Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 14:33:10 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: cejo@midway.uchicago.edu (Charles E. Jones) Subject: AEL In-line course materials Alan Kirkland and anyone else who's preparing course materials to be made available on the Web should make sure to register them with the Classics Course Database at: http://www.colleges.org/ctts/clscourses.html There are already some courses on Egypt and the Ancient Near East included there, and more such things are welcome. It's simple to register your Web site, just fill in the form. -Chuck Jones- cejo@midway.uchicago.edu ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 21:11:45 +0000 Subject: Re: AEL Re: Gardiner Exercises > > 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. Maybe we could work on our own solutions? Mark. ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 21:46:52 +0000 Subject: AEL Membership breaks the half century mark Dear all, The membership of the list has more than doubled over the last 24 hours. Those of you who have just joined might like to catch up with the 'story so far' by pointing your web browser at: http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/archives/week1.txt The URL is case sensitive! Mark Wilson ============================================================================== From: Gaye@arc.econ.su.oz.au To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 12:14:21 +0000 Subject: AEL Re: Hoch's grammar I just joined the list - thanks, Mark, for organising it. Having skimmed through week one's posts, I didn't see anyone mention that James Hoch's Grammar is in the latest catalogues from Eisenbrauns (USD 40.00, I think) and Harrassowitz, so if it isn't yet published, it will be soon. Gaye Wilson PhD student in Egyptology Macquarie University Sydney, Australia gaye@arc.econ.su.oz.au ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 23:38:54 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises > 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. But nasals can do incredible things! :) Even when they are not in the same syllable! Do not be surprised, and you may have noticed that Egyptian and Coptic, its successor are bothe very heavy on nasal sounds. I think it was taking place during Late Egyptian's lifetime, but can't pinpoint it any more than that at this time. These things have a tendency to happen in a fashion that look selective on the surface, but there were actually factors operating which either slowed or quickened them in given words. Phonetic environments, and the attitudes of the speakers about the words possibly too. > Geoff, could you site the Greek evidence for your *xenOm? and *'amOn? I think I am wrong to have put (Greek) behind those. They are reconstructions based on what came before and after. They had do have been at that phonetic point at some time, but we may not have writings of them. As for Amun, you are right, the Greek gives us {Ammon}. > 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. Unfortunately the {Khnoumis} you are refering to comes from a different source. The name of that dekan was {knmwt}. The {xhi} of Classical Greek was actually either a digraph for the /k/ and /h/ sounds in sequence, or it represented aspirated /k/ as opposed to unaspirated /k/, which is why when Coptic borrowed the Greek alphabet, {khi} was never used to represent the /x/ sound, but other letters had to be developed for that purpose in various of the Coptic dialects. 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. Westendorff's is an unfortunate dictionary. It is not as good as it should be. You can find more of that information in the following sources: (by the way, Cerny and Vycichl are better Coptic etymological dictionaries, if you are into that.) Albright, W.F., The Vocalization of the Egyptian Syllabic Orthography, American Oriental Series 5. (New Have, 1934). Czermak, Wilhelm, Die Laute der aegyptischen Sprache, 2 vols. (Vienna, 1931, 1934). Fecht, Gerhard, Wortakzent und Silbenstruktur, in Aegyptologishe FOrschungen 21 (New York, 1960). Hoch, James, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period (Princeton, 1994). Lacau, Pierre, Phonetique egyptienne ancienne, Etudes d'egyptologie I (Cairo, 1970) Vergot, Jozef, Phonetique historique de l'egyptien: les consonnes (Louvain, 1945). Worrell, William H., Coptic Sounds (Ann Arbor, 1934). I am sure there are plenty more, but I am just drawing a blank for the moment. Geoff ============================================================================== From: John Armstrong Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 01:02:40 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Hi and experience learning early vs late Egyptian Stephen Fryer writes: > 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. It's hard for me to respond to this because I just don't know the facts well enough. But you seem to be saying, or at least implying, that the difference between Middle Egyptian and Coptic is significantly greater than that between New Egyptian and Coptic, and that's what I sense. Phonological change per se may have progressed at a more or less steady rate over the whole period, but I get the feeling that morphosyntatic change took a big jump between Middle and New Egyptian-- basically the jump from early to late Egyptian-- and then settled down after that. I have no idea whether the big morphosynctatic jump was accompanied by a large amount of phonological change. I gather that at some point there was a loss (or at least major reduction) of posttonic final syllables, but I don't know when it is supposed to have happened. I also assume that the change from synthetic to analytic (to use the terms introduced by Geoff) was at least somewhat gradual, but I don't have any idea of how far it along it was at the point of the earliest attested New Egyptian (19th-20th dynasty) and how long it took to reach completion (i.e. get to more or less where it is in Coptic). I'd be interested any comments you or others you like to make on these questions. > 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. Yes, I browsed through it, though to be honest I don't know the various stages of the language well enough to be able to appreciate all his discussions. I actually bought this book in a Borders (a bookstore chain in the US) about a year ago. I took it off the shelf and looked at it thinking the title was Ancient Egyptian and was amazed to see it was just plain Ancient Egyptian and was about the language! (Full title _Ancient Egyptian: A linguistic introduction_.) And cheap too! > 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'll check his site. I'm not sure I how I would lay my hands on the book though. > I would be interested to hear what people think of it. Me too. -- John ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Re: Gardiner Exercises Date: Wed, 12 Feb 97 18:20:26 -0600 Dear Chuck and others, > 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 Agreed. I was referring to materials that are *not* included in those materials already up on the Web. As I pointed out, many Egyptian texts are now copyrighted in one or another publication. For example, the "Underworld Books" ("The Book of Caverns," "The Book of Gates," etc.) are now published by our colleagues in Europe (e.g. Professor Erik Hornung). I can't use their material without running bang-on into copyright issues, nor can I trot off to Egypt and make my own copies right off the walls. > 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 Quite so. But if I want to copy extracts from the Coffin Texts onto *this* list in order to use them as exercises or students, then I'm in copyright trouble again. There are two ways to fly: I beg permission from the CCER, I use their material without permission (wrong!), or else students have to flip back and forth between this List and the CCER webpage: "go to the CCER page, open "Coffin Texts," go to Spell no. 125, write out Lines 5-7, and read and translate..." This could quickly get tedious! What