From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 01:10:17 +0000 Subject: AEL Administrative Dear All, Welcome to the new list! I'd just like to remind everyone that posts to appear in the list should be sent to and not the list server address. When you post to the list, the list server will automatically add 'AEL ' (without the quotes) to the start of the subject field (unless the subject field already starts with 'AEL ' or 'Re: AEL '. Also, please remember that this list server does not implement all of the commands that many other servers do. The valid commands that you can send to are: To subscribe to the list: subscribe AEgyptian-L "Your Name" (substituting your own name) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe AEgyptian-L abc@123.com (substituting your email address) To ask for help on the list (help just repeats the into message): help Please note, the list has no digest option (yet). ---- Early, next week I hope to get the list's assocaited web page started and at that point I'll announce the start of the list in ANE. It's been a very hectic week getting everything ready for the start of the list, but everything seems to be working so far (fingers crossed)! Mark Wilson List Owner. ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 07 Feb 1997 22:54:38 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL Administrative At 01:10 AM 97/02/07 +0000, you wrote: >It's been a very hectic week getting everything ready for the start of >the list, but everything seems to be working so far (fingers crossed)! > Thanks for all your efforts, Mark. Hopefully we can make this list successful and lively. Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 20:30:12 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian Hello, Thank you for starting this listserve. I am looking forward to its serving as a learning forum. Let me just introduce myself. I am a graduate student in Egyptology at Yale. I have studied ancient Egyptian for many years now. I have joined your list in order to be of assistance, should anyone have questions which I am capable of answering. Just so we have a common means of representing sounds and writings, let me propose the following system of ascii transcription: (of course you are all free to adopt your own methods of communicating Egyptian on-line. I just propose this system as one that works for many Egyptologists.) First of all, there is a major distinction between phonemes and graphemes which needs to be addressed. Linguistic scholarship has developed a system of different kinds of brackets depending on whether you are talking about phonology or orthography. Phonology is expressed by phonemes, which are the smallest units of sound that convey meaning in a language. English writes the letter "A" but the sounds that it can represent are multiple. Some of them being the "a" in "hat" as opposed to the "a" in "hate". The sounds of the letter "a" in these two words are phonemic because they give the words in question very distinct meanings. Phonemes are written between //s. /b/ is the phoneme but {b} is the grapheme (the sign which the language employs to represent the phoneme). {}s are used to represent graphemes. What follows is a list of Egyptian graphemes and their phonemes: (The first character between {}s is the proposed ascii writing for the phoneme which follows in //s.) {3} = {Egyptian-vulture} It is still hotly debated exactly which phoneme {3} represented. For the purposes of learning Egyptian it is not necessary to have an opinion on the matter, but various suggestions have been proposed. At first it was believed that {3} represented /'/, the glottal stop, which is a click in the back of one's throat made at the beginning of a syllable starting with a vowel. More recent research has led scholars to recognize that {3} must have represented some liquid sound, such as /l/ or some quality of /r/, such as a uvular /R/ as in German or French. My personal view is that it represented /l/, but various European colleagues might still disagree on this matter. {j} = {reed-stalk} Its value is also still debated. It either represented /'/ or /y/, or both of these values. This is why Gardiner opted for {} in his transliteration system. (note: any letters written between <>s indicate that they are to be read as a single unit, thus represents an {i} with a glottal stop mark over it, and represents {h} with a dot under it. The system proposed here does not actually involve this usage, but rather it proposes single characters for each orthographic value.) {y} = {double-reed-stalk} or {dual-strokes} It seems to have represented the /y/ or /yy/ sounds, both of which are so close that it is hardly a distinction worth mentioning. {<} = {arm} Its value is securely understood to be // (the emphatic "h" of Arabic as in the letter {a} and the original pronunciation of Hebrew {eth}). {x} (contac-lens-h) = {hatched-circle}: // (a voiceless uvular fricative, like the {af} of Hebrew and the {a}) of Arabic and {ch} in German "ach". {X} (underscore-h) = {cow-belly}: // (a palatalized //, as {ch} in German "ich") {z} ("bolt-s") = {door-bolt}: earlier scholars thought it represented /z/, however more recent scholarship has shown that it must actually have represented // ({th} in "thin") Also, of note is the fact that in Middle Egyptian this sound had disappeared and coalesced with the second "s", both being pronounced identically as /s/. This is the reason that Gardiner does not distinguish {z} from {s} in his book. However, the student should be aware of the fact that words with these two sounds have distinct etymologies. {s} = {cloth-fold}: /s/. {S} (hacek-s) = {pool}: // (the sound of "sh" in "ship"). {q} (doted-k) = {hillock}: /q/. This was an emphatic /k/ articulated further back in the throat than the /k/ of English. It is like the {quf} of Hebrew and the {qaf} of Arabic. {k} = {handled-basket}: /k/. {g} = {pot-stand}: /g/. {t} = {loaf}: /t/. {T} (underscore-t) = {tether}: // like the sound of {ch} in "church". {d} = {hand}: /d/. One should note that there is reason to believe that this sound actually represented an emphatic {t} (dotted "t") as in Arabic {a}, however {d} is a convenient character for representing it as distinct from {t}. {D} (underscore-d) = {cobra}: //. As in the case of {d}, one should note that there is reason to believe that it really represented // which would be a palatalized // of some sort, i.e.; an emphatic form of //. Another important issue in transcription is the matter of what is reconstructed and what was actually written by the scribes. Technically, one should put an asterisk before a reconstructed word, but it has become common practice to put a scholar's reconstructions in parentheses. For example, the word for "person" was usually written {r}{T}{seated-man}, but we know from certain rare fuller writings of the word that it was actually *rmT. Someone representing a text containing this word _might_ choose to write it as r(m)T in his transliteration, though, in the case of this word, the reading has been so firmly established that this might not actually be necessary. Another issue is the representation of separable parts of a word and the affixes which attach to it. Gardiner uses points to separate words from suffixes. This system is used by many Egyptologists, but a more comprehensive system also exists, having been developed by German scholarship. This system distinguishes three different kinds of divisions: hyphenations between compounds; dots between morphemes (grammatical elements like gender markers, etc.); equal signs between words and personal pronoun suffixes which govern them. To this system recently has been added the practice of using hyphens between prefixes and words. Examples: Compound: m-< (a combination of {m} "in" + {<} "hand", forming the compound preposition m-< meaning "from") Division of Morphemes: p.t ({pt} meaning "sky", is a feminine noun. The {t} is a separate morpheme indicating the word's feminine class, therefore a dot should be placed between the {p} and the {t}.) Attached Suffix Pronoun: pr=f (pr "house" + =f "his" > pr=f "his house".) Prefixed Morpheme: s- s- To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL A complete beginner Dear All As a complete beginner to hieroglyphs, I wondered whether anyone could suggest a good 'basic' text which I can work with (Gardner seems a little advanced for my needs at the moment!) Hope some kind academic will take pity on a poor soul... Andrew Stokell ============================================================================== From: "Richard" To: Subject: Re: AEL A complete beginner Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 14:33:39 -0800 I would be very interested in any results that you receive. Would you mind sharing? Thanks, Richard ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Come to the Abecederium. It's a fabulous place! http://www.iea.com/~rtuttle/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- ---------- > From: Andrew Stokell > To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk > Subject: AEL A complete beginner > Date: Sunday, February 09, 1997 8:31 AM > > Dear All > > As a complete beginner to hieroglyphs, I wondered whether anyone could > suggest a good 'basic' text which I can work with (Gardner seems a little > advanced for my needs at the moment!) > Hope some kind academic will take pity on a poor soul... > > > Andrew Stokell ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian Date: Sun, 9 Feb 97 17:36:44 -0600 Dear Colleagues, I am a retired professor of South Asian and Islamic Studies, with decades-long interests in Egypt and Egyptian. Now that I am no longer burdened with University teaching (and committees and politics and ...!), I can turn my attention to various pleasant pastimes. Alas, nothing more "athletic" than sitting at my computer: folk who meet me for the first time often ask, "So just who *was* Pharoah in your day ... ?" :-) Allow me to ask Mr. Graham what benefits he perceives in his system of transliteration over against the very similar "Manual de Codage" developed by the CCER in Utrecht? For example, Mr. Graham proposes (<) for /'ayn/ (the pharyngeal voiced fricative often represented in Egyptian as the "arm sign"), whereas the Manual uses (A). I can see no particular value in one against the other, except that of consistency. Does anyone hold a strong opinion? There are not many differences of this kind, but we might wish to ask our List Owner to put out a quick and easy manual for us which we can archive and save for later referral when posting. If Mr. Graham wants to perform this useful service, I would urge him to do so. As for me, I am happy with any system that is reasonably consistent. Just let me know. If you are not yet aware of the valuable services of the CCER, please visit the following web address: vdplas@cc.ruu.nl Having said my say, may I ask how we might start? Professor (emeritus) M. A. R. Barker 118 East Elmwood Place Minneapolis, Minnesota 55419, U. S. A. ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 00:30:12 +0000 Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian Graham, Thanks for starting the ball rolling towards developing a transliteration scheme. I think it would be an excellent idea to include a perhaps condensed version of your post in the list's introductory message. Over the next few weeks I hope to put together a web page which could include the same information, perhaps with hieroglyphs added. A few people are using Manuel De Codage format, but I wonder if it is getting a bit dated now? I think it would be very helpful if we can agree on a standard transliteration for the purposes of the list. Regards, Mark Wilson ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 20:53:01 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Ascii & Exercises Hi, Mr. Barker, Thank you for your response. > Allow me to ask Mr. Graham what benefits he perceives in his system of > transliteration over against the very similar "Manual de Codage" developed by > the CCER in Utrecht? For example, Mr. Graham proposes (<) for /'ayn/ (the > pharyngeal voiced fricative often represented in Egyptian as the "arm sign"), > whereas the Manual uses (A). I can see no particular value in one against the > other, except that of consistency. Does anyone hold a strong opinion? I see the advantage only as representing the transcription characters closer to the way they appear in books, and that one should not begin to think of these signs as ever having represented vowels. Using {3} as opposed to {a}, {<} as opposed to {A}, {j} as opposed to {i} will help to maintain the student's concept of "consonant" as opposed to "vowel". > There are not many differences of this kind, but we might wish to ask our List > Owner to put out a quick and easy manual for us which we can archive and save > for later referral when posting. If Mr. Graham wants to perform this useful > service, I would urge him to do so. As for me, I am happy with any system that > is reasonably consistent. Just let me know. I would be happy to help in any way possible. I have developed many exercises for learning Egyptian over the years, and if someone has a scanner and could start a web page I would be happy to submit them so that they can be used by the internet-using public. One method of instruction which I have been attempting to develop is the presentation of nominal sentence structures before the introduction of the verbal system. This is because the Middle Egyptian verbal system is exceedingly difficult. There are various non-verbal ways of expressing sentences using infinitives. The course I have been developing introduces these before introducing the verb. There are two benefits to this approach: 1) the student can learn things in a gradual progression which does not strain his/her brain unduly to begin with. 2) the infinitives of different kinds of verbs have markers which distinguish certain of the different verbal classes from one another. If one is introduced to the infinitives first, one will not later have problems remembering to which verb class a given verb belongs. Example: sDm "hear" is a strong verb and therefore has a masculine infinitive (on the surface this verb's infinitive and its conjugated verbal form appear identically in writing as {sDm}), while prj.t "go forth" (written {prt}) is a third-weak verb (the third radical is /j/ (a weak or unstable consonant which is often ommitted in the hieroglyphic script)) which has a feminine infinitive displaying a final {t}. The conjugated stem of prj.t is written as {pr} though we can be sure that the final radical /j/ actually existed because of sporadic writings of it and because the infinitive of this verb is feminine. If one learns the conjugated base of prj.t first, one will learn it as {pr} and this does not give the student enough information about the nature of the verb. However, if one learns the infinitive {prt} *prj.t first, one will be learning the category of the verb along with its meaning. This is one improvement I would like to make over Gardiner. If you wish to be guinea pigs and attempt to learn Egyptian through the exercises I have been developing up til now, as I said before, I am willing to let you have a try at it. Sincerely, Geoffrey Graham ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 09 Feb 1997 19:47:19 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL A complete beginner At 04:31 PM 97/02/09 +0000, you wrote: > >As a complete beginner to hieroglyphs, I wondered whether anyone could >suggest a good 'basic' text which I can work with (Gardner seems a little >advanced for my needs at the moment!) >Hope some kind academic will take pity on a poor soul... > I hope you don't object to someone other than a professional Egyptologist making suggestions. I have been gradually learning Middle Egyptian on my own, and have in the process looked at a good number of books and other resources, trying to find one that wasn't too intimidating, or difficult to read. I am not sure if you are aware of two web sites aimed at beginners which might be useful to you: 1) Serge Rosmorduc's excellent introduction to reading hieroglyphs and simple formulaic inscriptions (unfortunately never completed) at: http://www.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~rosmord/EgyptienE.html 2) Egyptologica Vlaanderen's "Reading Hieroglyphs-The First Steps," a series of lessons which is being (slowly!) added to. This is at: http://www.netvision.be/egyptologica/e_hiero.htm In terms of textbooks, etc., a couple which are less intimidating (and perhaps less expensive that Gardiner too!) are: 1) _Introducing Egyptian Hieroglyphs_ by Barbara Watterson. I think this book takes the right speed and approach for the novice in its series of 11 lessons, with exercises and answers, and Egyptian-English and English-Egyptian word lists. The down side is that the hieroglyphs are hand drawn and her calligraphy is (in my opinion, which I admit is biased by reading the ancient scribes' "Hieroglyphic Bookhand") terrible. She also wrote a second volume, _More About Egyptian Hieroglyphs_, which unfortunately is not nearly as easy to use, and the handwritten hieroglyphs become a serious impediment ate times. 2) I know a number of people are going to jump all over me for suggesting this one, but here goes... _Egyptian Hieroglyphic Grammar_ by S.A.B. Mercer, available from Ares Publishers for US$15. This was written in 1926, about the same time as the first edition of Gardiner's grammar, so it might be considered somewhat out of date. However, when (sometime around Middle Bronze II) I was originally trying to learn from Gardiner, I used this book as a learning aid, and found that they had a lot in common in terms of their approach to and understanding of Egyptian. It is a lot smaller than Gardiner, and has a "chrestomathy" (selection of readings) at the end which is quite good. The hieroglyphs are all typeset, which is an advantage. It is however dated in terms of the transliterations of a number of words, and its approach to the Egyptian verbs is, like Gardiner, now considered inadequate. 3)_Middle Egyptian Grammar_ by Dr. James Hoch, is only available from the author (in a somewhat unfinished state) at: james_hoch@campuslife.utoronto.ca This is a modern grammar designed as a teaching textbook. It is much easier to read than Gardiner, and isn't nearly as heavy! This is the principal textbook from which I am attempting to learn Middle Egyptian. Pedagogically, I think it has a number of flaws, but I definitely recommend it to anyone seriously interested. I hope theses suggestions are of use to all those on the list who are currently struggling with the first steps in learning the Egyptian language. Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 09 Feb 1997 22:28:53 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL A complete beginner As sort of a post scriptum to the message I sent on this topic earlier, I wanted to add a comment on Budge's much maligned book _Egyptian Language: Easy Lessons in Egyptian Hieroglyphs_. While it is true that a lot of the information in this book is outdated, as far as I am concerned, its primary sin is that it is almost useless as a tool for learning anything. Budge also published many other books which have become available cheaply (I presume because copyright on them had lapsed). While a lot of the information in these is dated, there is still much useful stuff there once you know what to discount. These cheap editions make many hieroglyphic texts easily available which otherwise would be out of the reach of most of us non-Egyptologists. Just remember to pretty much ignore his transcriptions and translations. Good practice! Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 20:57:40 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian Hello, Mark, Thank you for your response. > Thanks for starting the ball rolling towards developing a > transliteration scheme. I think it would be an excellent idea to > include a perhaps condensed version of your post in the list's > introductory message. You are welcome. You can use what you like of what I have written for the introductory message. If you want to use the Manuel de codage system that will work fine too, but it does have a few glitches. Though I am not sure that they will be that big of a stumbling block for people at beginning stages. > Over the next few weeks I hope to put together a web page which could > include the same information, perhaps with hieroglyphs added. If you need materials for web pages, let me know. I have some things that might be of use. Sincerely, Geoffrey Graham ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 09 Feb 1997 19:47:16 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian At 05:36 PM 97/02/09 -0600, you wrote: >Allow me to ask Mr. Graham what benefits he perceives in his system of >transliteration over against the very similar "Manual de Codage" developed by >the CCER in Utrecht? For example, Mr. Graham proposes (<) for /'ayn/ (the >pharyngeal voiced fricative often represented in Egyptian as the "arm sign"), >whereas the Manual uses (A). I can see no particular value in one against the >other, except that of consistency. Does anyone hold a strong opinion? > For myself, I generally tend to use the Manuel de Codage format for ASCII transliterations. The standard proposed by Mr. Graham is fine, however: 1) I personally prefer not to use "j" to represent whatever sound the leaf represented, since whatever it was I'm sure it was NOT the sound represented by "j" in English, or French, or Spanish.... Using "i" instead comes a little closer in most languages using the Roman alphabet. (Within the Manuel format there is variation as to whether to use "i" or "j".) 2) The Manuel format has links to the system for entry of hieroglyphic text into WinGlyph (CCER), and I believe also into MacScribe(CCER) and InScribe (Saqqare Technologies). This could be important when we want to specify exactly what the spelling of a word is. Of course this leads to the unfortunate necessity of having at least occasional recourse to Gardiner numbers for some signs. If people wish I can post more details, but I prefer to keep this message from become over long. Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 01:41:18 -0800 (PST) To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Molly Walzer Subject: Re: AEL A complete beginner Hello! From another complete beginner. I contacted the Oriental Institute, Chicago, who is offering a correspondence course called Hieroglyphics by mail. This is their bibliography: Required text: Gardiner, Alan. Egyptian Grammar. Oxford, Griffith institute AShmolean Museum, 1957. Optional texts: Faulkner, R.A. A concise dictionary of Middle Egyptian. Oxford, Griffith (etc.), 1964. Fischer, H. Ancient Egyptian calligraphy. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979. These are listed in Amazon.com, as is another title someone else mentioned: Zauzich, Karl-Theodor. Hieroglyphics without mystery. Univ. of Texas Press, 1992 ($14.95 pbk.) I was fortunate enough to find Gardiner in a used book store; it's beautiful &, I agree, somewhat daunting for the neophyte. I also downloaded the demo & 4700 glyphs from the CCER site - the difference between the demo & the purchased version of WinGlyph is about $250 and a line through the demo glyphs. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than myself can think of a means to utilize this. Awaiting developments with interest, I am Molly Walzer mwalzer@pacbell.net >Dear All > >As a complete beginner to hieroglyphs, I wondered whether anyone could >suggest a good 'basic' text which I can work with (Gardner seems a little >advanced for my needs at the moment!) >Hope some kind academic will take pity on a poor soul... > > >Andrew Stokell > > ============================================================================== From: akirklan@unlgrad1.unl.edu (Alan Kirkland) Subject: Re: AEL A complete beginner To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 09:47:38 -0600 (CST) Stephen and the rest of the list, E.A. Wallis Budge did an awful lot of work towards presenting the wonders of Egyptian literature in hierogl;yphic to the lay public. While this is indeed dated material, as Stephen notes it is one of the best inexpensive sources of a large body of texts in hieroglyphic. Thge thing we have to remember is that Budge was neither a dedicated Egyptologist (in the exclusive sense of academia) nor an archaeological philologist. He was the Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum during the latter half of the nineteenth century. His primary focus was acquisition of choice antiquities for the Museum and to publicise that material in the best way possible. In light of these aims, he achieved them quite well. However, because of this popular approach, he also managed to pass himself off as an expert in the immensely popular area of Egyptology at a time when the discipline was just getting on its feet. One has to take his works at their period face value, andf not try to give them credence where they are not applicable. Budge's works on the Papyrus of Ani, the "Easy Lessons in Hieroglyphic", "The Rosetta Stone", "Hieroglyphic Legends of the Egyptian Gods", and many others are thanks to Dover Publications easily and inexpensively available in one's B & N Bookstore. They have value not so much as instructional tomes but as text record repositories. A large body of the literature in Egyptology was written at a time when the prevailing attitudes were not near as informed nor as (hopefully) enlightened as our own in this contemporary time. Certain bias in this body of scholarly work tends to creep