Coping with Obscurity publishes the papers discussed at the Brown University Workshop on Earlier Egyptian grammar in March, 2013. The workshop united ten scholars of differing viewpoints dealing with the central question of how to judge and interpret the grammatical value of the written evidence preserved in texts of the Old and Middle Kingdoms (ca. 2350-1650 BC). The nine papers in the volume present orthographic, lexical, morphological and syntactic approaches to the data and represent a significant step toward a new, pluralistic understanding of Earlier Egyptian grammar.

James P. Allen is the Charles Edwin Wilbour Professor of Egyptology at Brown University and conference organizer. He has been working on a revised model of the Earlier Egyptian verbal system since 2010 and is currently conducting research toward a comprehensive grammar of the ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts.

Mark A. Collier is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. His current research is centered on the study of grammatically evoked inferences and alternatives in ancient Egyptian. His earlier publications were instrumental in leading scholars to a reevaluation of the grammatical model of Earlier Egyptian that had governed research since the 1960s.

Andréas Stauder is Directeur d'etudes at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris. His work has focused on the verbal system of Earlier Egyptian, particularly its passives. For the past decade, he has been one of the leading figures working toward a new grammatical model of Earlier Egyptian.