we need is permission to copy short selections from a variety of texts in order to make exercises from them. I can think of 2-3 dozen books from which I might like to make such extracts -- I'm sure you can each add many more. > There's also Mike Dyall-Smith's typeset edition of the Authobiography of > Weni: > http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/weni/weni.html A lovely piece. How did Mike get permission to rewrite (retype) the hieroglyphs and put them up on the Web? Somebody must own the copyrights to the edition he got them from, even if he retyped them himself with MacScribe. > 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 Yup. Another great boon. The problem as I understand it is that we want to go further on this list: e.g. make up a body of exercises and drills to reinforce Professor Hoch's rather short exercises (good as far as they go!), put up texts which we can all read and annotate, etc. As I said, the Griffith Institute *does* have the key to the first 9 lessons from Gardiner. They are not speedy -- their last post was in September, I think. All of this helps -- and helps greatly -- but it's not *all* that we need. Suppose, just for example, that Geoff Graham has an exercise that is a part of a published stela or inscription; doesn't he have to get permission from the copyright owner(s) in order to publish it on the net? Can he send it out over the Net to us? I hate this kind of legal question. Please don't imagine that I am enjoying myself! But we do have to solve these and related issues before we can rush into (net)print with exercises based on somebody's publication. I won't even lift chunks from Sethe's "Lesestuecke," not without checking to see if the copyright has lapsed first! Messy. Ideas? Regards, Phil ============================================================================== From: John Armstrong Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 01:16:00 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Hi and experience learning early vs late Egyptian Geoff writes: >> 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. Yes, someone else mentioned to me a while back that people used to start with the later forms of the language and then move on to the earlier ones. I wonder if they ended up knowing Egyptian better than people do today? :-) As to script, yes, it was my understanding that New Egyptian texts are of the sort that appear written in Hieratic on papyri (as opposed to carved onto monuments in Hieroglyphic), but I assumed that learners could access them through editions that transcribed the Hieratic into Hieroglyphic. BTW, I only have a vague idea of the inventory of texts that are counted as New Egyptian. I believe it includes the following literary narratives and tales (titles from W. K. Simpson _The Literature of Ancient Egypt_ [LAE] and Miriam Lichtheim _Ancient Egyptian Literature_ vol 2 [AEL2]): The Report of Wenamun [LAE,AEL2] The Quarrel of Apophis and Seknenre [LAE2] The Capture of Joppa [LAE2] The Tale of the Doomed Prince [LAE,AEL2] The Tale of the Two Brothers [LAE,AEL2] The Contendings of Horus and Seth [LAE,AEL2] The Blinding of Truth by Falsehood [LAE,AEL2] Astarte and the Insatiable Sea [LAE] A Ghost Story [LAE] also: The Tale of Woe (or is this a literary letter?) The Instruction of Amenemope may be New Egyptian, but I'm not sure. I would guess that there are additional literary texts in New Egyptian, but I don't know what they are. I assume that most letters and administrative documents from the New Kingdom and after are in New Egyptian (if not Demotic), but I'm not sure. I don't know of any detailed list, but many items are mentioned in the overview of Egyptian literature in Stephen Quirke and Jeffrey Spencer, _The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt_ (Thames and Hudson, 1992), pp. 130-147. The documents that sound like they'd be of most interest to non-specialists are those concerning the so-called harem conspiracy in the reign of Ramesses II and the investigation of tomb robberies in the reign of Ramesses IX (?), but I don't know if there are any readily available editions or translations. If you or anyone could correct or extend the list I'd appreciate it. -- John ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Re: teaching materials on th Date: Wed, 12 Feb 97 18:33:02 -0600 Dear Mike and all, > 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. The CCER is a good bunch. Mr. Van den Berg has been very helpful to me also. We might want to some of these issues past them, although I am sure that no one wants to burden them. > 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. Possible. If we develop a body of reading texts (rather like your excellent "Biography of Weni"), we can perhaps approach them. We can do the same with exercises and drills, although these may produce problems of their own. Perhaps the CCER would not wish to use Web space to put up a large body of elementary exercises. This was sort of what I had in mind (within limitations) for *this* List. I had hoped to see Geoff Graham's goodies up here quite soon, for instance. > 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. A real downer, as we say. I had invested some pretty good money in their fonts, too, and when I was told that I'd have to sign a very restrictive contract in order to use them on the Net, I just tossed all their fonts! Sad, but one learns from tribulation ... > 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. Please do check with him. Regards, Phil ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 15:43:11 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL Re: Gardiner Exercises At 07:20 PM 97/02/11 -0600, you wrote: >I do think the Yamada font I wrote about this morning is >freeware, but I'm not completely sure. All the fonts at Yamada are, according to them, freeware. One of the sets of fonts is Glyph Basic, which is the set of fonts used by the CCER in WinGlyph, etc. I notice that they had the Nakht TrueType font in Mac format only. I have it somewhere around here in PC format (though I don't use it myself). 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 Membership breaks the half century mark Date: Wed, 12 Feb 97 21:33:54 -0600 Dear Mark, THanks for all your efforts! Having all the messages available on the web site is a nice touch. Improvements? If you could somehow drop the lengthy "address" portions of the letters -- the mechanical web postal information -- you could save lots of space! This may not be problem, but it is tiresome to have to plough through all of the routing data for each message each time, expecially since some of us (me, for example) are such frequent posters! Pergaps there is no way to avoid this. If you can chop off the routing data, your net site would be considerably shorter and easier to read! Just for example, you don't have to put this letter of mine up there at all! We're looking forward to some real "Egyptian" on the web site soon! Phil ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 08:07:55 -0500 From: Patrick Durusau To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: Copyright Issues Phil, I am not sure that the copyright issues are as troublesome as your recent post to Mark's excellent AEgyptian-L list indicates. I would make the following distinctions on copyright issues relating the Egyptian texts: 1. Original translations, transliterations and interpretations by an author. Clear copyright protection. Consult copyright statutes=20 for expiration dates. 2. Photographs of original inscriptions. You cannot reproduce the photograph itself without falling afoul of copyright law. (But that is not what I understood to be your concern.) 