lot of my students do like to have both, um, and they like to have a print one. So um you can do that. I provide like sign lists that you can download. I provide um for the introductory levels for like level one, I provide all the vocabulary lists that you need. So you don't need a dictionary um at that level at all. And um, then when you get into the levels after that, that's when I would advise using a dictionary. But again, if you want to, you could use an online dictionary. We talk about those kinds of resources all the time in the program too. Um, and if anybody, you know, just is like has a burning question and they want to know about that, you can always just shoot me an email and be like, what was that thing you talked about on there that I'd like to see? Um and um in terms of do you need a laptop or not, so you could do this really from any device that you can access the internet with. I would say probably um it's gonna be a little easier with a bigger screen, just so you can see the texts um really well. And some people like to print out the exercise um booklets, which are PDFs, so you can just download them. You don't need to print them. Um, some people like to print them and write on them. I do put space so you can work right on the exercise if you want to, or you can work in your own notebook, like whatever you prefer, or on a tablet. Sometimes people like to work on a tablet, right? And draw right on there. Um, and uh I I do recommend generally having um a color screen that you can look at the photos with. So you don't necessarily need to actually like write out your exercises on there. You don't need anything big enough for that, but you just want something big enough that you can see the photo and you can zoom in. You can also zoom in at a part at a time, of course. So you don't necessarily have to have like a huge monitor or anything like that. But um, so that's the only thing I would say. You obviously you do need to be able to access the internet. But if you're if you're here on this call or you're catching the replay, you're using internet. So I do presume that you have um internet for that. Um uh yeah, so um Neil had a follow-up question on that. So, would an iPhone work okay? Um, how do we receive the lessons, like an email or anything like that? I don't have a printer, um, but I do have lots of books like um Alan's Middle Egyptian, et cetera. Yeah, so um let's that's a really good question. So let's go ahead and um I will actually open up the um back end of the curriculum for you all so I can show you exactly what that looks like. Um, and you can see what it's like um to access this. So um let's see. Let me just talk about this window separately so we can I can switch my screen sharing over to here. All right, so the curriculum is hosted on a site called Member Vault. You can log into this from any web browser. You don't need any like special software or anything for it. So you could absolutely log on from an iPhone if you want. Um and um all of the lessons are in here. So this that I am showing right now is the Master Scribes main part of the curriculum. There's also some other bonus material um that I can show you in a minute as well. So if we want, I can pull up some of these and you can see exactly what some of these lessons look like. So um level one, Scribal School is in a separate section, which I'll show you in a minute, but let's pop into level two as an example. So um we have level two here. Let me just go to view this module. I click on that. It comes up first with the welcome video. So you'll play this video. And again, this can be it's embedded on the web page. So you can play this on, you know, pretty much any web browser um on your device. And um then you have uh it looks a little bit different on mobile because I'm on a desktop right now. So like your menu with the different lessons, for example, I think it shrinks down to like the little lines that they call a hamburger thing, and you have to click on that to like open up the list of lessons, for example. So it'll look slightly different on mobile, but basically the same. And they'll all have this like next lesson button. So um, once you've watched the welcome video, and in the welcome lesson, by the way, this is where I have links to download all the exercises. So, for example, um, if we want to open up the exercises um for module two, and I click on the high resolution version, so it might take a moment um to load up, especially because I'm screen, I'm on Zoom at the same time and screen sharing and and so forth. But um, when this loads up, you can um you could save this, of course. Uh it's a PDF, so it's a you could download it and save it if you like. Um, you could also um just work from it here uh in the browser if you prefer. And so when you open these up, this gives you all of the exercises. So the first exercise in this first lesson in this module, for example, um, is an excerpt from the letters of Hecanacht. Um, those are those letters I talked about with the landowner who is writing home and is like really frustrated with his family members and stuff. So here he's giving them an order basically to return the property um uh to somebody um with it. And so um I again have photographs whenever possible. The letters. Letters are in a script called hieratic. So for those of you