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Welcome to Voices of Ancient Egypt, the podcast for people who don't just want to learn about ancient Egypt, but want to understand it on a deeper, more meaningful level. I'm Melinda Nelsonhurst, an Egyptologist with a PhD in the field and years of experience teaching at the university level, working in Egypt, and training students around the world to read real ancient Egyptian texts. I've spent decades studying this civilization in a traditional academic setting, so you don't have to. And so you can access knowledge that's usually locked behind academic walls. This podcast brings ancient Egyptian history, beliefs, and language to life and shows you that learning hieroglyphs is possible no matter your age, background, or schedule. So whether you want to read hieroglyphs in museums, on social media, or on your next trip to Egypt, you'll find the tools, stories, and encouragement to make it real right here. Let's hear the voices of the ancient world together. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Voices of Ancient Egypt podcast. I want to bring you an episode today where we talk a little bit about this time of year. We're heading into the fourth quarter of 2026 when I'm recording this. And we might be looking back at this point and thinking, where did the year go? But here's the thing, it's not over yet. It's actually an amazing time of year to tackle the things that you've been wanting to do, your interests that maybe got put off because of summer vacations or projects at work or an illness or whatever it might be earlier this year. This time of year is a wonderful time to get into that. And in fact, when you think about it, we think of it as the end of the year. And sometimes we're tempted to just kind of coast to the end and then start over in January, right? But in the ancient Egyptian mindset and their way of life, in Egyptian terms, this is actually when the year has just started. The new year was in summer, and that's when the flood started. And now we'd be about to head into the growing season very soon. This is the time when literally plants grew. This is when the crops started growing. And this was seen as a great time of renewal and growth. And not just in the literal sense for the crops, but for people as well, whether people in the afterlife or those still living, this was seen as a great time of rebirth, renewal, and growth. So at this time of year, while a lot of people are gonna wait probably till the new year to do things, you don't need to do that, right? Right now is a perfect time to pursue what you've dreamed of and grow yourself. Instead of I'll start in January, you can ask yourself, instead of that thought, ask yourself, where do I want to be? And who do I want to be when January gets here? You'll walk into your new year with so much newfound understanding. If you tackle your dream of reading hieroglyphs now, you'll walk into the new year understanding so much more than you do right now when it comes to hieroglyphs. If you've wanted to do this for a long time, and I bet you have, you've waited, right? You've had this desire for a long time, and this desire has waited. It's been patient. It has waited through previous fourth quarters of years. It's waited through previous new years. The question is, are you going to make it wait another year? Because here's the thing. I know that investing in yourself and in your passions, your hobbies can feel selfish. There's a specific quality of guilt that can sometimes come with spending time and money on something that feels personal, something that is about your own joy and curiosity, rather than say about your family or your work or other responsibilities. Learning to read hieroglyphs can feel like that, because you know, for most people, it doesn't have a clear professional return, for example. It's something you want for yourself. And wanting things for yourself can feel, especially in a season this time of year, that is about to become relentlessly focused on other people, it can feel like a self-indulgence that needs to be justified in some way. But I think there's a reframe that's really important here because here's the thing: investing in your own curiosity, your own intellectual life, your own love of something ancient and beautiful is not selfish. It's the thing that makes you more fully yourself. And the more fully yourself you are, the more you have to bring to everyone else, the more you have to bring to the table. You fill your own cup, and then you can show up both for yourself and for others differently. And not to mention, actually, your confidence grows in ways that you wouldn't imagine from everything you've learned. I've seen this in my students over and over again, where they were afraid to try with hieroglyphs and they were afraid of trying various other things too. Once they got into hieroglyphs and they saw they really could do this, this opened up all these other possibilities for them too. And they returned to other passion projects they had that they had been afraid to work on. They were afraid they weren't good enough for before. And these gains aren't just while you're learning. They aren't just for a few months or for a year, they're for a lifetime. Whether it's the confidence that you gain that we were just talking about or the literal skills of reading hieroglyphs as well. When you invest in learning something you love, really invest with structure and support, community, you don't just learn the thing. You become someone who knows