3. The content of an original inscription, whether represented in a photograph or transcribed in a published work. I would argue there is no copyright protection to prevent you from entering the original inscription on your computer and printing out copies for your class or on the Web. You would need to be careful not to include any original material from the author who published the material, such as using their transcription of a demotic inscription, etc. I see #3 as flowing from: =A7 102. Subject matter of copyright: In genera= l a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title [17 USCS =A7=A7 101 et seq.], in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories:=20 Note that the subject matter of copyright covers only "original works of authorship" which would include the inscriptions I describe above, but the original authors long ago ceased to have any interest in copyright issues. I don't see how a current author or publisher could claim copyright on the content of an inscription that was made over 3,000-4,000 years ago. I am aware that it is a common assumption (prejudice?) that the finder of an inscription or scroll somehow acquires a right to control its content and publication. The difficulty of preparing materials for widespread distribution, which would be a service to an area of study we all support, is increased by such notions. =20 Sorry for this digression into legal issues. If anyone would like to discuss such matters further, off-list, I would be happy to discuss how we can bring such issues to the test. =20 Patrick Patrick Durusau Information Technology Scholars Press pdurusau@emory.edu P.S. On the Coffin Texts issue, simply type in the spells from DeBucks original print reproduction. It is your reading of the hieroglyphics on the plates.=20 > Agreed. I was referring to materials that are *not* included in those m= aterials > already up on the Web. As I pointed out, many Egyptian texts are now co= pyrighted > in one or another publication. For example, the "Underworld Books" ("Th= e Book of > Caverns," "The Book of Gates," etc.) are now published by our colleague= s in > Europe (e.g. Professor Erik Hornung). I can't use their material withou= t running > bang-on into copyright issues, nor can I trot off to Egypt and make my = own > copies right off the walls. >=20 > > You mention in particular the Coffin texts, but they're already avail= able > > to you, complete, free of charge, indexed, searchable, at: > > http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/ct/ct.html >=20 > Quite so. But if I want to copy extracts from the Coffin Texts onto *th= is* list > in order to use them as exercises or students, then I'm in copyright tr= ouble > again. There are two ways to fly: I beg permission from the CCER, I use= their > material without permission (wrong!), or else students have to flip bac= k and > forth between this List and the CCER webpage: "go to the CCER page, ope= n "Coffin > Texts," go to Spell no. 125, write out Lines 5-7, and read and translat= e..." > This could quickly get tedious! ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 13:10:32 -0500 (EST) From: EHAshment@aol.com To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: experience learning early vs late Egyptian Geoff wrote: >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. As an elaboration, the morphology of an analytic language is comprised of separate units, whereas that of synthetic languages have the capability of building sentence-long words by combining various affixes (that often cannot stand alone) around a core, such as a verb. Bloomfield (_Language_ [New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1933], 207) cites Chinese as an extreme example of an analytic language and Eskimo as an extreme example of a synthetic language, adding the caveat that--with certain exceptions--the distinction between analytic and synthetic is relative, for 'any one language may be in some respects more analytic, but in other respects more synthetic, than some other language'. Further, the OED defines "analytic" as 'Expressing the various notions and relations into which a proposition or complex notion may be analyzed, by distinct words, instead of combining several into one word'; and "synthetic" as being 'Characterized by combination of simple words or elements into compound or complex words; expressing a complex notion by a single compounded or complex word instead of by a number of distinct words. (Opposed to ANALYTICAL I b.)' In the _Oxford Companion to the English Language_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), Aitchison observes that an analytic language is one 'in which each basic grammatical unit (morpheme) tends to form a separate word'; and that 'English is a mildly analytic language, ... seen mainly in vocabulary from sources other than Latin and Greek' (64a). A synthetic language is one 'in which words tend to be composed out of two or more grammatical units (morphemes), as in Latin _amabamus_ (we loved), which combines "love", _past, first person, plural_' (1016a). In the more synthetic OE and ME, tense and aspect are integral parts of the verbal expression: ir.f, iry.f, irr.f, ir.n.f. In the more analytic LE, Demotic, and Coptic, however, that is no longer the case: sw [tw.i] sdm, iw.f sdm, mtw.f sdm, ir iw.f sdm, etc. I think it is interesting to note that this shift from synthetic verb forms to analytical occurred in what Eyre terms the 'historical development of Egyptian from a language with V[erb]S[ubject]O[bject] word order to one with S[ubject]V[erb]O[bject] word order' (Tense or Aspect in Middle Egyptian?, in _Akten des Vierten Internationalen Aegyptologen Kongresses Muenchen 1985_ [Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 1989], 3:65). Everyone on the list probably already knows this, but it was enjoyable to write, at any rate. Edward H. Ashment (Ed) EHAshment@aol.com ============================================================================== From: John Armstrong Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 09:01:51 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Ascii & Exercises Geoff writes: >> I am very confused about the date of the /O/ -> /U/ change. If it [SNIP] > I think it was taking place during Late Egyptian's lifetime, but can't > pinpoint it any more than that at this time. These things have a tendency > to happen in a fashion that look selective on the surface, but there were > actually factors operating which either slowed or quickened them in given > words. Phonetic environments, and the attitudes of the speakers about the > words possibly too. I guess I was expecting a more traditional (if maybe less realistic) answer like "that happened between the 18th and 26th dynasties". :-) But seriously, do Egyptian scholars have a conventional framework of more or less dated, regular sound changes or do they view phonological change as haphazard or unreconstructable in its details? My only exposure to Egyptian linguistics outside of Loprieno, which I can only claimed to have skimmed, is Coptic etymology, and there I see a lot of "sometimes" and "or". >> 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. > > Unfortunately the {Khnoumis} you are refering to comes from a different > source. The name of that dekan was {knmwt}. The {xhi} of Classical Greek > was actually either a digraph for the /k/ and /h/ sounds in sequence, or > it represented aspirated /k/ as opposed to unaspirated /k/, which is why > when Coptic borrowed the Greek alphabet, {khi} was never used to represent > the /x/ sound, but other letters had to be developed for that purpose in > various of the Coptic dialects. Oops, you're right. If I had bothered to look at what the Greek in the Budge text was glossing I would have seen that it was knmwt and not xnmw. But I thought that initial x (and/or X) could be represented as X (kh) in Greek, as for example in Gk Khemmis = Copt Shmin (but also Khmin) Mod Achmim 'Panopolis' < Xntj-mnw (Westendorf) or Gk (?) Pakhon = Copt Pashons (but also Pakhon) Month 9 < p3 n Xnsw. I realize the kh letter indicates a stop in Coptic as I assume it did in Egyptian Greek; I assume that words in which kh represents old x or X involve some kind of "hardening" of the h-sound. > Westendorff's is an unfortunate dictionary. It is not as good as it > should be. You can find more of that information in the following > sources: (by the way, Cerny and Vycichl are better Coptic etymological > dictionaries, if you are into that.) I understand it is essentially a revision of Spiegelberg's old dictionary, but I assumed it was a decent revision. What is unfortunate about it? And also, what is Vycichl? > Albright, W.F., The Vocalization of the Egyptian Syllabic Orthography, > American Oriental Series 5. (New Have, 1934). [SNIP] Thanks for the bibliography. Too bad these books are so hard to find (outside of a good university library, that is). -- John ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 10:24:26 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises At 11:38 PM 97/02/12 -0500, you wrote: >You can find more of that information in the following >sources: Don't forget the survey of Egyptological linguisitcs, covering phonology, morphology and syntax both synchronically and diachronically, and including a very large bibliography: _Ancient Egyptian_, Loprieno, A. Cambridge University Press. 