hi Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture is part of a new genre of books focussed on Egyptian

Egyptian language

Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...

 hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...

. The book is a primer

Primer (textbook)

A primer is a first textbook for teaching of reading, such as an alphabet book or basal reader. The word also is used more broadly to refer to any book that presents the most basic elements of a subject....

 on hieroglyphs from the viewpoint of seeing hieroglyphs in the context of their use in iconography

Iconography

Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...

 of sculpture, monuments, reliefs, tomb reliefs, literature, specifically the corpus of The Book of the Dead versions for various deceased Egyptians, and other areas.

The book is arranged sequentially with the 26 categories of Gardiner's Sign List

Gardiner's Sign List

Gardiner's Sign List is a list of common Egyptian hieroglyphs compiled by Sir Alan Gardiner. It is considered a standard reference in the study of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs....

. Each entry is a detailed write-up, and a facing page of one to six graphic or photo examples, elucidating the hieroglyphs usage.