To read Egyptian one used to have to be philologist, orientalist and cryptographer at once; readers today may thank 200 years' labor by Egyptologists from Barthelmy to Budge for the privilege of being able to read and study hieroglyphic texts much as one studies any foreign language, The student no longer need compare pictographs with inscriptions in Coptic and in Greek on old stones and tablets: this basic guide to the Egyptian language, first published in 1910 and now available for the first time in paperback, remains the standard introduction by perhaps the most prolific, erudite Egyptologist of the century.
Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East.
Budge is both adored and despised by modern egyptologists, his copious amount of work cannot be completely accepted or ignored. This is a good introduction to understanding the syntax of the three types of ancient Egyptian, some of the basic terms, and the functionality of the language as part of life.
Budge. You're probably gonna read him if you're taking a serious look at Egyptian heiroglyphs. Outdated, but more or less necessary. He made significant progress, and more has been made since.