1995 Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 08:00:16 +1100 From: Michael Dyall-Smith Subject: AEL copyright To: to AEL REGARDING copyright Regarding the discussion on copyright of (teaching) materials for web use: I asked Hans van den Berg (CCER) about this and his responses are given below. In summary, the basic Glyph font set is OK to use (for non-commercail purposes). Typesetting sections of texts should be OK for educational/research purposes (again,non-commercial). All you need is to write for permission and cite the source. This should be easy nowdays as most publishers are on the web. A major outstanding problem is the use of photographs. Hans' response is given below the line. Hope this allays some of the worries. Mike Dyall-Smith, Melbourne, Australia e-m: mikeds@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au ------------------------------------ > The major hesitation is copyright. Copyright on fonts used for the web, The same for the use of museum photos on the web... We know all about it. There is something called 'fair use', which means you are allowed to use something as long as you don't earn money with it. As long as it is not for commercial reasons, but scientific or educational it may be Ok. At least, it is a possible hole in the law, an possible excuse if you're caught. I mostly depends on the person owening the rights granting you use for educational and scientific use. > a) The basic Glyph font, is it OK to use this in web pages, say where >documents can be downloaded and the fonts are embedded in the document? I myself wouln;t object since these fonts are freely available on our FTP server anyway. The extended library is a whole different problem. I have nothing to say about those rights, since it more or less involves the IFAO. > b) What is the position where an egyptian text is typeset from a >published book( eg.where the egyptian is in handwritten form), and then >made available on the web? Idem. I wouldn't object myself, and I guess it is ok as long as the Extended Library is not concerned. > c) What about small extracts from published works being put up on the > web? >In all cases, the aim is for use in teaching. Non-profit, so allowable. At least, that's what you could say in court. You will mostly need written permission. >As long as the sources were clearly >stated, and only small sections were used, and the purpose was for >teaching/research, surely this is standard practise?? Yes, non-profit, so again allowable. All the best, Hans (van den Berg) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Centre for Computer-aided Egyptological Research (CCER) Faculty of Theology Utrecht University Trans 2 Heidelberglaan 2 NL-3584 CS Utrecht The Netherlands Tel: +31-(0)30-2531982; Fax: +31-(0)30-2540413 e-mail: vdplas@cc.ruu.nl WWW: "http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/" ------------------------------------ ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 18:03:52 -0500 (EST) From: EHAshment@aol.com To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises On 13 Feb 1997, John Armstrong wrote: >And also, what is Vycichl? Werner Vycichl wrote the _Dictionnaire etymologique de la Langue Copte_ (Leuven: Editions Peeters, 1983). Edward H. Ashment (Ed) EHAshment@aol.com ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 00:33:12 +0000 Subject: AEL Lack of general principles of grammar Dear Phill and Alan, > > 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 think you've both raised a very important point. Over the last 2 or 3 decades, here in the UK at least, there seems to have been a reduction of emphasis on teaching the general principles of grammar in schools. Not having a grounding in basic grammar causes an unnecessary barrier when trying to learn any language. I wonder how many people on this list would be prepared to admit experience of such difficulties? Probably one of the most difficult aspects for us native english speakers is how to tackle gender of nouns. Does anyone have any tips? Mark. ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 19:20:31 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian Hello, Phil, > 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. There is probably nothing wrong with Macscribe per se, however, my laser printer cannot seem to print anything with more than a few lines of hieroglyphic text without serious post-script errors. I had created my excercises originally using fonts which I myself have designed, however, I have discovered that when I resinstall fonts, or add them to a new computer, that computer does not necessarily recognize the fonts correctly, and I have had to re-type things countless times. I will probably try resinstalling all my hieroglyphic fonts to my new computer sometime soon, however, since I am taking FIVE classes this semester, I do not really have much time to devote to this project. I have sent the first lesson to someone who has a scanner and should be putting it up on the web shortly. Geoff ============================================================================== To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: David Maclennan Subject: AEL De-lurking down under Date: 14 Feb 1997 14:04:34 +1200 I'm really pleased to see this list up and running, and it certainly seems to be generating a lot of traffic. As a total beginner I have to say that some of the posts dealing with arcane grammatical points are way above my current level of understanding of the ancient Egyptian language, but I hope to get there some day! Here in Wellington, NZ there are no available courses in the language. Auckland University, several hundred kms to the north, does offer some courses, and I have been informed by them that they can be taken extramurally, so I shall probably be doing that some day. In the meantime I've signed up for the Oriental Institute's Non-Literary Hieroglyphs By Mail course, which should at least give me the basics. Once I've done that I hope to have enough knowledge to get further practice by translating hieroglyph inscriptions in illustrations from the various books on Egypt I own. Like others who've posted to this list, I, too, find Gardiner somewhat intimidating. Part of the problem is that I've never been much of a linguist, at least in terms of learning all the grammatical rules. If someone asked me to define an infinitive or a participle I couldn't do it, but yet I probably use them instinctively every day in written and oral communication. I'm surprised no one's yet come up with an improvement on Gardiner (yes, I've heard of Hoch's grammar, but some posts to this list would seem to indicate it suffers from some of the same faults as Gardiner). Someone on this list noted that the Egyptian hieroglyphic language should not be considered in isolation from other aspects of Egyptian art and culture. I'd have to agree with this. Two books which I got the other day look like they will be very useful in placing the language in this context. They are Richard Wilkinson's two books, "Reading Egyptian Art" and "Symbol and Magic in Egyptian Art", both published by Thames and Hudson. Anybody else found these useful? Thanks for bearing with a novice's first posting! David Maclennan ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 20:20:23 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Hi and experience learning early vs late Egyptian Hello, John, > As to script, yes, it was my understanding that New Egyptian texts > are of the sort that appear written in Hieratic on papyri (as opposed > to carved onto monuments in Hieroglyphic), but I assumed that > learners could access them through editions that transcribed the > Hieratic into Hieroglyphic. Yes, you can. However, the problem of Late Egyptian orthography is not so simple as only hieratic versus hieroglyphic. Late Egyptian uses many superfluous characters to represent words. There are three signs for every ONE sign of Middle Egyptian, AND, some of these signs are very confusing. Late Egyptian emplyes {3}, {t}, {w}, and {y} indiscriminately, regardless of whether they really occured in words or not. Furthermore there is frequent alternation between {j} and {r}, which can really throw a student off if he/she does not understand that both had devolved into the simple /e/ phoneme in many instances by this time. > The Report of Wenamun [LAE,AEL2] > The Quarrel of Apophis and Seknenre [LAE2] > The Capture of Joppa [LAE2] > The Tale of the Doomed Prince [LAE,AEL2] > The Tale of the Two Brothers [LAE,AEL2] > The Contendings of Horus and Seth [LAE,AEL2] > The Blinding of Truth by Falsehood [LAE,AEL2] > Astarte and the Insatiable Sea [LAE] > A Ghost Story [LAE] > The Tale of Woe (or is this a literary letter?) This is a good list. To this you can add the Late Ramesside letters, and countless ostraca with legal contracts and other material. > I assume that most letters and administrative documents from the New > Kingdom and after are in New Egyptian (if not Demotic), but I'm not > sure. I don't know of any detailed list, but many items are mentioned > in the overview of Egyptian literature in Stephen Quirke and Jeffrey > Spencer, _The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt_ (Thames and > Hudson, 1992), pp. 130-147. The documents that sound like they'd be > of most interest to non-specialists are those concerning the so-called > harem conspiracy in the reign of Ramesses II and the investigation of > tomb robberies in the reign of Ramesses IX (?), but I don't know if > there are any readily available editions or translations. These are also important texts in Late Egyptian. There are good translations available by Wente. Geoff ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 19:45:16 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Hi and experience learning early vs late Egyptian Hello, Stephen,=20 > Actually, after I had considered the matter for a while (since I original= ly > 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 muc= h > greater if you take in the 2000 years from Middle Egyptian to Coptic. Well, since we are talking about the evolution of a language from at least 3,000 BCE until the 14th century AD, I think that the changes were rather small considering. Just look how much English has changed in its very short lifetime! Presently I have studied every stage of the the Egyptian language from Old Egyptian through Coptic, and, while the changes between the extreme ends are phenominal, the language still maintained certain basic vocabulary and syntactical features from one end to the other. How many speakers of Modern English would recognize the least word in Old English? Yet, I believe, if it were not for the changes in writing system, that a Copt might well get the basic gist of an Old Egyptian text, through a certain degree of confusion of course. > I don't know if you are familiar with _Ancient Egyptian_ by Antonio Lopri= eno > (Cambridge University Press). It is a fascinating book on the developmen= t > of the language in all its aspects - phonology, morphology and syntax. Indeed I am. It is a very interesting and informative book. I really like Loprieno's work. I would disagree with him only on rather minor points. > I don't know if you read French at all. Perhaps you or others on the lis= t > 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 Egypt= ian. > I would be interested to hear what people think of it. I am very familiar with the book, and have been using it to a large extent recently. French and German are absolutely essential for research into Egyptian philology, and reading knowledge of both of these languages is a prerequisite for entry into a PhD program in Egyptology at any institution of which I know. Neveu's book is excellent in many respects, and is a welcome addition at this point. Not only is it a scholarly work of considerable use, but it is beautifully published with illustrations of the texts in hieratic script. Until now, the best books available for the study of Late Egyptian have been Cery/Groll, and Frandsen, both of which are quite good, but Neveu's text is much more user-friendly. In case anyone is interested in Late Egyptian, the dictionary by Leonard Lesko, and his students is also an invaluable tool (A Dictionary of Late Egyptian. Berkeley and Providence, 1982-1990). Geoff Graham ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 19:54:12 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises Hello, Stephen, > 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). The changes of which you are speaking must have actually taken place after the Amarna Period. The diplomatic Akkadian tablets of the Amarna Period indicate that no /e/ or /o/ quality vowels were yet in use in Egyptian. Coptic is absolutely parallel to English with regard to the loss of vowel quality in unstressed syllables, but this change did not occur until Some time DURING the use of Late Egyptian. > >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? This name was undoubtedly originally *'anApu, but the long /A/ phoneme was transformed from /A/ to // to /O/ to /U/, the final syllable represented by the {w} in writing never entirely disappeared and was represented in Greek transcription by the {-is} ending in {anoubis}. Geoff ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 20:10:53 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii representation of Egyptian Hello, Alan, > What is the general feeling out there about the nature of the > vulture sign's phonetic quality? I have recently written a paper on this very subject :) I used P.J. Watson's analysis of triliteral root patterning to analyze occurences of the {3} and {j} characters in triliteral verbal roots ("Consonantal Patterning in Egyptian Triliteral Verbal Roots", _Glimpses of Ancient Egypt: Studies in Honor of H.W. Fairman_, pp. 100-106, Warminster, 1979). The theory is that certain kinds of consonants gravitate toward certain other kinds of consonants, and that they also avoid contact with certain other kinds of consonants, much as they do in Arabic. This analysis indicated that the {j} would have to have been a glottal stop and that the {3} had to have been a liquid parallel with both /r/ and /n/, leaving a relatively clear indication of its original value having been /l/. I am considering publishing my results. I am only awaiting critique by one of my professors at this point. 