looking, you might be wondering why does this not look like hieroglyphs? Um, it's in hieratic. So in the case of things like this, where it's hieratic, I do provide. A hieroglyphic transcription. Or if there's something that's simply just, you know, unusually difficult to make out for some reason, I'll provide a hieroglyphic transcription for that as well. We also have some tomb scenes in here. So sometimes those can be faded, and I'll have transcriptions for those. And let's move a little bit later on in this module. We go to another part of Apechano letters, and then we get into heart scarabs. So with heart scarabs, these oftentimes these are carved right into the heart scarabs. So we look right at the object itself. This is a beautiful one that was owned by a princess that was set in a gold setting and uh then on set onto a necklace. Um the only draw, the drawback is the gold setting does slightly encroach on the edges of the text a little bit, um, but it makes for a quite a beautiful text as well. Um and so we work right from the text like this. And so you don't need to print this out necessarily. You can just work with this on your screen and then um work in your notebook when it comes to writing out the translation and so forth. And I think most people tend to do it that way, or if they have a tablet, they might use this to go ahead and write on the lines um on the screen of their tablet, for example, um, with that. So you can always um and you can always zoom in. Uh that's actually a little bit more difficult to do on the computer than it is when you're on uh a mobile device. You can just like pinch, pinch to zoom and stuff on your mobile device. So you can always pinch in, pinch, you know, to widen it to um zoom in closer on the hieroglyphs if you need to get a better look uh at anything, especially when you're looking at the high resolution version like this. I do have like a standard resolution version. If you want to just pull something up quickly to take a quick look, it'll load faster. Um, but when you really want to have like the sharpest picture on it, you the high resolution one um uh gives you that. So, and then once you've got that, you can move into lesson one and you're ready to watch the first lesson. So you'll notice um for those that you are seeing, those of you who are seeing this replay, um, that this lesson one video is nine minutes and 52 seconds. That is pretty typical. I didn't mention this before, but the curriculum, um, I mentioned it being step by step and fitting together and you know, all of those sorts of things. Um, but one of the things I didn't mention is the vast, vast majority of the lessons are under 15 minutes. And this is very intentional, very, very intentional. This is because not only is this created to fit into like a real schedule, real life, you know. So if you've just got 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes a day, you know, or three days a week or whatever it is, that you can you can actually complete, you know, watching a video in that time and possibly even, you know, do part of the exercises too, um, even if you only have, say, 25 minutes or something like that. So it's partially for that reason, but it's also because of the intentionality I've put into selecting what you learn in each lesson. So it's the puzzle pieces I was talking about, right? And how they fit together. This is not what often happens in academia. And early on in my teaching, I absolutely was guilty of this as well, and I see it all the time amongst other professors, is that a lot of times in traditional lessons, uh through all best intentions, uh professors will do basically throw in what we say in American English, like everything but the kitchen sink, right? They just give you absolutely every possible detail all at once, right? And this does not work for uh your brain uh learning, right? Is because this is like you're being thrown into the deep end and it's so many different pieces that are floating around at once, right? So this is very intentional. You learn one piece at a time, right? So Neil was just asking in the chat. So at the in this particular level that we're looking at, he's asking, does this start with um with what's the imperative? So yes, this particular in level two, we learn something that's called the imperative. If you don't know what the imperative is, don't worry. We absolutely, that's the first thing we talk about in this. And um, we talk about like what is it and what are the basics of what it looks like in Egyptian. Um, and again, this is level two. This is not where you're starting if you're a beginner. Okay. We can look at beginner, we can go back and look at um beginner stuff if you'd like. And um this just is when we get into this level, this is the main thing that you need to learn uh that appears a lot on heart scarabs and then the Book of the Dead spell that shows up on heart scarabs. Heart scarabs um, if you haven't heard of these before, they're an amulet that was put on the chest of the deceased during the wrapping um after embalming. And this was meant to keep your heart from testifying against you. And uh so this um, and these, there's so many of them, they're in museum collections everywhere. So it is a wonderful text to learn how to read. It's fairly formulaic, although each one can have some