out of the woodwork. Budge was a product of his age and century, not to mention his empire and gender. These things have to be taken into account when woprking with anything the gentleman wrote. Perhaps the best way to utilize these works is as reference books containing a number of delightful texts for translation. Thanks to the efforts of many Egyptologists, we have now a greater understanding of the ancient Egyptian written language than ever before. Budge's books have a great deal of value as long as one does the text the credit of personal translation. That is the essence of scholarly research anyway; to work dirrrectly with the texts of the ancient peoples and to strive towards greater understanding through what they have to say about themselves. The use of grammars is merely a part of the learning process, as those who have done us all the service of writing them will attest. No translation is perfect, and the best way to ultimately enjoy ancient Egyptian literature is to work through it oneself. Bon appetit, mes cher colleagues! There are yet great strides to be made in the area of producing textbooks that introduce the ancient Egyptian language on a level for the beginner. My hope is that that is one of the goals of discussion on this list; to better synthesize the body of grammatical and reference literature available for this marvellous and intricate language. AAll media bear investigation; check out Mike Dyall-Smith's program for the Macintosh "Scribe of KMT". It is one of the best tools to have come out since Gardiner's grammar for the beginner in the hieroglyphs. Cheers all, Alan -- "We stand on the shoulders of Giants, who were lifted up by Titans, and all we can and will accomplish we owe to them." Alan F.C.W. Kirkland University of Nebraska akirklan@unlgrad1.unl.edu ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises Date: Mon, 10 Feb 97 10:07:26 -0600 Colleagues, For Geoffrey Graham -- and since people on this list are friendly and courteous, let me start a "first name" custom (for those who do not already know one another) and say, call me "Phil." I could go into the reason for my legal name being "M. A. R. Barker," but I fear this would bore people -- it would certainly be "off-list." > I see the advantage only as representing the transcription characters > closer to the way they appear in books, and that one should not begin to > think of these signs as ever having represented vowels. Using {3} as > opposed to {a}, {<} as opposed to {A}, {j} as opposed to {i} will help to > maintain the student's concept of "consonant" as opposed to "vowel". I agree with you. The only value to using (A) for /'ayn/ (the pharyngeal voiced fricative) is that a capital "A" is somehow more familiar to me than the (<) symbol. I do agree that we must take steps to ensure that people *not* think of Egyptian graphemes as representing *vowels.* I believe another writer has urged (i) instead of (j), however. I don't think it makes a lot of difference -- most of us are familiar with various transliteration systems and can work from one or another as the need arises. I can even still read old Budge without blanching! (He did indeed put out a large number of important texts, and the paperback publishers have made these available in cheap format -- whatever you think of his pedagogy!) > I would be happy to help in any way possible. I have developed many > exercises for learning Egyptian over the years, and if someone has a > scanner and could start a web page I would be happy to submit them so that > they can be used by the internet-using public. Let me ask our computer mavens out there if it is not possible to send hieroglyphic texts as "enclosures" through e-mail. I use Popmail, and I have successfully sent many texts in odd scripts -- including both documents and applications (such as games). All one does is put your piece into a programme like "Dropstuff 4.0"; then when the receiver gets it, it is run through "Stuffitexpander 4.02." This turns it back into its original form that can be read. This may not work across ^platforms," however: e.g. from a Mac to a Unix to a DOS machine. Does anybody know more? If you require, I can ask a friend who has done a lot of this kind of work. It is also easily possible to use Adobe Acrobat to produce a "PDF" document that can be read across platforms. I am not too fond of Acrobat because it sometimes rejects some of my fonts and won't encode a document, but it *does* work. I, for one, would *love* to see your exercises! > One method of instruction which I have been attempting to develop is the > presentation of nominal sentence structures before the introduction of the > verbal system. This is because the Middle Egyptian verbal system is > exceedingly difficult. There are various non-verbal ways of expressing > sentences using infinitives. The course I have been developing introduces > these before introducing the verb. Interesting. This approach may work! Older courses have tended to start with verbal forms because the sDm=f form *looks* easy -- ignoring Polotksy and Loprieno and others who have given complex descriptions of its semantics and usage. There are two benefits to this > approach: 1) the student can learn things in a gradual progression which > does not strain his/her brain unduly to begin with. 2) the infinitives of > different kinds of verbs have markers which distinguish certain of the > different verbal classes from one another. If one is introduced to the > infinitives first, one will not later have problems remembering to which > verb class a given verb belongs. Good idea. > Example: sDm "hear" is a strong verb and therefore has a masculine > infinitive (on the surface this verb's infinitive and its conjugated > verbal form appear identically in writing as {sDm}), while prj.t "go > forth" (written {prt}) is a third-weak verb (the third radical is /j/ (a > weak or unstable consonant which is often ommitted in the hieroglyphic > script)) which has a feminine infinitive displaying a final {t}. The > conjugated stem of prj.t is written as {pr} though we can be sure that the > final radical /j/ actually existed because of sporadic writings of it and > because the infinitive of this verb is feminine. If one learns the > conjugated base of prj.t first, one will learn it as {pr} and this does > not give the student enough information about the nature of the verb. > However, if one learns the infinitive {prt} *prj.t first, one will be > learning the category of the verb along with its meaning. Absolutely right on. I myself do not find the alternation between prj and pr difficult: it is somewhat similar to Classical Arabic, which I studied for some years. It may confuse others, however, and your idea sounds good. > If you wish to be guinea pigs and attempt to learn Egyptian through the exercises I have been developing up til now, as I said before, I am willing to let you have a try at it.> Love to. I make a great guinea pig, although I differ significantly in physiognomy... :-) Try sending me a few lessons as an e-mail "enclosure," and I'll tell you if I can read it. You can do this off-list, if you wish. Regards to all, Phil ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 11:09:03 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: cejo@midway.uchicago.edu (Charles E. Jones) Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian Thanks to Geoffrey Graham for his explanation of this phonological transliteration scheme. Seconding M. A. R. Barker and others, I note, however, that it would simplify matters greatly if we used the Manuel de Codage scheme for graphemic transcription. The best argument for using that rather than what Geoffrey Graham uses is that the major on-line databases [Beinlich Word index, Coffin Texts, Prosopographia Aegypti, and so on] all use this scheme. It was adopted by many Egyptologists and published already nearly a decade and a half ago in: Author..... Buurman, Jan; Nicolas Grimal; Michael Hainsworth; Jochen Hallof, and Dirk van der Plas Title...... Inventaire des signes hieroglyphiques en vue de leur saisie informatique Subtitle... Manuel de codage des textes hieroglyphiques en vue de leur saisie sur ordinateur / Manuel for the Encoding of hieroglyphic Texts for Computer-Input / Leitfaden zur Verschlusseling hieroglyphischer Texte fur die Computer-Angabe Place...... Paris Publisher.. Imprimerie Lienhart & Cie; Diffusion de Boccard Date....... 1984, 1986, 1988 Collation.. 215 pages Subject.... Memoirs de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Series..... Informatique et Egyptologie; v. 2 You'll also find the basic scheme outlined at the home pages of the various projects, among them: http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/egypt/test/beinlich.html and http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/ccer/ But note that the actual Manuel de Codage is a book of more than 200 pages of which the scheme used in these databases covers precisely four lines on a single page (page 23). I'd sugest that those of you who're interested dig it out of the library and have a look. On the other hand, as the Chairman (and Geoffrey) said, let a thousand flowers bloom. ;-) -Chuck Jones- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Charles E. Jones Research Archivist - Bibliographer The Oriental Institute - Chicago 1155 E. 58th St. Chicago IL 60637-1569 Voice (312) 702-9537 Fax (312) 702-9853 cejo@midway.uchicago.edu http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/DEPT/RA/ABZU/ABZU.HTML ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL A complete beginner Date: Mon, 10 Feb 97 09:24:33 -0600 For Mr. Andrew Stokell, A text that "works" for many beginners is Karl-Theodor Zauzich, "Hieroglyphs without Mystery," Translated by Ann Macy Roth, University of Texas Press,1992. This paperback is attractively produced and nicely orgaqnised. It does not take the student very far, however. For a "serious" college/university level course check out James E. Hoch, "Middle Egyptian Grammar," Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, final publication pending, Toronto, Canada. Write to him at the University of Toronto at the following e-mail address: James_Hoch@mail.campuslife.utoronto.ca. He has spiral bound "prepublication" copies for sale. I happen to like this textbook very much. There are others, but these two appeal to me. Regards, Prof. M. A. R. Barker ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 19:07:16 +0000 Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian > If you need materials for web pages, let me know. I have some things that > might be of use. I could certainly use any materials or suggestions you may have. I have 5M of web space available, but no scanner. If you can get someone to scan your exercises, I'd be more than willing to put them up onto the web. Mark. ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 11:24:18 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises At 08:53 PM 97/02/09 -0500, you wrote: >I have developed many >exercises for learning Egyptian over the years, and if someone has a >scanner and could start a web page I would be happy to submit them so that >they can be used by the internet-using public. > I have access to a scanner and MAY be able to set up web pages (I'm not certain about that, depends partly on space requirements) on my college account. Alternatively, if someone else can host a website but doesn't have scanning facilities, I can probably do the scanning and transmit the files. >There are two benefits to this >approach: 1) the student can learn things in a gradual progression which >does not strain his/her brain unduly to begin with. 2) the infinitives of >different kinds of verbs have markers which distinguish certain of the >different verbal classes from one another. If one is introduced to the >infinitives first, one will not later have problems remembering to which >verb class a given verb belongs. > This is a rather interesting idea, and I would definitely be interested to see what you have developed on these lines. >Example: sDm "hear" is a strong verb and therefore has a masculine >infinitive (on the surface this verb's infinitive and its conjugated >verbal form appear identically in writing as {sDm}), while prj.t "go >forth" (written {prt}) is a third-weak verb (the third radical is /j/ (a >weak or unstable consonant which is often ommitted in the hieroglyphic >script)) which has a feminine infinitive displaying a final {t}. The >conjugated stem of prj.t is written as {pr} though we can be sure that the >final radical /j/ actually existed because of sporadic writings of it and >because the infinitive of this verb is feminine. I am rather suspicious of a number of the third-weak verbs, prj being one of them, that they are actually derived from a strong root with a terminal r which was weakened to a glottal stop or silent, e.g. prr -> pr'. In any case for many of these verbs I strongly suspect that what is represented by the j is actually an essentially unsupported vowel sound of some flavour or other. The behaviour of these verbs show a lot in common with the Hebrew lamed-he and lamed-aleph verbs. There appear also to be some verbs thrown into this class whcih it seems probably did end in and actual consonant sound like our y, but these do not form feminine infinitives. These would under your system of teaching distinguish themselves quite clearly. In any case, I am quite interested to see what you have developed. I have a feeling that those of us who are in the throes of learning, or have recently learned, a subject may frequently have a clearer idea of how to improve teaching methods that those who have been long away from the original learning process. And for textbooks, I think that people who are trying t learn from them without a teacher are probably clearest on how they could be better written. Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 20:46:26 +0000 Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises > I have access to a scanner and MAY be able to set up web pages (I'm > not certain about that, depends partly on space requirements) on my > college account. Alternatively, if someone else can host a website > but doesn't have scanning facilities, I can probably do the scanning > and transmit the files. Stephen, Thanks for your offer! I have 5M web space available. If you can scan them and send them to me, I can make them available on a web page. Mark. ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 08:02:45 +1100 From: Michael Dyall-Smith Subject: AEL Re: G. Graham's teaching ma To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Reply to: Re> G. Graham's teaching material Mark, Geoffrey, A volunteer is needed?? If you send me copies of the material, I can scan, and probably mock up the web pages fairly readily. A program that may be of some use here is Adobe Acrobat (I have the full program). This takes a typeset document, and puts it up (with no changes) as a web document. The only hassle is the netscape plug-in (freely available) to view PDF files, but in my experience (so far) it works like a charm. Regards, Mike Dyall-Smith Melbourne, Australia -------------------------------------- Date: 11/2/97 7:51 AM To: Michael Dyall-Smith From: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk > If you need materials for web pages, let me know. I have some things that > might be of use. I could certainly use any materials or suggestions you may have. I have 5M of web space available, but no scanner. If you can get someone to scan your exercises, I'd be more than willing to put them up onto the web. Mark. ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 14:00:29 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL A complete beginner At 09:47 AM 97/02/10 -0600, you wrote: >Budge's works on >the Papyrus of Ani, the "Easy Lessons in Hieroglyphic", "The Rosetta >Stone", "Hieroglyphic Legends of the Egyptian Gods", and many others >are thanks to Dover Publications easily and inexpensively available in >one's B & N Bookstore. They have value not so much as instructional >tomes but as text record repositories. I would like to add another of Budge's books that I recently (and cheaply) added to my library - The Mummy: Funeral Rites and Customs in Ancient Egypt. It contains among other things examples of inscriptions on scarabs and ushabtis of various periods, as well as many other brief texts that I know of no other easily available source of. >"We stand on the shoulders of Giants, who were lifted up by Titans, >and all we can and will accomplish we owe to them." I sort of hope that even standing on the shoulders of midgets like me can give people a bit of a leg up to higher things! Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ============================================================================== From: akirklan@unlgrad1.unl.edu (Alan Kirkland) Subject: AEL AS regards beginning instruction texts To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 16:43:08 -0600 (CST) Phil and the rest of the list, It has been my pleasure to have had the acquaintance of Dr. Hoch and his grammar for over two years. Just this past semester I and Thomas Rinkevich here at the University of Nebraska (Dep[t. of Classics) have been using it to teach Egyptian to first year students. One of the problems with James' textbook is that it doesn't really preach to the unconverted. By this I mean that, like Gardiner before him, Hoch makes several basic assumptions about the level of comprehension of the student. Some of the students I had in the 101 class in the Fall were not prepared in previous foreign languages for things like case, number, and gender for nouns. the same with tense, mood, aspect, and voice for verbs. I literally had to back up and start from a wholly different approach to the notion of getting the structure of Egyptian morphology and syntax across to them. Now I'm thankful. Hoch's grammar does indeed incorporate many fine and necessary additions to the understanding of the grammar of written Egyptian. But the basic pedagogy is still lacking for the students educated in the twentieth century; i.e. it still makes the assumption of a certain level of knowledge. Herein lies the problem between academic and non-academic grammar/textbook approaches to teaching ancient Egyptian. The basic problems lie in the use of abstract exercises based on the layout of the grammatical lessons. Egyptian is a context-driven language. That is to say that it uses the force of the composition to drive the syntactical meaning of individual sentence constructions. It is terribly hard for a student to learn a language that has no living speakers or current composers in a series of dry and concocted exercises. This is certainly not how the ancient Egyptians taught their scribal candidates in the schools from which we have examples of exercises. They taught their written language by using a two-pronged approach; first the signs and their calligraphic forms, then grammar by copying extant texts. There were no (to our state of present knowledge) teaching grammars by the folks who invented and used the language, as in the case of the Greeks or Arabs. Grammar and syntactical rules were taught and reinforced through the copying of examples, much in the way we learn typing or form letters in business. I have been teaching Egyptian on the approach of 1) learn the signs, 2) learn the grammar through copying and translating texts, and 3) gaining an ever-increasing vocabulary through active usage. I would be interested to hear what the rest of the group thinks of this, and whether or not it seems to be a viable method. All I know is that it works. I also use Mike Dyall-Smith's "Scribe of KMT" program. Comments anyone? Cheers, Alan -- "We stand on the shoulders of Giants, who were lifted up by Titans, and all we can and will accomplish we owe to them." Alan F.C.W. Kirkland University of Nebraska akirklan@unlgrad1.unl.edu ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 19:18:53 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian Hi, Mark, > I could certainly use any materials or suggestions you may have. I > have 5M of web space available, but no scanner. If you can get > someone to scan your exercises, I'd be more than willing to put them > up onto the web. Sounds great to me. However, I have just discovered that my materials are in a bad way at the moment. What I had done was still in progress and I only have _light_ dot-matrix print-outs with pen-written editing marks all over them. I have changed computer format since I produced them, and I cannot get MacScribe to work for me. What I need to do is reinstall all my old fonts, and hope and pray that the computer will recognize everything the same as when they were created. Then, I will want to do some editing and additions, and finally laser print them, and scan them, etc. This might entail a bit of time. However, if whoever has the scanner can take it piecemeal, one lesson at a time, then I think it is possible to at least start with something. If nothing else, I can always send some hand-written materials. My hieroglyphic hand is relatively good, kind of like Sethe's but slightly neater. Oh, I don't suppose anyone on here still needs the basic monoliteral signs at this point? And most of you must be familiar with a few biliterals and determinatives? I was hoping to send the first reading passage and its accompanying vocabulary. It seems to me that once that were up on the web, if anyone had questions about how the words were spelled in Egyptian, we could discuss it on the list, and learn collectively. Also, I am sure that some people will already be too advanced for the first lesson. Be patient. And, of course, other people should put up whatever they like. Nobody should feel trapped doing only what I suggest. It would be really great if we could get several things all going at once, designed by different people, at different levels with different content. We would only stand to learn so much more that way. For that matter we could even put up excercises from Gardiner, or would that be illegal? I never thought about that. I wonder. Geoff ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 19:36:32 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises Hello, Stephen, Thanks for the interesting response. > I am rather suspicious of a number of the third-weak verbs, prj being one of > them, that they are actually derived from a strong root with a terminal r > which was weakened to a glottal stop or silent, e.g. prr -> pr'. In any > case for many of these verbs I strongly suspect that what is represented by > the j is actually an essentially unsupported vowel sound of some flavour or > other. The behaviour of these verbs show a lot in common with the Hebrew > lamed-he and lamed-aleph verbs. There appear also to be some verbs thrown > into this class whcih it seems probably did end in and actual consonant > sound like our y, but these do not form feminine infinitives. These would > under your system of teaching distinguish themselves quite clearly. You are quite right in most of your perceptions. The third weak verb is a standard feature of Arabic, and they behave similarly in Arabic and Egyptian. I have studied many years of Arabic too. It is one of my very favorite languages in the world. Another standard feature of Arabic and most Afroasiatic languages is the "hollow verb". I firmly believe that Egyptian had these as well, but there are Egyptologists who would hotly debate the point. My contention is that the supposedly "biliteral" verbs all had weak consonants in the middle postion. There is ample Coptic evidence to support this supposition, yet many Egyptologists stubbornly hold onto the idea of biliteral verbs, refusing to see Egyptian as that close to the Semitic languages. Of course, I am not going to propound any "off the wall" interpretations here, and when I refer to these verbs I will respectfully use the Gardinerian terminology. :) And you are right to suspect the effect of /r/s which have evolved into /j/s. The only thing to watch out for are certain verbs that actually have /j/ as a STRONG radical. Those verbs, such as 3mj "mix", smj "report", and swj "drink" come from more recently corrupted "third-r" verbs. (3mr, smr, zwr) Back to the topic of real third-weak verbs, the point is that if you learn them as third-weak verbs in the first place, instead of learning them without knowing what type of verb they are, as Gardiner presents them, and then later introduces third-weak verbs and suddenly informs you that all these verbs you have learned up til now were actually of quite different classes, then you will not have any problem at all with this feature of Egyptian. Yours, Geoff Graham ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 19:48:02 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Re: G. Graham's teaching ma Hi, Michael! How are you? Nice to see you here. Sounds good. I am sure you have been following what I have said about the materials' present state. Yours, Geoff ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 18:59:03 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian Hello, Chuck, Nice to see you here too. > Thanks to Geoffrey Graham for his explanation of this phonological > transliteration scheme. Seconding M. A. R. Barker and others, I note, > however, that it would simplify matters greatly if we used the Manuel de > Codage scheme for graphemic transcription. The best argument for using Thank you for the information. Obviously, there are many systems in use, and each scholar has his own approach to various aspects of transliteration, such as whether one transcribes exactly what is written or what the most standard