it, right? And that person shows up differently everywhere. Whether it's in museums, on trips, in conversations, in the way you see photographs and documentaries and movies and news stories about Egypt. My students know this. They've experienced this. So you've heard some of them talk about it on the podcast, like my student John, who was in the last episode, he knows this from his experiences, especially when he recently went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or you've heard many other students of mine, including Juan and Mark and so many others on the podcast, who stood next to a statue or a temple or somebody's jewelry and answered questions as if they were the guide there themselves. When you invest in learning hieroglyphs now, you don't just have a new skill for the new year. You have a new lens that you look at everything through. And that lens goes everywhere you go for the rest of your life. That's not selfish. That's an investment with a very long return. And with the holiday season coming up, you might have travel plans at this time of year, or maybe you'll be staying home and curling up with a book. Either way, your new lens will forever change either of these experiences as well as all of the others. Whether it's when reading a book about ancient Egypt and reading the hieroglyphs on the artifacts that you see in the pictures there, or visiting Egypt or a museum. Because if you start learning hieroglyphs now, you'll be standing there differently than you would have otherwise, able to recognize things you couldn't before. That museum visit, that Egypt trip, that moment in front of an inscription in a book or online. It's closer than it feels. And what you do in the next few months determines who you are when you get there. And there's something particularly valuable about starting a learning journey at the same time as other people. Like in the fourth quarter, we have now with a cohort of people who are starting in my program MasterScribes, who all made the decision in the same enrollment window. And this offers exactly that. You wouldn't be joining a program midstream and feeling behind, right? You'd be starting with a group of people who are exactly where you are, who have the same questions and the same excitement and the same tendency to go down Egypt rabbit holes at midnight. You'll share milestones like reading your first Egyptian text, quote unquote, out in the wild, whether it's in a museum or on a trip or maybe on somebody's necklace. You'll learn from each other's questions and the answers from both me and from the people who understand exactly what you're working through. There's a particular energy of a group of people who all love the same thing and are learning it together. Whether it's holding an informal book club together to read some historical fiction set in ancient Egypt, or sharing photos from your latest museum visit, or chatting about movies and video games set in the ancient world, it's a uniquely validating experience and one you just really can't get on your own or at another time. That community is time-specific. The cohort that starts in this window of time that we're about to start is this particular cohort with these particular people at this moment. It won't be replicated exactly the same way when the next enrollment period rolls around a half a year or more from now. And that experience is not just for your time in this cohort though, right? This changes your lens for a lifetime, like we talked about. Imagine yourself a year from now. You're writing a letter to yourself of today. What would you say? What does that future you know how to read? Where have they been? And what did they see there that they would have missed before? What does it feel like to stand in front of a hieroglyphic text and actually understand what it says? You might say to yourself, Wow, I went to the museum today and I'd been there multiple times before and always had a great time. I love looking at the objects and reading the tags and learning so much. But today was like I had never been there before. It was a totally new experience. I walked up to Estela and I read what was on it. I read what the person wanted for their afterlife. I read about their family members. I read that inscription on that Pharaoh's statue that the person next to me was wondering what it said. I explained it to them, and they looked at me with that shock in their eyes, their mouth open. It was a life-changing experience. And I'm so glad I did what I needed to do to be here today. And that person, that person who wrote that to you, that person in the future that's you in the future, that person, the one who reads the text, who has spent a year inside this language, who goes to museums and on Egypt trips and or looks at photos differently, that person starts today, not on January 1st, not when things calm down, not when the timing is better. Today, in this final quarter of the year that's already taught you something about how fast time moves and how important it is to spend some of it on the things that you actually love. And that's exactly what we do in my next level hieroglyphs program, Master Scribes. And I can't wait to support you on this beautiful journey learning something that you really actually love. Head over to masterscribes.com to fill out the quick application so you can join this cohort that's starting up soon. Applications closed September 29th, so you'll want to submit the application now. And I can't wait to read your application and invite you in. Until next time, stay curious.