differences. So we do practice on multiple ones, right? Because of that. Because I don't want to just have you practice on one heart scarab and then be like, oh yeah, now you forever you know all heart scarabs, right? No, we practice in a variety of them, um, as well as mixing in all those other types of text that we talked about earlier when I gave the example of, you know, we're working on other things along the way and practicing other things with this too. So, for example, in this module, we also learn to read some of the conversations on tomb walls. So you might have seen pictures, you know, of tomb walls in Egypt where people are talking to each other, they're doing various things, and there's like hieroglyphs over them and stuff. So this is also used in a lot of those. So we also learn to read those scenes where um people are often being rather bossy with each other because this is basically how you make an order, is what you're learning here. So it's like, do this, don't do that, um, and so on and so forth. So this features a lot on um in these types of texts. But we can also, I'm gonna hit the little home button here. So we can go back to the home um home screen, which for some reason doesn't seem to want to show me everything at once, not sure what happened here. Um, but uh in when you go back to the home screen, this also has um uh a link to Scribal School here. This is our level one. And so when you first start with this, we have a welcome module that's just about the program um and everything here, and then you can move into module one. And again, lessons are kept almost all of them under 15 minutes. And um, in that welcome lesson in each module, you will have those workbooks to download. Um, so lesson one, module one, we start from the basics. Like, what are hieroglyphs? How do they work? Are they similar to emoji? Um, or are they more like a Rebus puzzle? Like what exactly goes on here? Do they have sounds? Do they have a picture meaning? Like all of those, we start with those basics. In lesson two, we get into sounds. Maybe that's a little bit of a spoiler for lesson one. Um, but in lesson two, we get into the specific sounds um and some of the basic signs. Uh, we continue with talking about sounds in lesson three and how we pronounce them today, because we have a very standardized way of pronouncing things in modern times that's not necessarily the same as how the ancients pronounce things. Um and we talk about the basics of building some basic words with these signs here in module one and the directions of the signs. Um, and also just a little background on the language and on the different scripts. So I mentioned briefly hieratic before, for example, versus hieroglyphs. Um and um, so Neil is saying awesome. I'd love to hear how it sounded. Uh, is that possible? So um it's tricky because one of the things you'll learn in um this module is that the ancient Egyptians did not write vowels. So obviously they had vowels in their language, that's how they pronounced words when they spoke, but they didn't write them down. This is common to some other languages from that region of the world, too. Um, um, so if you've ever tried to learn like Arabic or Hebrew or something, for example, you'll be familiar with the fact that there's no vowels in the writing. Um, but because of that, and because the language wasn't spoken as like an everyday language for quite a long time before it was deciphered, um, and it had a thousands of year history where the sounds changed over time, we don't know precisely how things were pronounced. So we do have some really good clues, and I do talk about that um in here. So we have it from like when Egyptian names show up in texts written by people in other languages, for example, whether it be like Greek or in like cuneiform texts from the Near East, for example, plus um the things that we know from the field of linguistics also help with figuring that out and sort of um working backwards. So we do know for the final stage of Egyptian, which is called Coptic, they wrote it with um Greek characters and the addition of some additional characters for sounds that Egyptian had and Greek did not. So we have vowels from that. So we do have a pretty good idea of how Coptic was pronounced. However, that's like, you know, around the beginning of our common era. And so if we're looking at texts from 2000 BC, pronunciation is gonna be probably pretty different when you're talking about a 2000-year difference. So we don't know precisely. We have a pretty good idea of um at least the consonants and sometimes the vowels, we can have a decent idea of sort of how they fit together. But because we can't know all of them and it's still being researched, we have a very um standardized way that we pronounce things that's not really meant to replicate how it sounded originally. You do have people who have taken um the work of scholars, though, in linguistics and who have really worked on what what they call in technical terms phonology, that is the sounds in the language, um, who will make YouTube videos of like reading texts aloud and that kind of thing. So you can find those sometimes that can um some of those are well done, um, not necessarily all of them. And of course, these days there's a lot of AI stuff out there. Um, but there are some out there that were