reconstructable form of the word should be. Example: a scribe has written: {jwfnjwjjdptnbtf} Suppose that based on the context and the determinatives, you know that he intended to say: "He was coming toward the boat of his lord". Do you separate things out but still spell them as the scribe did... jw=f n jwj j dp.t nb.t=f Or do you correct the scribe's budding Late Egyptian back to more standard Middle Egyptian for him... jw=f m jw.t r dp.t nb=f The first technique will be more valuable to people who are attempting to observe the actual state of the language at the time that the text was written, while the second method will impart more clear meaning to more people, who have learned standard Middle Egyptian. If you are transliterating for yourself, then you need to do it however it makes most sense to you. After all, transliteration is a kind of note telling yourself or someone else the phonetic and sentential content of an inscription. There should be some happy medium between what is actually written and what will impart the most meaning about what is written. This is why some Egyptologists will write third-weak verbs without their final radicals (afterall, the Egyptians usually wrote them that way), while others will carefully reconstruct every known piece of information into their transcriptions. Both ways have their benefits and their pitfalls. But, I think it is a good thing to familiarize oneself with multiple approaches. This way, we will be able to move from one scholar's work to another's without becoming confused. Similarly, it is good to look at hieroglyphs in various hand writings and media. The hieroglyphs appear as they do in Gardiner's font only in monumental inscriptions of the early Eighteenth Dynasty. If we really want to read Egyptian, we need to look at many different styles of writing, everything from hieroglyphic book-hand to deeply cut inscriptions on Giant Ramesside colossi, and not to forget the varied hands of all the Egyptologists who have copied down writings from hieratic and other media. Most of us use a combination of these approaches, and vary our technique depending on our mood and the occasion. It is healthy to be familiar with more than one approach to transcription. Therefore, why don't we just use whatever we feel most comfortable using, so long as we all explain in some fashion anything that differs significantly from Gardiner, the Manuel de Codage, or other systems with which most of us would be familiar. Sincerely, Geoff ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 19:45:18 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises Hello, Phil, Good message. > I agree with you. The only value to using (A) for /'ayn/ (the pharyngeal voiced > fricative) is that a capital "A" is somehow more familiar to me than the (<) > symbol. I do agree that we must take steps to ensure that people *not* think of You should go ahead and use what works best for you. We should put more than one system up on that page, so that people can see their equivalence. > Let me ask our computer mavens out there if it is not possible to send > hieroglyphic texts as "enclosures" through e-mail. I use Popmail, and I have I unfortunately don;t know about these things. > Interesting. This approach may work! Older courses have tended to start with > verbal forms because the sDm=f form *looks* easy -- ignoring Polotksy and > Loprieno and others who have given complex descriptions of its semantics and > usage. Well, it would be fun to try it at least. > Absolutely right on. I myself do not find the alternation between prj and pr > difficult: it is somewhat similar to Classical Arabic, which I studied for some > years. It may confuse others, however, and your idea sounds good. Oh dear, I must have mixed up postings, and answered the info on Arabic in the last message. I hope I did not offend anyone. Anyway, you are quite right. Or, did both of you mention Arabic??? I seem to be rather confused. I presntly have the flu, this is why I am home with my computer so much right now. I am usually too busy for all this email. :) > Try sending me a few lessons as an e-mail "enclosure," and I'll tell you if I > can read it. You can do this off-list, if you wish. I wish I knew how. See my other post about their present condition. I think we will have to scan from hand-written versions at first, until I get some things worked out on my new computer. Yours, Geoff ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL AS regards beginning instruction texts Date: Mon, 10 Feb 97 23:12:03 -0600 Dear Alan and Colleagues, I admit to a little puzzlement about my posts to this list. I have sent several messages, but when I fetch my e-mail, I see only *your* letters but not mine, although I do see occasinal quotes from my messages. Vrious other lists show copies of the poster's letters, as well as responses to him/her; this allows us to maintain continuity. I do keep copies, so nothing is lost, but confusion reigns when I try to recall whether I have said something before or not! Is this what we are to expect? Or have I forgotten to set some option or something? -- Apologies for deviating from our topic! Let me turn to Alan's comments on James Hoch. > One of the problems with James' textbook is that it doesn't really > preach to the unconverted. By this I mean that, like Gardiner before > him, Hoch makes several basic assumptions about the level of > comprehension of the student. Some of the students I had in the 101 > class in the Fall were not prepared in previous foreign languages for > things like case, number, and gender for nouns. the same with tense, > mood, aspect, and voice for verbs. I literally had to back up and > start from a wholly different approach to the notion of getting the > structure of Egyptian morphology and syntax across to them. This is sadly true of many modern students. I taught Arabic, Urdu, and Baluchi (the latter two from my own textbooks) for many years, and the degree of unpreparedness of our North American students was as you say, Alan, woeful. I believe that we *have* to start with what we have. -- And we have to maintain an appropriate academic standard. If, in one academic year, we manage to teach only the script -- or just part of it in a language with a script as complex as Egyptian! -- plus a few paradigms and a few dozen lexemes of vocabulary, then I think we're in trouble. Students ask me, "Why can't we read something as complex as the kids in French, Spanish, or German are doing?" This same question is put by critical administrators as well, often with repercussions on funding and support. Some colleagues leaned over backwards to cut us "funny language" teachers some slack, but this becomes increasingly difficult as more and more emphasis is placed upon "standardised" tests and standards that work across a whole bundle of languages. My point here is indeed relevant to Egyptian. At one end of the spectrum we find very nicely printed teaching materials that do not provide enough of the language to permit the student to read "real" texts: e.g. Zauzich, Watterson. At the other end, Gardiner looms like an unclimbable pyramid, expecting students to have already mastered nuances of grammar (voice, mood, singular, plural, tense - - etc.), all written in serious, adult, professional English, and supplied with only a handful of exercises that quickly become too difficult for anybody to solve without a "guru." Mr. Malek of the Griffith Institute kindly put up the solutions to the first 9 of Gardiner's exercises but has since not posted any more -- something I regret deeply. Having struggled through Gardiner myself for over 40 years, I know what it means to endure frustration all too well! This is why I welcome James Hoch's book. He *does* tend to be more Gardineresque than otherwise; he uses grammatical terms and technical language; his exercises are largely the old-fashioned "translate into English/Egyptian"; etc. But he is intelligible, with a minimum of jargon, and enough material to allow a student to go through his book and move on. I am told -- Alan can say whether this be so or not -- that Professor Hoch has a sheaf of further exercises and drills that he uses in class but cannot include in his book for reasons of space. I urge him to publish these -- even in xerox or mimeograph form -- so that we may benefit. > Hoch's grammar does indeed incorporate many > fine and necessary additions to the understanding of the grammar of > written Egyptian. But the basic pedagogy is still lacking for the > students educated in the twentieth century; i.e. it still makes the > assumption of a certain level of knowledge. Herein lies the problem > between academic and non-academic grammar/textbook approaches to > teaching ancient Egyptian. The basic problems lie in the use of > abstract exercises based on the layout of the grammatical lessons. Yes! I agree. This may be where Geoffrey Graham can be of great service. Others can help as well. All together we should be able to put a selection of exercises at various levels up on the List. I certainly hope so. > Egyptian is a context-driven language. That is to say that it > uses the force of the composition to drive the syntactical meaning of > individual sentence constructions. It is terribly hard for a student > to learn a language that has no living speakers or current composers > in a series of dry and concocted exercises. All true. Worse, many teachers insist on real materials drawn from real texts. This often introduces uncommon vocabulary, new and unexplained grammatical points, and syntactic structures that are irrelevant to the exercise per se, but which one must include if one does not wish to "edit" the original. To some "edit" seems to mean "violate." This is certainly not how > the ancient Egyptians taught their scribal candidates in the schools > from which we have examples of exercises. They taught their written > language by using a two-pronged approach; first the signs and their > calligraphic forms, then grammar by copying extant texts. There were > no (to our state of present knowledge) teaching grammars by the folks > who invented and used the language, as in the case of the Greeks or > Arabs. Grammar and syntactical rules were taught and reinforced > through the copying of examples, much in the way we learn typing or > form letters in business, The major difference here is that the ancient Egyptian student already *knew* the language verbally and could thus proceed directly to the written form(s). We cannot. I have no experience of Greek or Latin grammars written by speakers of those tongues, but I can tell you that the great grammar of Sanskrit, composed by Panini, is one mean job to tackle! I have always wondered if some day we might find an Egyptian grammar written by and for contemporary ancient Egyptians -- and what would it be like? Would it even be of much use to us? Another related point: we should not, in my humble opinion, teach unfamiliar foreign languages to adult students in the same fashion that they are taught to children of those cultures. I thus do not advocate "baby language." I recall an Urdu text for foreigners that included sentences like, "I pick the mango," "I throw the ball," "Ahmad runs on the playing field," "We all see Ahmad," and the like. Such vocabulary is useless to adults, of course, but many American students found it appealing because of its simplicity -- then wondered why they couldn't understand what real adults around them were saying. The opposite is true of textbooks that are composed by native speakers in flowery, bookish, literary language: e.g. the student of "High Hindi," who learns jawbreaking Sanskrit compounds instead of the vernacular Hindi-Urdu known to all -- and then gets a wonderful reputation as the "office pundit," while remaining totally incapable of speaking to ordinary folk in the bazaar. Little of this, you say, is relevant to our new ancient Egyptian list. I bring in these extremes as examples of what I hope we are *not* doing or planning to do. Alan's point about translating and copying texts is perhaps the best method we have now; yet I hope that our colleagues will inspect coursebooks in other ancient languages where similar problems exist, and devise new and interesting exercises. On the Net, rather than in expensive book form on paper, we can experiment without having our words "written in stone," as it were. I have been teaching Egyptian on the approach of 1) learn the > signs, 2) learn the grammar through copying and translating texts, and > 3) gaining an ever-increasing vocabulary through active usage. I > would be interested to hear what the rest of the group thinks of this, > and whether or not it seems to be a viable method. All I know is that > it works. I also use Mike Dyall-Smith's "Scribe of KMT" program. > Comments anyone? Basically excellent. Sign learning is