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? The {3} character alternated with various others. ({n}, {r}, {w} and in later times with {j} and {y}) I would wager that it represented /l/ in all instances before the New Kingdom, at which time it had deteriorated to a vocallic sound. Late Egyptian shows clear confusion over the phoneme, but Middle Egyptian did not. Geoff ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 20:47:28 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Ascii & Exercises Hello, John, > xnmw. But I thought that initial x (and/or X) could be represented as > X (kh) in Greek, as for example in Gk Khemmis = Copt Shmin (but also > Khmin) Mod Achmim 'Panopolis' < Xntj-mnw (Westendorf) or Gk (?) Pakhon = > Copt Pashons (but also Pakhon) Month 9 < p3 n Xnsw. I realize the kh > letter indicates a stop in Coptic as I assume it did in Egyptian > Greek; I assume that words in which kh represents old x or X involve > some kind of "hardening" of the h-sound. Are you certain that the {khemmis} to which you are referring is actually Akhmim? I believe that that is the name applied to earlier Akhbit, the Delta location of the birth place of Horus. Akhmim is usually refered to as "Panopolis" in Greek sources. Clearly Greek {khi} was adopted by the Egyptians for later use in Coptic at a stage when Classical Greek was still spoken, however, simultaneous with the extant Coptic that we have, was the _Koine_ Greek of the Eastern Roman Empire, in which {khi} was steadily coming to represent the /x/ sound. Therefore, Coptic displays a certain degree of ambiguity with regard to exactly which phoneme {khi} represented. The majority of Egyptian examples of /x/ had by this period evolved into // sounds, and new writings with {khi} would tend to take either the traditional Coptic reading of /kh/ (/k/ + /h/ derived from Classical Greek usage) or the more recent Koine reading of /x/ with no real systematization. > > Westendorff's is an unfortunate dictionary. It is not as good as it > I understand it is essentially a revision of Spiegelberg's old > dictionary, but I assumed it was a decent revision. What is > unfortunate about it? And also, what is Vycichl? Well, it leaves out so much valuable information, and it does not add that much. Coptic Scholars only refer to Westendorf if all else fails. This is mostly the impression that I have gained from my instructors, and I am not prepared to comment on any specific details since my knowledge of Coptic is only at a Yale second-year level at this point in time. (of course, at Yale, a second year level entails reading of almost any documents in Coptic, however, the longer one's experience reading a given language, the more extensive one's knowledge becomes.) Vycichl's is an etymological dictionary written in French, though he himself is a Czech scholar. (Vycichl, Werner, _Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue copte_, Leuven, 1983). His book is very complete, though, some of his etymologies are taken from relatively modern African languages, and therefore of slightly less credibility than those taken from languages which had more ancient systems of writing, given the incredible degree of change that can take place in a spoken language over time. Geoff ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 13:23:53 +0000 Subject: AEL Administrative Please sign your submissions to the list ---------------------------------------- It has been brought to my attention that some email programs do not show the original sender's address at the top of the message. Therefore, as with other scholarly lists, you should sign your posts to the list with your real name and email address. The omission of this rule from the list's introductory message has been corrected. Mail delays ----------- My ISP (Demon Internet) has acknowledged that there are currently 'mail delays' affecting email. The effect of this is that a small number of list members are experiencing delays sending and receiving list messages, resulting in some messages arriving out of sequence. The Listserver -------------- I've always made it clear, from the start, that this list is being run on a low budget. This means that when you send a message to the list, you may not see your message come back from the list for several hours. Your emails received by the server are sent out to list members at least twice a day Monday to Friday. Messages sent over a weekend period are unlikely to appear until sunday evening (UK time). Off topic posts --------------- When replying to a message that has appeared in the list, please consider whether it would be better to send your reply privately. Please also try to avoid sending off topic or 'chatty' posts to the list. Whilst no-one is going to complain about the occasional off topic comment made in passing, I did start to receive complaints about the recent 'copyright' thread, for example. In cases like this it would be better practice to conduct the discussion off list and then send a summary of the results, where appropriate, to the list. And finally ----------- I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed to the already high standard of discussion that the list has seen during the first week of operation. Although there is always likely to be discussion of an advanced nature on the list, measures are being taken to organise some list and/or web based material for beginners as well. Thanks for all your excellent contributions so far, Best Regards, Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk List Owner ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 10:25:21 +0100 (MEZ) From: schenkel@uni-tuebingen.de To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Cc: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Liste neuaegyptischer Texte Prof.Dr.Wolfgang Schenkel Aegyptologisches Institut Schloss,D-72070 Tuebingen schenkel@uni-tuebingen.de Einen Ueberblick ueber den Textbestand in neuaegyptischer Sprache gibt Friedrich Junge, Einfuehrung in die Grammatik des Neuaegyptischen, Wiesbaden 1996, S. 16-18; auch S. 321-332. Im uebrigen kann man das Buch angelegentlich zum Studium des Neuaegyptischen empfehlen. Es steht sehr viel Interessantes darin. ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 10:33:03 +0100 (MEZ) From: schenkel@uni-tuebingen.de To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Cc: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: Lautwandel, u.a. o > u Prof.Dr.Wolfgang Schenkel Aegyptologisches Institut Schloss,D-72070 Tuebingen schenkel@uni-tuebingen.de Ueber den Lautwandel bei den Vokalen (auch ueber die Chronologie des Lautwandels) informiert Juergen Osing, Die Nominalbildung des Aegyptischen, S. 10-30. S. auch meine Einfuehrung in die altaegyptische Sprachwissenschaft, S. 86-92. Zu den Vortonvokalen ergaenzend Juergen Zeidler, in: Louise Gestermann / Heike Sternber-El Hotabi, Per aspera ad astra, 1996, ...; Carsten Peust, in: Goettinger Miszellen 149, 1995, S. 67ff. Zur Praenasalierung, die dem Lautwandel a > o > u (ou) zugrunde liegt: Carsten Peust, in: Lingua Aegyptial 2, ... ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 10:46:58 +0100 (MEZ) From: schenkel@uni-tuebingen.de To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Cc: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Koptisches etymologisches Woerterbuch Prof.Dr.Wolfgang Schenkel Aegyptologisches Institut Schloss,D-72070 Tuebingen schenkel@uni-tuebingen.de Ich kann die Beurteilung des Koptischen Handwoerterbuchs von Westendorf nicht teilen. Meines Erachtens ist es fuer Fragen der altaegyptischen Etymologie die erste Instanz, reichhaltiger als Cerny und zuverlaessiger als Vycichl. Eine ganz andere Frage ist, wo sich der Koptologe bedient. Dieser wird wegen der Belegstellenangaben selbstverstaendlich Crum benutzen, zum mindesten bei schwierigeren Fragen. Uebrigens ist Vycichls Muttersprache (oesterreichisches) Deutsch. ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 11:25:12 +0100 (MEZ) From: schenkel@uni-tuebingen.de To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Cc: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Vokalschreibung Prof.Dr.Wolfgang Schenkel Aegyptologisches Institut Schloss,D-72070 Tuebingen schenkel@uni-tuebingen.de On Tue, 11 Feb 1997, Stephen Fryer wrote: > Perhaps if Prof. Schenkel has joined this > list he can set me straight Ich moechte mich gewiss nicht zu allem aeussern, wozu ich eine Idee zu haben glaube. Viele Dinge sind so kompliziert, dass man sie nicht einfach ad hoc per E-Mail entscheiden kann. Auch wuerde mir die Zeit fehlen, alle interessanten Fragen ernsthaft aufzugreifen. Ich hoffe immer, dass andere meine bibliographischen Hinweise aufgreifen, sich in die Materie einarbeiten und dann selbst die Antworten finden - hoffentlich bessere als ich sie geben koennte. Fuer manchen liegt heute die Welt hinter dem Fenster seines Computer-Bildschirms. Aber es gibt immer noch die Bibliotheken, und dort ist immer noch mehr aegyptologisches Wissen versammelt als im gesamten Internet. > >I have also wondered whether the Egyptians ever tried to indicate long > >(stressed?) vowel qualities with /y/ and /w/? Es ist gewiss nicht so, aber es gibt durchaus Ansaetze zur Vokalschreibung. Besonders gut zu beobachten ist die Verwendung des Gardiner-Zeichens Z4 fuer /i/. Im Demotischen ist sie bestens zu belegen. Fuer das Neuaegyptische s. meine Bemerkungen in Orientalia 63, 1994, S. 10ff. (NB: ziemlich kompliziert, man muss die Nominalbildung beherzigen). Im uebrigen denke ich, dass Z4 bereits im Mittleren Reich fuer auslautendes i stehen kann (Nisben). ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 07:20:33 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: kasia@humnet.ucla.edu (Kasia Szpakowska) Subject: Re: AEL De-lurking down under >I'm really pleased to see this list up and running, and it certainly >seems to be generating a lot of traffic. As a total beginner I have >to say that some of the posts dealing with arcane grammatical points >are way above my current level of understanding of the ancient >Egyptian language, but I hope to get there some day! I know what you mean. I wish someone had suggested I take a course in basic linguistics before delving into ancient Egyptian. I would suggest perhaps buying a Dictionary of Linguistic terminology as an aid. Taking the course at Aukland is definately the way to go if you want to learn the language! >improvement on Gardiner (yes, I've heard of Hoch's grammar, but some >posts to this list would seem to indicate it suffers from some of the >same faults as Gardiner). Still, I would definitely start with Hoch's grammar. I don't think there will ever be a grammar written that all Egyptologists will agree on! I would suggest starting with Hoch's, (while keeping Gardiner and Faulkner around as well!) then continuing on to supplementary readings (such as Loprieno's Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction) to learn about the alternate understandings, problems, etc... But without some sort of basic groundwork, none of the more advanced grammatical discussions will make sense. --Kasia Kasia Szpakowska Graduate student Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, UCLA ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 11:32:22 -0500 (EST) From: EHAshment@aol.com To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL De-lurking down under On 14 February 1997, David Maclennan wrote: >Someone on this list noted that the Egyptian hieroglyphic language >should not be considered in isolation from other aspects of Egyptian >art and culture. I'd have to agree with this. Jan Assmann (in Biderman and Scharfstein, eds., _Interpretation in Religion_, vol. 2 of Philosophy and Religion: A Comparative Yearbook [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992], 98-99) observes that the vignettes, or iconic portions tend to be the canonical parts of Egyptian writings. The texts are interpretations of the vignettes designed to 'enrich the meaning and to adapt the rite to specific theological and mythological contexts'. He notes further that 'The temple reliefs of the Late period reflect a full-fledged tradition of ritual exegesis, a culture of interpretation ("Auslegungskultur") applied not to texts -- as in the more-or-less contemporaneous Alexandrian and Jewish institutions of interpretation -- but to pictures. However, this culture of interpretation is anything but a symptom of Hellenistic influence; on the contrary, it is deeply rooted in the Egyptian cult.' Edward H. Ashment (Ed) EHAshment@aol.com ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 11:32:25 -0500 (EST) From: EHAshment@aol.com To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Hi and experience learning early vs late Egyptian On 14 February 1997, Geoffrey Graham wrote to John Armstrong: >the problem of Late Egyptian orthography is not so >simple as only hieratic versus hieroglyphic. Late Egyptian uses many >superfluous characters to represent words. There are three signs for >every ONE sign of Middle Egyptian, AND, some of these signs are very >confusing. Late Egyptian emplyes {3}, {t}, {w}, and {y} indiscriminately, >regardless of whether they really occured in words or not. Furthermore >there is frequent alternation between {j} and {r}, which can really throw >a student off if he/she does not understand that both had devolved into >the simple /e/ phoneme in many instances by this time. In Cerny's and Groll's _A Late Egyptian Grammar_ (2d ed.; there is a third edition out, I believe, but I do not have it), the first chapter is dedicated to orthography. Inter alia, they write: 'In Late Egyptian many words display exactly the same orthography as in Middle Egyptian.... Certain words show changes from Middle Egyptian. In particular there is an ending, w, the meaning and origin of which escape us entirely...'. Other headings in this chapter are the so-called syllabic orthography; vocalization; hieratic abbreviations; group writing; assimilation of signs; redundant signs; peculiarities of 'b', 'm', and 'n'; a possible loss of the genitival 'n'; the loss of final 'r' and 't'; the coalescence of 'z' and 's'; and variant writings of consonants (1-7) John Armstrong wrote: >The documents that sound like they'd be > of most interest to non-specialists are those concerning the so-called > harem conspiracy in the reign of Ramesses II and the investigation of > tomb robberies in the reign of Ramesses IX (?), but I don't know if > there are any readily available editions or translations. For the Harem Conspiracy in the time of Rameses III, see: Buck, Adriaan de. 1936. Documenten betreffende een samenzwering in den harem van Ramses III. _Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux_ 1, no. 4:165-170. Buck, Adriaan de. 1937. The Judicial Papyrus of Turin. _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_ 23:152-164. For the tomb robberies, see: Peet, Thomas Eric. [1930] 1977. _The Great Tomb-Robberies of the Twentieth Egyptian Dynasty_. 2 vols. in 1. Reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. Edward H. Ashment (Ed) EHAshment@aol.com ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 21:43:42 -0500 (EST) From: Suredesign@aol.com To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL OI Course Last year I was taking a course in Gardiner from the University of CA at Berkeley, 12 chapters a semester for two semesters. We met once a week. Gardiner is very dense I agree, but he can be worked with if you do it slowly and really pay attention to the examples in the chapter. The OI I also signed up for after completing semester 1 of Gardiner. Teeter really expects you to know a great deal of Gardiner before you start, also you must at least have a copy of Gardiner and Faulkner (Middle Egyptian Dictionary) to do the work at all and a good photograph of some of her inscriptions to do the work. I learned a great deal from her course, but it is really hard going. I also use Barbara Watterson'd books on Heirglyphics, "Introducing Egyptian Heiroglyphics" and "More about Egyptian Heiroglyphics". They are lesson books with a key to the exercises in the back. You might ask on list (or I probably will) if they can still be found. We (the American Research Center in Egypt: Northern California Chapter) in San Francisco have had to copy the first book by xeroxing one copy owned by a member. The second can still be found in used bookstores (That's how I got mine). They won't replace Gardiner, but when you get stuck, she explains things more simply than he does. AL Berens ARCE/NC Newsletter Editor ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 16:20:29 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: loprieno@HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (Antonio Loprieno) Subject: AEL Textbooks and phonemes Dear list-subscribers, During AEL's first