actually done by people who like understand this part of the field and and so forth. So for just wanting to hear generally how it sounded, those can be that's kind of the closest thing we have. But I do talk specifically about like how the consonants sounded. And um, you know, there's some, depending on how far back you go in history, there's some that can be a little bit uh questioned still in scholarship for some of them, but um, I'll get into all of that in here so you know how um how we pronounce these things today. So when we talk to each other, we have to have a way to be able to say it. So that's why we have this standardized way, is because um, you know, as scholars or students, you know, learning this, it's like if we're talking to each other about something, uh, it would sound like alphabet soup all the time. And we were just trying to be like, you know, that word that is like vulture, doorbelt, uh, breadloaf kind of thing, right? Um, whereas I I could just say instead, I could say assets or something, which and that would be our standardized pronunciation of that. And other people who have learned the language would be like, oh yeah, you know, and yeah. And so uh we talk like that at conferences. And um once people have gotten to a level where they understand that, you know, with learning and stuff, we can talk back and forth um about words. We don't necessarily like have conversations in Egyptian where you could you could definitely work on that, but um, but instead it's more about like being able to talk about the language so that you know we can ask and answer questions and say, like, oh, and I read this part, this part was really interesting, this like here, and then like say what the part is, you know, um, and Egyptian. So if we skip ahead a little bit um in level one, go to module four, you can see this is all about um what we call the offering prayer. I call it live in the good life and the afterlife because this is all about having what you need for the afterlife. Um and um again, all of these always have exercises. Um, anything that it introduces any kind of new concepts about how to read these things, you get to practice them. So um there's an occasional lesson that doesn't have an exercise. So, for example, the final one on in module one I was talking about, where we just talk about the stages of the language and um the scripts and stuff, that one doesn't have exercises because it's really more background material. Um, but for any of these where you learn any kinds of new vocabulary or new concepts or anything like that, we have um these exercises so that you could practice them right away. And as I mentioned, they will recur over time too in the curriculum. So we won't just see things like once and never work on them again. Um, they will recur. So, like the offering prayer, for example, not only do a lot of these words show up in other kinds of texts that you'll learn later, um, but you'll even see the offering prayer itself again on other monuments um in later lessons and also in much later modules. You'll even see it again in like level three of Master Scribes, I think others too, but that's just the one I can think of off the top of my head. Um, when we get into some related texts and like longer versions of this and stuff. So these kinds of things, like I said, it has that built-in space repetition, but also that, you know, mixing it up, that interleaving, because you're not just doing the same thing over and over again, right? You're practicing on different ones. You can see we've got a bunch of different texts, and they're all even if they're all these are these three I've just shown are all offering prayers, but they're all a little bit different, right? And they're different sort of handwriting, you could say. I mean, they're really painting or carving in this case, but you can tell, like, you know, each artist, they're doing something a little bit different. And so it's really valuable to work on these real texts because um uh a lot of times this language is taught in textbooks with just typeset examples. And you can learn some that way, certainly, although I find the textbooks, again, not the best method um for the way that they approach it. But in addition to that, you're learning to read just very standardized signs, right? And the people who are creating these monuments didn't work with standardized typeset, right? They're not using a they're not using a printing press. They are painting things, they're drawing things, they're carving things, right? So everybody's got a little bit different way that they carve certain signs. Um, and that's why it's really crucial to practice on a variety um of objects. And so, you know, uh we've uh already, um, for those who are listening, I have scrolled through, you know, five different offering prayers so far, right? And each one is unique. They have standard parts to them that you can learn. That's one of the reasons we learn it at this level, because it will have these standardized parts that you can learn, like a formula. That's why we often call this actually the offering formula, uh, because it's very formulaic, although everyone has a little variation. So it's a great place to be at when you're in level one because you learn a lot of um basics of word order and basics of vocabulary on these