Why? I assume, because the translators thought it would be an interesting exercise. Way back when I took Ancient Egyptian in college, the instructor said that while we could generally make sense out of a hieroglyphic text it was very unlikely that we could create an idiomatically correct one from scratch. It's hard enough doing this when there are living speakers around; when the last one died around 400 CE it's got to be really challenging.

At any rate, the authors tried. Just the problem of the title give some insight into translation; should you translate "Peter" as ptr, the phonetic equivalent, or should you translate it as inr ("rock, stone") which is what it means? The authors choose ptr with a male name determinative, followed by sXat ("hare, rabbit") with a hare determinative.

The original illustrations are used throughout the book, and little notes are added when the authors have to make a translation decision ("linen tail" for "cotton tail"; "Son of Gregor" for "MacGregor" and so on). There is no parallel English translation, so unless you are familiar with the story you'll have to read hieroglyphs. One interesting choice is the author's name is translated as bAtrk sAt pwAttr: "Beatrix, Daughter of Potter" (with "Potter" spelled phonetically, not Kd (someone who makes pots).

Just the thing for the coffee table. ( )

Classic tale of Peter sneaking into Farmer McGregor's Garden and almost getting caught. Reminds children to obey their parents and not misbehave or suffer the consequences.

A classic story of a mischievous rabbit. ( )

Beatrix Potter's classic tale has been translated into Middle Egyptian, a pleasant respite from the formal texts that must be translated by archaeology and language students. ( )

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/jjones/entry/peter_rabbit_in/ ( )