fundamental and crucial. After these are internalised, partially at least, we should go on to grammatical, syntactic, and lexical exercises and drills -- something we still have to construct, if somebody hasn't already done so. These materials must lead quickly to real cultural, historical, and literary texts that will hold the student's interest, reinforce patterns, add vocabulary, and lead to fluency (not, of course, verbal!). Okay, so I am a pedagogical idealist... With regards to all, Phil Barker ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises Date: Tue, 11 Feb 97 09:22:20 -0600 Dear Geoff, > > I am rather suspicious of a number of the third-weak verbs, prj being one > > of > > them, that they are actually derived from a strong root with a terminal r > > which was weakened to a glottal stop or silent, e.g. prr -> pr'. In any > > case for many of these verbs I strongly suspect that what is represented by > > the j is actually an essentially unsupported vowel sound of some flavour or > > other. The behaviour of these verbs show a lot in common with the Hebrew > > lamed-he and lamed-aleph verbs. There appear also to be some verbs thrown > > into this class which it seems probably did end in and actual consonant > > sound like our y, but these do not form feminine infinitives. These would > > under your system of teaching distinguish themselves quite clearly. Classical Arabic has sometimes been been described as a "normativising" language: i.e. if some items do not fit into a class of similars, some or all of the exceptions may be "normativised" to rid them of irregularities. I thus wonder if *every* Arabic biliteral root must necessarily be derived from an original triliteral root containing a weak consonant or a hamza (glottal stop). Another possibility is a geminated 3rd consonant: e.g. jalla/ jala:l- "be great,lofty." These are quite common in Arabic. If you postulate initial or medial weak consonants that have disappeared in written Egyptian, then perhaps we should take a good look at the possibility of geminated roots as well. The problem of morhpologically geminated roots also arises in Egyptian: e.g. pr(y) and prr. Are there not some Semitic languages which display *original* biliteral roots: i.e. roots which consist of two consonants and no evidence whatsoever of a third "weak" root letter anywhere? I shall have to check my notes on this because I may be right out wrong! The shift of consonantal /r/ to /h/ and then to zero is widespread: e.g. British "father" and "car" with final vowels that cannot be represented by phonetic symbols because of e-mail limitations; Bostonese American does much the same but with phonetically differenty final vowels. I imagine that ancient Egyptian would sound much different than we moderns may think! Rather like representations of "southern" American English dialect: "suhthuhn, yew know, Suh!" On the question of "hollow verbs," I believe that Egyptian would certainly have had them, if indeed it had terminally weak verbs. I do not know if *all* supposedly biliteral verbs actually had a third weak consonant in between the first and third radicals. I'll wait for proof. I have also wondered whether the Egyptians ever tried to indicate long (stressed?) vowel qualities with /y/ and /w/? The name of the deity Anubis comes to mind as an example: this is usually transcribed as /inpw/ (or /jnpw/ if you like). Could not the final /w/ represent a long *medial* /u:/, as seen in Greek transcriptions: /anu:p-is/ > /anu:b-is/ with a voiceless stop becoming voiced beteen vowels? > Back to the topic of real third-weak verbs, the point is that if you learn > them as third-weak verbs in the first place, instead of learning them > without knowing what type of verb they are, as Gardiner presents them, and > then later introduces third-weak verbs and suddenly informs you that all > these verbs you have learned up til now were actually of quite different > classes, then you will not have any problem at all with this feature of > Egyptian. Correct, but you will also have to *unlearn* the third radical in environments where it is not manifested. Regards, Phil Barker ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: Hieroglyphic Fonts Date: Tue, 11 Feb 97 09:47:44 -0600 To All: If you need a hieroglyphic computer font, go to: http://babel.uoregon.edu/Yamada/guides.html I think they have both Mac and DOS formats. These can apparently be downloaded for free. This is not as neat as the CCER's "MacScribe," of course, but it does give you the glyphs,and if you want to get cute, you can go over into an art programme (e.g. Aldus Superpaint, Adobe Illustrator or Freehand, etc.) type your text, and then size, rearrange, and even redraw your glyphs manually. It's time-consuming but fun! Phil Barker ============================================================================== From: John Armstrong Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 09:34:02 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Hi and experience learning early vs late Egyptian Hi, I'm a linguist-turned-programmer and am trying to learn Egyptian in my spare time. I'm really glad to see this list. Thanks to Mark for setting it up, and to everyone for contributing. I'm finding the current discussion of how to learn and teach Egyptian very interesting, and would like to add something about my own experience. I started trying to learn Middle Egyptian a couple years ago, but realized after a while that I wasn't making much progress. Part of the problem was simply that I wasn't devoting much effort to the task, but part of it was that the task was intrinsically frustrating. The basic situation was that I was trying to learn a language that I couldn't see through the writing system. I sensed that underneath the hierogyphs there was all kinds of phonology and morphology going on, but between a total lack of writing of vowels and an incomplete writing of consonsants (especially "weak" consonants), I just couldn't tell what was happening. Then something happened that changed everything for me. I was flipping through Budge's Egyptian Language: Easy Lessons and I stumbled onto the extract from the 'Tale of the Two Brothers' at the end of Chapter III. I immediately saw from the interlinear translation that the language of the text was different from that which I had been previously studying. It was filled with particles that clearly marked the syntax. There were articles before the nouns, sentence particles and conjunctions at the beginning of main and subordinate clauses, prepositions before verbs (or rather the infinitives which served as verbs). The language actually looked learnable, even easy! I soon confirmed that the language of the 'Tale of Two Brothers' really was different from the language of Gardiner: it was New Egyptian. I learned that the attested forms of Egyptian fall into two main categories, early Egyptian including Old and Middle Egyptian and late Egyptian including New Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic, and inferred that the difference I had seen must be that between early and late Egyptian (or at least a part of it). I had looked briefly at Coptic in an earlier life, and remembered that it had the sort of syntax I was seeing in my little snippet of New Egyptian. Despite having read something to the contrary in some authority, I imagined that Demotic had to represent a stage of the language between New Egyptian and Coptic, and that it would show the same syntax. I checked the only Demotic text I had access to, namely the Demotic version of the decree on the Rosetta Stone, and found saw that it did. To make a long story short, I decided as a result of this experience to shift the focus of my Egyptian learning effort from early Egyptian to late Egyptian. I'm still moving very slowly, mostly because of lack of time, but I'm enjoying the process. The thing that really turns me one (hmm, do people still say that?) is the continuity from New Egyptian to Coptic. I realize that something like 1500 years separates the oldest New Egyptian and Christian Coptic and that the language had to change over that time, but I expect it changed pretty slowly compared to languages involved in major migrations and upheavals. Of course the really fascinating question is how much the language changed phonologically-- i.e. in pronunciation-- between New Egyptian and Coptic. I don't know the answer, but I like to think that there was reasonable continuity and that the pronunciation of New Egyptian was not totally different from that of Coptic. I would be interested to hear about other list members' views on late Egyptian. If people haven't previously investigated it, but would be interested in doing so, I would be glad to post a list of obtainable books that I have found useful. -- John John Armstrong Project Manager Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc. 411 Waverley Oaks Road Waltham, MA 02154 http://www.kurzweil.com Vce: 617-893-5151 x 312 Fax: 617-893-6525 Email: johnarm@kurzweil.com ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian Date: Tue, 11 Feb 97 09:31:02 -0600 Dear Geoff, > Sounds great to me. However, I have just discovered that my materials are > in a bad way at the moment. What I had done was still in progress and I > only have _light_ dot-matrix print-outs with pen-written editing marks all > over them. I have changed computer format since I produced them, and I > cannot get MacScribe to work for me. What is wrong with your MacScribe? I had forgotten that I have to press return after *each* keyed hieroglyph, and all I was getting were blank spaces. Dumb of me! Write to the CCER and describe your problem; they're good about helping. Do try sending us some materials! > Oh, I don't suppose anyone on here still needs the basic monoliteral signs > at this point? And most of you must be familiar with a few biliterals and > determinatives? I was hoping to send the first reading passage and its > accompanying vocabulary. It seems to me that once that were up on the > web, if anyone had questions about how the words were spelled in Egyptian, > we could discuss it on the list, and learn collectively. Excellent. I look forward to seeing your materials. > Also, I am sure that some people will already be too advanced for the > first lesson. Be patient. No-o-o problem! At my age, patience is all I've got that still works... > we could even put up excercises from Gardiner, or would that be illegal? I > never thought about that. I wonder. It is indeed illegal. But copyright lawsuits are hideously expensive, and when there is no financial loss to the aggrieved party, an American judge may just award the plaintiff $1.00 and tell the culprits not to do it again. I cannot say what a British judge might do. In any case, we can ask for permission from the current copyright holders. That would be better. Regards, Phil ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 20:17:51 +0000 Subject: AEL You should see your own emails come back from the list Dear Phil, > I admit to a little puzzlement about my posts to this list. I have sent several > messages, but when I fetch my e-mail, I see only *your* letters but not mine, I don't know why you don't see your own messages coming back from the list. The list server doesn't distinguish between yours and other people's messages when sending posts out to list members. Maybe they are lost in cyberspace somewhere!! Mark. ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:46:33 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: cejo@midway.uchicago.edu (Charles E. Jones) Subject: AEL Re: Gardiner Exercises Phil writes: >It is indeed illegal. But copyright lawsuits are hideously expensive, and when >there is no financial loss to the aggrieved party, an American judge may just >award the plaintiff $1.00 and tell the culprits not to do it again. I cannot >say >what a British judge might do. In any case, we can ask for permission from the >current copyright holders. That would be better. Chuck replies: I presume members of this list are aware that our colleagues at the Griffith Institute have prepared a key to the translation exercises in Gardiner: http://www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk/gri/8gramt.html Perhaps the Griffith, as the copyright holder, might be willing to do the exercises themselves. I might also point out that at 62 dollars (from the Oriental Institute Museum store: http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/SUQ/Suq_Store_Book.html), Gardiner is not a bad deal at all. -Chuck Jones- cejo@midway.uchicago.edu ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 21:20:23 +0000 From: Andrew Stokell To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Thank you! Just a quick word of thanks to all those who responded to my plea for a beginner's guide to hieroglyphics - I've got a lot of reading to do now! Back to lurking, but keep up the good work everyone. Regards Andrew Stokell ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:25:33 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises At 07:36 PM 97/02/10 -0500, you wrote: > >You are quite right in most of your perceptions. The third weak verb is a >standard feature of Arabic, and they behave similarly in Arabic and >Egyptian. I have studied many years of Arabic too. Having re-read my comments in your reply, they seem slightly chaotic and confused. My basic feeling is that within the classification "third-weak" there are actually several types of verb hidden, with different behaviours, including ones that should probably be classed as strong verbs with a "j" as their last radical. > Another standard feature of Arabic and >most Afroasiatic languages is the "hollow verb". I firmly believe that >Egyptian had these as well, but there are Egyptologists who would hotly >debate the point. My contention is that the supposedly "biliteral" verbs >all had weak consonants in the middle postion. I don't know about ALL bi-radical roots in Egyptian, but I suspect that many were (one that comes to mind is "mt" "die", I suspect there is a silent "w" in the middle there somewhere). I rather like the term "hollow verb" - I tend to think of the phenomenon as "ayin-weak" (actually ayin-waw and ayin-yod, for purists) from Hebrew grammar. Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Re: Gardiner Exercises Date: Tue, 11 Feb 97 19:20:06 -0600 Dear Chuck and List-members, > Chuck replies: > > I presume members of this list are aware that our colleagues at the > Griffith Institute have prepared a key to the translation exercises in > Gardiner: > > http://www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk/gri/8gramt.html Quite right, but Mr. Jaromir Malek, who is doing the key, has not published anything beyond Lesson 9. I wrote to him, and he expressed regret and said that he is currently busy on other projects but will get back to Gardiner. I fear we may want speedier progress than this. We also want to develop exercises of our own in hieroglyphic script. > I might also point out that at 62 dollars (from the Oriental Institute > Museum store: http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/SUQ/Suq_Store_Book.html), > Gardiner is not a bad deal at all. Right again! He's a very good deal. No one is advocating that anyone scan in exercises from Gardiner to use on this List. I think this came up in the context of *testing* the possibility of scanning and putting hieroglyphic texts up for our members. Some of our members lack the computer expertise necessary to scan and post foreign language materials. A short text for "training" is really all we need of anybody, and it could just as well be Budge as Gardiner. Nobody wants to violate copyrights, but almost all published ancient Egyptian texts are copyrighted. How are we going to obtain materials to put on the List unless we (a) violate copyrights,(b) hunt for copyright owners and beg for permission, or (c) write our own stuff? I have even found that some font- manufacturers are now refusing permission to let people put materials using their fonts on the Net because it is so easy to copy, download, and rip off their fonts! If this continues, we'll be writing our Egyptian by hand or going to transliterations in the commonest computer fonts (Geneva or New York)! Perhaps we'll have to carve our texts on stone slabs and ship them to each other .. Or some nice pottery ostraca, maybe? Anybody got a solution? I do think the Yamada font I wrote about this morning is freeware, but I'm not completely sure. I also urge that someone ask the CCER about texts written with MacScribe. Can we put them up? Linguists' Software in Washington State sent me a contract requiring me *not* to put materials in their fonts onto the Net -- unless it is just a few characters and not enough to download and steal. I then removed *all* of their fonts from my documents and from my computer and no longer use them. I do not want legal hassles. Chuck, is it possible for you to get permission for us to put up scans of University of Chicago Press materials (e.g. De Buck's "Coffin Texts," "The Tomb of Kheruef," etc.) I think we would need only 20-30 lines of text from any publication to serve as the foundation for exercises. I certainly do not wish to ruffle any feathers or muddy any waters (to mingle metaphors horribly). I want to do things absolutely legally. Our goal is to get something onto the Net that we can read and use. This is an honourable scholarly objective, and one would hope that the presses would understand and cooperate. We'd be most grateful, I am sure. Regards, Phil Barker ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 21:05:41 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises Hello, Phil, > Classical Arabic has sometimes been been described as a "normativising" > language: i.e. if some items do not fit into a class of similars, some or all of > the exceptions may be "normativised" to rid them of irregularities. I thus > wonder if *every* Arabic biliteral root must necessarily be derived from an > original triliteral root containing a weak consonant or a hamza (glottal stop). > Another possibility is a geminated 3rd consonant: e.g. jalla/ jala:l- "be > great,lofty." These are quite common in Arabic. If you postulate initial or > medial weak consonants that have disappeared in written Egyptian, then perhaps > we should take a good look at the possibility of geminated roots as well. The > problem of morhpologically geminated roots also arises in Egyptian: e.g. pr(y) > and prr. You are right, Classical Arabic grammar is normative. Yet, Egyptian clearly had second-genimating verbs as well. These are well attested. wnn, m33, qbb, etc. Like in the case of Arabic, the weak medial consonants in Egyptian are likely to be both /j/ (either /'/ OR /y/) and /w/. Dd "say" might actually be *Djd, wn "open" might be "wjn", etc. There is a rule wich dictates that closed syllables could only have short vowels in Egyptian, yet Coptic gives us forms like {O} "say",{wOn} "open", and {yOt} "father" If the original Egyptian equivalents of these words produced these writings, then it had to be either because they contained a weak consonant in the middle (*A'ad, *wA'an, *yA'at) or because there were final radicals which were later lost (*Adu/i, *wAnu/i *yAtu/i). Then there are also examples of words which exhibit extra consonants in the Coptic, which were not represented by the Egyptian. (Eg. Hm.t "wife", Hmw.t "wives" gives Coptic {hime}, {hyome} (the /y/ sound in the original word having come out)). > Are there not some Semitic languages which display *original* biliteral roots: > i.e. roots which consist of two consonants and no evidence whatsoever of a third > "weak" root letter anywhere? I shall have to check my notes on this because I > may be right out wrong! I believe not. There are Berber languages which apparently have verbs of only two radicals, but not any Semitic ones. In the case of Berber languages, we only have modern records to deal with. Unfortunately there are no ancient texts to examine, and these supposed biliteral verbs may all have hailed from original triliterals which had evolved from hollow verbs. > I have also wondered whether the Egyptians ever tried to indicate long > (stressed?) vowel qualities with /y/ and /w/? The name of the deity Anubis comes > to mind as an example: this is usually transcribed as /inpw/ (or /jnpw/ if you > like). Could not the final /w/ represent a long *medial* /u:/, as seen in Greek > transcriptions: /anu:p-is/ > /anu:b-is/ with a voiceless stop becoming voiced > beteen vowels? In the case of the history of the name "Anubis", the /U/ sound is generated from an original /A/ (long /a/) which has been altered due to the nasal /n/ sound in proximity. /n/ and /m/ produced the change from /A/ to /O/ and finally to /U/. The final {w} in {jnpw} is either a participial ending, or it represents a vocallic /u/ ending of masuline nouns. Look also at the examples of Khnum and Amun. These are names for which we can clearly document these changes. Cuneiform, Greek, and Coptic examples of them show us the clear development of /A/ to /O/ to /U/ (*xanAmu (Middle Egyptian) > *xenOm (Greek evidence) > *xnUbis (Coptic) (the {-is} ending is a Hellenicism, and Coptic shows a propensity for alternation between /m/ and /b/), and *'amAnu (Amarna Period Cuneiform evidence) > *'amOn (Classical Greek evidence) > *amUn (Coptic)). > Correct, but you will also have to *unlearn* the third radical in environments > where it is not manifested. Yet, there is reason to belive that the third-weak radicals wer actually present whether written or not. It is advisable to consider at least the possibility that they were there, and the student needs to keep third-weak verbal roots spearate in his/her mind nonetheless. Geoff ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 21:18:03 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Hi and experience learning early vs late Egyptian Hi, John, > I would be interested to hear about other list members' views on late > Egyptian. If people haven't previously investigated it, but would be > interested in doing so, I would be glad to post a list of obtainable > books that I have found useful. Yes, you have discovered a very important thing. In some European schools they teach Late Egyptian before Middle Egyptian, for just these reasons. Late Egyptian is much easier than Middle Egyptian. The only problem with learning Late Egyptian first is that the orthography is much more complex. The grammar is an analyitic, one not too dissimilar to that of English, whereas the grammars of Old and Middle Egyptian are synthetic ones, more like German and Latin. In the Nineteenth century people learned Coptic first and then worked their way back to Middle Egyptian. There are benefits to this approach, but unfortunately Late Egyptian was written exclusively in the hieratic script, which has its own problems. Geoff ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 01:39:02 -0500 (EST) From: NebetHet@aol.com To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian Em hotep, Geoff and the list! Your last note made quite a bit of sense about how there are several different ways to transliterate, and that one must use the one which makes the most personal sense as ultimately, transliteration is personal work. However, for the purposes of a list or lessons such as the ones we are suggesting here, we have to find *some* common ground. While I also like your ideas and think that you should publish them, for now, as the Manuel de Codage is an "accepted standard" which most of us, at least with some background in the discipline, can comprehend, we should stick with it, unless and until someone could come up with a better idea. I would have suggested trying to write the words out with vowels, as I did above with "em hotep," but we'd probably go just as far 'round with "e" or "o"? questions as we do with what standard to use. Or perhaps we should just allow the listowner to pull rank and tell us which transliteration we are going to use? (grin) Ankh udja seneb em hotep (life, prosperity and health, in peace!) ( Tamara )=| Ma'at is the Foundation of Ra's Heaven / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ "Modern Egyptology is one part adventure, one part detective work, and one part anal-compulsive meticulousness--it's got it all!" -- Egyptologist Kent Weeks, re-discoverer of KV5 / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ Rev. Tamara Siuda, Chief Priest and Per'a, The House of Netjer http://users.aol.com/hetnetjer/private/hetntr.html Member, American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) and Ancient Egypt Studies Association (AESA) / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 23:28:46 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL Hi and experience learning early vs late Egyptian At 09:34 AM 97/02/11 -0500, you wrote: >The thing that really >turns me one (hmm, do people still say that?) is the continuity from >New Egyptian to Coptic. I realize that something like 1500 years >separates the oldest New Egyptian and Christian Coptic and that the >language had to change over that time, but I expect it changed pretty >slowly compared to languages involved in major migrations and >upheavals. Of course the really fascinating question is how much the >language changed phonologically-- i.e. in pronunciation-- between New >Egyptian and Coptic. I don't know the answer, but I like to think >that there was reasonable continuity and that the pronunciation of New >Egyptian was not totally different from that of Coptic. > Actually, after I had considered the matter for a while (since I originally had the same feeling about continuity and speed of change in Egyptian) I realized that Egyptian hadn't been particularly static compared to other languages. Think of the development from Latin to Italian (2000 years). Phonetically there is probably rather less change than Late Egyptian -> Coptic (1500 years), and grammatically, maybe about the same, or possibly less for Italian. Both the grammatical and phonological changes were much greater if you take in the 2000 years from Middle Egyptian to Coptic. I don't know if you are familiar with _Ancient Egyptian_ by Antonio Loprieno (Cambridge University Press). It is a fascinating book on the development of the language in all its aspects - phonology, morphology and syntax. I don't know if you read French at all. Perhaps you or others on the list are familiar with a book in Serge Rosmorduc's bibliography _La langue des Rams=E8s_ by F. Neveu. It sounds like an interesting book for Late= Egyptian. I would be interested to hear what people think of it. Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 23:28:49 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises At 09:22 AM 97/02/11 -0600, you wrote: > >The shift of consonantal /r/ to /h/ and then to zero is widespread: e.g. >British "father" and "car" with final vowels that cannot be represented by >phonetic symbols because of e-mail limitations; Bostonese American does much the >same but with phonetically differenty final vowels. I imagine that ancient >Egyptian would sound much different than we moderns may think! Rather like >representations of "southern" American English dialect: "suhthuhn, yew know, >Suh!" > I might have used Cockney and similar south English dialects as a comparison, with syllable-final t becoming a (pronounced) glottal stop, as well as silencing syllable-final r. It always sounded strange to me, coming from a dialect that kept final t and had a definite tendency to Rhotacism (pronounced final r). While speculating on theses sort of lines, I get the impression from the sort of changes in pronumciation which were going on during the Old and Middle Kingdoms (at least as I understand Loprieno's summary) that Egyptian of that time period may have been a stress-timed language like English, rather than syllable-timed like (say) Japanese, or indeed most of the world's other languages (I used to work in an ESL department and learned that one of the biggest problem students from most other languages had was adjusting to the stree-timed nature of English). I don't know if this has been suggested anywhere else. Perhaps if Prof. Schenkel has joined this list he can set me straight (Entschuldige mich. Ich kann nur ein wenig Deutsch. Ich will aber lernen.) > >I have also wondered whether the Egyptians ever tried to indicate long >(stressed?) vowel qualities with /y/ and /w/? The name of the deity Anubis comes >to mind as an example: this is usually transcribed as /inpw/ (or /jnpw/ if you >like). Could not the final /w/ represent a long *medial* /u:/, as seen in Greek >transcriptions: /anu:p-is/ > /anu:b-is/ with a voiceless stop becoming voiced >between vowels? I believe they did this to some extent when they modified their orthography in Ramesside times. But as far as I can gather, it was somewhat haphazard, and they had more of a tendency to do this with transcriptions of foreign words. I seem to remember that Dr. Hoch alludes to some of these trends in the last lesson of his Grammar. Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 23:27:40 +1100 From: Michael Dyall-Smith Subject: AEL Re: teaching materials on th To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Reply to: RE>teaching materials on the web RE: Phil Barker/copyright fonts and web pages: A couple of points: a) The CCER web site has a section for teaching materials. I have had very good relations with the people who run this site (eg. Hans van den Berg) and they have had lengthy experience with the difficult area of copyright. They would be a good source of expertise. It would also be worth considering asking the CCER to put up any teaching material on their web page. They are enthusiastic and maintain the site on a daily basis. b) Regarding Linguists' Software: I had the same problem with their fonts. The contract is overly restrictive. I did the same as you - trashed them. c) The CCER transliteration fonts are freely usable for non-commercial purposes. I am pretty sure the basic hieroglyphic font is generally usable for non-commercial purposes also. Hans (CCER) could advise on this. Regards, Mike Dyall-Smith Melbourne, Australia ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 09:32:27 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: cejo@midway.uchicago.edu (Charles E. Jones) Subject: Re: AEL Re: Gardiner Exercises Phil writes: >Chuck, is it possible for you to get permission for us to put up scans of >University of Chicago Press materials (e.g. De Buck's "Coffin Texts," "The >Tomb >of Kheruef," etc.) I think we would need only 20-30 lines of text from any >publication to serve as the foundation for exercises... >...Our goal is to get >something onto the Net that we can read and use. This is an honourable >scholarly.. and Chuck replies: There is a fair quantity of material already up on the Web. Egyptian metarial is conveniently listed and indexed in my Abzu project at: http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/DEPT/RA/ABZU/ABZU.HTML You mention in particular the Coffin texts, but they're already available to you, complete, free of charge, indexed, searchable, at: http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/ct/ct.html There's also Mike Dyall-Smith's typeset edition of the Authobiography of Weni: http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/weni/weni.html and other things. Is seems sensible to use what's there already as a foundation, no? Note that a key to the exercises in James Hoch's grammar are also available (as posted to ANE in September 1995) at: http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/egypt/ad/hoch -Chuck Jones- cejo@midway.uchicago.edu ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: Hieroglyphic Fonts (fwd) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 97 09:30:56 -0600 Hello! I did not see this message among those sent out to me. If it has been posted, then please discard this copy. If it has not been sent out, then please do post it. I think people might indeed like to see it and learn of the availability of a nice hieroglyphic font. ------------ Forwarded Message begins here ------------ From: "M. A. R. Barker" Date: Tue, 11 Feb 97 09:47:44 -0600 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: Hieroglyphic Fonts To All: If you need a hieroglyphic computer font, go to: http://babel.uoregon.edu/Yamada/guides.html I think they have both Mac and DOS formats. These can apparently be downloaded for free. This is not as neat as the CCER's "MacScribe," of course, but it does give you the glyphs,and if you want to get cute, you can go over into an art programme (e.g. Aldus Superpaint, Adobe Illustrator or Freehand, etc.) type your text, and then size, rearrange, and even redraw your glyphs manually. It's time-consuming but fun! Phil Barker ============================================================================== From: John Armstrong Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 10:05:17 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Ascii & Exercises Geoff (>) writes in response to Phil (>>): >> I have also wondered whether the Egyptians ever tried to indicate long >> (stressed?) vowel qualities with /y/ and /w/? The name of the deity Anubis comes >> to mind as an example: this is usually transcribed as /inpw/ (or /jnpw/ if you >> like). Could not the final /w/ represent a long *medial* /u:/, as seen in Greek >> transcriptions: /anu:p-is/ > /anu:b-is/ with a voiceless stop becoming voiced >> beteen vowels? > > In the case of the history of the name "Anubis", the /U/ sound is > generated from an original /A/ (long /a/) which has been altered due to > the nasal /n/ sound in proximity. /n/ and /m/ produced the change from > /A/ to /O/ and finally to /U/. The final {w} in {jnpw} is either a > participial ending, or it represents a vocallic /u/ ending of masuline > nouns. Look also at the examples of Khnum and Amun. These are names for > which we can clearly document these changes. Cuneiform, Greek, and Coptic > examples of them show us the clear development of /A/ to /O/ to /U/ > (*xanAmu (Middle Egyptian) > *xenOm (Greek evidence) > *xnUbis (Coptic) > (the {-is} ending is a Hellenicism, and Coptic shows a propensity for > alternation between /m/ and /b/), and *'amAnu (Amarna Period Cuneiform > evidence) > *'amOn (Classical Greek evidence) > *amUn (Coptic)). I am very confused about the date of the /O/ -> /U/ change. If it appears in Gk Anoubis, Coptic Anoup, then it is at least as old as Herodotus. But Herodotus also has Ammo-n for "the Libyan Zeus", which, if it's the same word, doesn't show the change, although it is later seen in Coptic Amoun (also Gk). The name for the Egyptian god appears as Amana in Hittite Rea-mashesha mai Amana = Ramesses Meri Amon (= Ramesses II, ANET 202), so the change looks to be after c. 1280. Also, Coptic has Atoum (also Gk) which, if it involves the same change, shows it before rather than after a nasal, which as far as I know is not normal. Geoff, could you site the Greek evidence for your *xenOm? and *'amOn? For the former I have only Gk Khnoumis in a text on the decans and their gods with Greek glosses, Budge, _The Gods of the Egyptians_ 2.304n4. Also, maybe you could recommend a good source of information on the appearance of Egyptian words/names in other ancient languages I have on Westendorf's _Koptisches Handwoerterbuch_ which, though apparently accurate, is extremely short on citations. -- John ============================================================================== From: akirklan@unlgrad1.unl.edu (Alan Kirkland) Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 09:30:09 -0600 (CST) Colleagues, The Manuel de Codage is perhaps the closest thing Egyptology has to a standard in representing Egyptian phonics. I agree with Tamara and others who have suggested that we stick with that until some better and mutually agreeable method (avocational, academic, and professional) can be devised and agreed upon. Stephen has put forth some thoughts regardiung the degree of change in the Egyp[tian language over the course of its native usage. Ancient Egyptian shows itself to be an incredibly dynamic laguage, and the examples that we havbe extant from the texts give ample evidence of this, if one reads through the syntactic (and morphological analysis!) structures as well as the content. I have said before that Egyptian is a context-driven language, at least in its written form, and that learning ( and eventually mastering) it involves a collateral study of the cultural details as well as the philological. Has anyone gotten together any of these exercises that I keep getting hints of? I'd like to see them. Since I'm in the process of teaching this to undergraduates, I am always looking for alternative approaches to the ones I am in the process of developing. I have heard rumour that the answers to Gardiner are out there somewhere, does anyone know the URL? Many huzzahs to Mark for starting this list. I think that it will prove to be one of the most valuable forums for the discussion and idea-sharing of the language. If anyone is interested, I am in the process of getting the syllabus, book list, and course description of the class I'm currently teaching (and which i helped to develop) up on the Web. What is the general feeling out there about the nature of the vulture sign's phonetic quality? I know that this has been the subject of on-again-off-again controversy, and I have my two deben worth to contribute. I think that it is possible that it represents more than just the /3/ that I was initially taught, but may also have the quality of /3l/ as well. Sort of an "ahhuhhl" sound, like that in the initial of 'aleph' in Hebrew and Arabic. This can work in a couple of ways insofar as what it may have value for in speech, or indeed in writing as well. Either "ahh" or "uhhl", the /a/ or /l/ of English. Dyall-Smith and I have bandied this a bit, and James Hocvh and I have discussed it a little, and the classical philologists here on my faculty have dumped their shekels and drachmae on me as well. Thus I am soliciting opinion of the list. After all, this is what some of the initial discussion has addressed in a sense; the phonetic values of the signs. Comments? Criticisms? Deben? Cheers all, Alan -- "We stand on the shoulders of Giants, who were lifted up by Titans, and all we can and will accomplish we owe to them." Alan F.C.W. Kirkland University of Nebraska akirklan@unlgrad1.unl.edu ==============================================================================