really standardized texts, so that you're not, again, being thrown in at the deep end with like having to learn absolutely everything at once, like a whole bunch of grammar, bunch of vocabulary, trying to read like complex texts where every line is different, that sort of thing. This is a piece at a time. So you're learning this formulaic stuff first, and this gets you familiar with the signs, it gets you familiar with some of the most common words that will reappear in texts like forever that you're whenever you're reading Egyptian stuff. It'll be like, oh, there's that verb ear. Yeah, we see that all the time, right? Um so there's lots of things, or we see, or or there is, oh, chet, the word chet, I know that one. It means thing, right? Um, that's something that occurs in this text, the offering prayer, but it's something you'll see in lots of different texts, as you can imagine. We use the word thing in our modern languages a lot, right? So do the ancient Egyptians. Uh, so there's a lot of that really common vocabulary that comes in early like this. So you're not starting, you know, from square one trying to learn like four different things, four different aspects of the language all at one time. Um so yeah, that is how we do it. And um, if there's anything specific any of you would like to see, please let me know and we can jump into that um while you have me here. We are over the hour, so I don't want to respect your time and wrap up soon. Um and so um, okay, so Neil's asking, so how does this work with like, do you send me your lessons or how does this work? Oh, really good question, Neil. So that reminds me I didn't show you the answer keys yet. I should show you the answer keys. So um when you go into each module, you have not only the um the exercises, and uh, in the case of level one here, you also have vocabulary sheets. I mentioned how you don't need a dictionary when you're at level one. Um the vocabulary sheets are built in, um, but there's also answer keys. Um so if we go to the answer key, you can click on that and it opens up. So you can check your own answers. And um where the magic comes in with this is this creates a flexibility. So um what you do is you want to work through the exercises and then check your answers with um the answer key. So, like here's that first exercise that we were looking at a minute ago, and here's the answer key for it. Um and I have both what's called transliteration. This is how we depel just represent the sounds in Egyptian, as well as a translation. And you can compare what you have to this. And then so there's there's two parts to the magic of this. One is you can do this on your own schedule, right? This is available on demand. So I encourage my students to work at times when it's available to them and um to work through things that um, you know, on their own time. So some of my students, for example, like to work on hieroglyphs for 20, 30 minutes in the morning while they drink their morning coffee. And they might do that just on weekdays, for example. Um, other students maybe work um three days a week uh on stuff, things like that. But the point is you can do it at whatever time works for you. So whether that's with your morning coffee or after you've done the dishes after dinner or during your lunch break at work, whatever it might be. Um, and this is something where um our um bonus uh sustainable study habit tracker comes in, which I'm gonna share the link for in the chat. You all can download it. Um when you do click on this link, by the way, it will immediately prompt you to download it. And so you might need to like turn off pop-up pop-up blockers or something like that to um allow the file or give it permission to allow the file to download. Um, it is a PDF that will download from Google Drive when you click on that. So this is um something that will be available in MasterScribes too. So if you're if you're listening to this later and you're not here live, um, you will, or if you're already enrolled in Master Scribes, don't worry, you will get this in MasterScribes as well. And um, we have an even more in-depth process to go through for setting up your study schedule that we do at the very beginning of our six months together in MasterScribes. And um this tracker can help you continue to implement that um uh as you go and check, you know, fill in the things for each week when you work, as well as help remind you of the things that you should do at the end of every study session. Um, and I I share it now because this goes hand in hand um with that idea of sort of working regularly and the accountability. Um and you'll come and check in every week with us in the community to let us know what you're working on to help keep you accountable. And then after you've looked at the answer sheets, so um, let me go back over to that screen here for a moment because I I had moved to get that link. Um once you uh you oops, oops, sorry, I pulled out the wrong window for myself. Where did it go? Here it is. Um, so once you've looked at the answer sheet, a lot of times people have questions. I sort of briefly mentioned this earlier that I've had students who tried to work through a book, for example, and then they're like, well, okay, I had an answer key, but I didn't know why my translation apparently wasn't right. Like it was different from what was in the book. Or I didn't know if maybe it was okay. It's just a slight variation on it. Um, and that's the kind of thing that my students bring those kinds of questions to me all the time. I get every type of question, everything from like, I couldn't tell what this sign is, like what is this sign, to um, I translated this word this way. Like, is that okay? Or does it need to be the way you have an answer key? Or can you walk me through this entire exercise and explain every part to me? We do that all the time too on calls. Um and we can do that in the community as well. Um, usually if it's an in-depth walkthrough, that that's good for the calls, though. Even if you can't make it live again, it's recorded, so you can always watch the replay. Some of my students who love to ask that kind of question, um, like Marissa, who you might have heard on the podcast before, a lot of times she can't make the calls live, but she still submits her questions for it, and then she catches the replay later to go over those. So we go through all kinds of questions like that, to questions about like, what is this word about? Grammar mean, or like um sometimes some of my students will be reading another book about ancient Egyptian grammar or something, and they'll be like, so-and-so says like this thing in this book, and I don't really understand what that means. Like, can you explain to me like what are they trying to mean, like explain here? Like, what does this really mean? We have just like all kinds of questions, or sometimes we get questions that are like not even specifically about the language, but other aspects of ancient Egyptian. So we get questions like I had uh one that was kind of a fun one we did one time is somebody asked, is there um, you know, we did ancient Egyptians have mustaches? Very often was a question somebody asked. Um and it was prompted because I guess some people online were like claiming that a particular statue was a forgery because the man had a mustache, and they're like, no other statues have mustaches and all this kind of thing. So um, so uh he asked this question in our community, and I was like, that's a really good question. Like, I know I've seen mustaches like multiple times on statues. So yeah, absolutely mustaches were a thing, at least in certain time periods. Now, ancient Egyptian, ancient Egypt, just like every other time, has its fashion that goes in and out of style, right? Um, so anyway, that led me to I had so I went and I dug up some photographs of other statues and wall carvings and stuff of people who had mustaches. And yeah, you don't see it as often because a lot of the statues had the mustaches only painted on, not carved, and the paint has worn away. So you can mostly can only find it on statues where the paint's actually still preserved, which aren't as many of them. And it was really only in fashion, like around the like later third of like fourth dynasty, during the Old Kingdom, like basically during what we think of as sort of the height of pyramid building time, right? Um, so you'll see officials from that time who have a mustache and so forth, but you won't see it much uh in other time periods. So sometimes we just get like kind of um, I guess you could say, to use an American baseball analogy, like out of left field, you know, kinds of questions like that. But they're fun because it really fills in different aspects of the culture and the history um that we might not otherwise talk about, right? And so that's one of the things why it's great to be in the community and also to either come to the calls live or watch the replays so you can benefit from other people's questions too. Neil says, um, is this close to how um you began yourself in Egyptology? Uh he said, it's so cool that you did um admire that so much. So um when I got started in Egyptology, uh in the well, let me try to do this in a brief way for my story. But um in North America, there are not a lot of universities that have Egyptology. So um where I went for undergraduate did not have Egyptology, but I did get lucky and have an opportunity to take uh two undergraduate courses with Egyptologists near the end of my undergraduate time. Um, but so it was a very small amount, basic. Um and then I had to go to graduate school to get um the Egyptology training. And most people in North America don't can't get very much Egyptology training until they get to the graduate level because it's just not at a lot of the universities. So I um when I got into a PhD program at um one of the few places in North America that has a PhD program in Egyptology, there's like maybe like 10 or so um in the whole continent. Uh that was when I really got my intensive training. So I had years of coursework on pretty much like all kinds of topics to do with ancient Egypt. Um, the history, the arts, the archaeology of it, the language, um, mainly the first three stages of the language. So what are called old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, late Egyptian, but also some demotic, which is the fourth stage. Um and um, so I had years of coursework in those. Then we also had um a fair amount of time of self-studying to prepare for exams. And then we did comprehensive exams, which covered all those topics I just mentioned. Um it takes like weeks uh to do the comprehensive exams. Uh it's like two and a half weeks of exams. Um, and I also had a minor area in um Mesopotamian history and archaeology, and so that was part of those exams too. Um and um then after that, you propose your research project for your dissertation, and um, then spend you know, another few years researching and writing your dissertation. So it's a it's a long process. The PhD in in North America tends to be um like multiple degrees in other places. So, like for in Europe, for example, you would specialize earlier and get some background already in undergraduate, and then you would get a master's, and then you would get the PhD, which would really just be more of the research and the writing at that point. So it's equivalent training, but it's just done at kind of a different stage in the education process here because uh undergraduate programs in university are in in at least in the states and Canada, meant to be a uh broader training in uh multiple fields rather than specializing in just one. So you do have more stuff in one area, but there's also a variety, and that's that's how it's created here. So it's a little bit different than in some other places in the world. But yeah, that's how I learned. Like I kind of briefly alluded to, um, the way we learned the language there was not efficient really um or approachable. Um it it was more difficult than it needed to be, let me put it that way. Um so it's it's one of the reasons why I wanted to do things differently, um, both in terms of teaching outside the university as well as when I teach my university courses. So I have I have taught this language at university as well. And um I actually developed the curriculum that I use there by teaching outside of the university. So, like the things I was talking about here in level one that um we were talking about most recently on and that I was screen sharing with, these are things that informed my introductory course also at the university level. And that um it so it works for people who have you know regular working life with families uh because my programs are more flexible than a semester schedule. Um, but it also works for um students who are in a traditional university and uh on that more traditional semester kind of schedule, it's just done a little bit differently in terms of the scheduling of it. But um, I teach them what the same things that I learned from working with people outside of the university and from doing the research into learning science. Um, and it's it's made me a better teacher overall, being able to do that. It's one of the things I love about teaching actually outside the university is I learn so much from it. I I am constantly improving my teaching. I'm constantly, I'm still constantly improving my understanding of the ancient Egyptian language, too. It's a it's it's a lifetime journey, really, you know, you learn more and more over time because there's just so much out there, so many texts you could read. So, so many. Um and, you know, just like I was telling one of my students the other day, like, you know, if you think about even children who are growing up with their native language, think about how many years it takes them that I mean, my uh my son's in middle school and he's still frequently at, and he has a really good vocabulary, but he's still frequently asking me, what does this word mean? You know, what does that word mean? And he's and he's had, you know, over a decade of learning this language, right? And he has it in his everyday life. So it's really a lifelong journey. You can learn to read so much in just a couple of months, but you can also keep going um and keep learning. I keep learning, I keep learning more all the time. Um, and I love that. I love that about teaching. And I love that about the language too, because there's always more to learn. Um, there's always another text to read, right? And it's gonna be, even if there's a lot of familiar stuff in it, there's gonna be something about it that's different from the other things that you've read. So, and that's that's one of the wonderful things about the language. All right. Well, if there isn't anything else in terms of questions um or things that you'd like to see um uh right now, uh, we can go ahead and uh wrap up the call. And um I will then go hop over and review your applications. I don't want to keep you all waiting on those applications anymore. Um and if you have any questions, though, of course, you can feel free to email me, respond to any of my emails that you might have gotten. Um, I'm here always to answer questions. And I would encourage you to apply. If you're not sure if it's a good fit for you, apply and we can talk about if it's a good fit. You could um I'll let you know if I think you're a good fit and accept you if you are. And then if you're still not sure, you want to build your study plan, you can book that call with me to do that so that you can just feel extra confident and supported in that decision. So, all right, with that, um we'll wrap up. Thank you all so much for those of you who are here live and for those of you catching us on the replay or on the podcast. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day, and I am so excited to go review your applications and start welcoming in a bunch of you into MasterScribes. Take care and bye.