weeks of activity, a certain number of important issues have been raised, and although I definitely prefer to read etheral discussions rather than actively participate in them--perhaps because I am a lazy Italian--I would like to touch on two main problems which seem to have attracted the attention of the members. Let me point out that my present interest goes to the "understanding" of the difficulties, not to their "solution," which is doomed to remain delegated to each individual's own judgment. The two problems I see raised with a certain regularity are (a) the lack (or the inaccessibility) of instructional materials for the fresh beginner, and (b) the elusive nature of our understanding of Egyptian phonology. (a) In order to address this issue, we need to briefly look at the features of academic instruction in Ancient Egyptian. What is the profile of the prospective student of this language? Which audience do introductory manuals aim at? Since its inception as a scholarly discipline in the XIXth century, Egyptology has experienced a somewhat bifrontal reality: on the one hand, a considerable--albeit mostly superficial--public interest, ultimately a permanence of the "Egyptomania" of the pre-decipherment era; on the other hand, a relatively secluded, and (especially in the English speaking world) numerically underrepresented academic presence within the group of "Orientalistic" disciplines. This means that the field is traditionally ill-equipped to serve the needs of the "educated layman," i.e., of the reader who, without being a professional, develops a deep interest in any aspect in the discipline, for example language. To express it in polar terms: the alternative is between a coffee-table book on Tutankhamun and a study of solar theology in the New Kingdom, or, if you prefer, between Zauzich's Introduction and Gardiner's Grammar, with little leeway in between. While things have partially changed in other areas of Egyptology--for example, some of Assmann's books, while very detailed, address issues of global cultural history and do not require a previous knowledge of Egyptian--this has not been the case for language. The reason is to be sought in the lack of a sufficiently sizeable potential public. The only realistic audience for any type of introduction to Egyptian is the minute cohort of students of the field--"students" in the etymological sense: not only those enrolled in a regular academic program, but certainly those who "toil" along the laborious path of learning a somewhat unusual set of data, whether their background be historical, linguistic, philological, etc. And here I come to the problem of the prerequisites needed to undertake this task. Let me stress that this is NOT a question of elitism--at least not from a theoretical point of view: if some people feel they are the guardians of an arcane knowledge, that's their beer, as one says in German. The problem is much more a didactic, i.e., goal-driven one: how can one most effectively acquire the unusual set of data I just mentioned? Short of writing an encyclopaedia (what is an adverb? how do I read this Hebrew word? what does Late Bronze mean? what is a glottal stop? how do languages evolve? who is Ramses II? etc.), the author of any introductory manual must make judgment calls and rely most heavily on collateral information each reader will want to acquire on his or her own. In other words: it makes no sense for an Egyptologist to try to give (outside perhaps a class-room environment) an ad-hoc explanation of how sound change works and what a nominal phrase is, since there is a plethora of readily available manuals, books, introductions and the like, in which these concepts are expressed much more clearly and professionally. Therefore, to study Egyptian without having a general idea of how languages work, while not impossible in principle, is an enterprise in which the reader cannot strive for the assistance of any written companion. Such a book does not exist, nor will it unfortunately ever exist. This didactic approach to the problem of prerequisites can also help us understand why Egyptologists are somewhat at a loss when asked, for example, how to study Hieratic without hunting for the inaccessible and dusty Moeller or how to vocalize an Egyptian word without translating the 952 hand-typed pages of Osing's Nominalbildung--"reinventing the wheel," as a list-member put it very iconically. In a complex written culture such as ours, knowledge is organized hierarchically--hierarchically not in the sense of haves and have-nots, but it the sense of a sequence of concentric circles, of "keys" to the next level. In this perspective, the only realistic group of individuals (not in theory, but in practice) who would want to approach Hieratic are those for whom Moeller is not inaccessible, although perhaps still dusty. Similarly, the amount of effort required in order to come up with coherent criteria for the vocalization of the name of the Egyptian sun-god is incommensurably higher than the amount of effort required in order to digest the 952 pages of Osing's Nominalbildung. Hence the apparently illogical, but in fact very practical shortcut: if one wants to study Hieratic, may one hunt for Moeller; if one wants to know how the Egyptians addressed their sun-god, may one study German. That will save a lot of time. (b) The name of the Egyptian sun-god now leads me to the second issue raised in recent communications: that of Egyptian vocalism. Recently, a list-subscriber correctly reminded us that, when trying to reconstruct the reality of an Egyptian word, one should discriminate between the "graphemic" {x} and the "phonemic" /x/ dimension. Unfortunately, there is a third level involved here, i.e., the actual "phonetic" [x] realization. This means that Egyptian linguists operate at three levels: that of the hieroglyphic or Hieratic or Demotic or Coptic "graphemes," that of a systematically reconstructed sequence of "phonemes," and that of their hypothetical "phonetic" realization. These dimensions are themselves organized hierarchically, i.e., the degree of plausibility is very high in the case of graphemes, decreases dramatically in the case of phonemes, and is reduced to a considerable degree to speculation when we reach the level of the underlying phonetic realization. However, in matters Egyptian phonology things are not as grim as may appear from this introduction: some general and specific rules of language evolution (i.e., the general rules which can be read in the plethora of linguistic books I referred to before and the specific rules which one derives from the boring reading of Osing, Schenkel, Zeidler, Hoch or from the entertaining reading of Loprieno), provide us with paradigms, i.e., with patterns which are assumed to govern the behavior of our documentation. The trick for our reconstruction of any Egyptian word is how to place it into the right spot, the right "paradigm." While these patterns as reconstructed by scholars are obviously somewhat imaginary, they have proven so successful in explaining a variety of details, that--to follow what I said in my treatment of issue (a)--an ad-hoc solution might appear more attractive here and there, but, since it would posit a different underlying paradigm, it would probably create too many black holes in other areas of this imaginary system "ou' tout (or at least: ou' beaucoup) se tient." As a general rule, therefore, an Egyptian linguist will be able to answer questions of a punctual nature, especially if it concerns a noun (with verbs things are more complicated, and the "imaginary system" is still very much imaginary): how was the name of the God Anubis vocalized? Probably originally */yana:puw/ or */yana:paw/ or */yana:pu/, depending on whether you are Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. But the same Egyptian linguist will need to write seventeen pages if asked why it is so, and whether it would not be much easier to assume a more readily visible vocalization, such as */anu:bi/. He or she would have to mention Afroasiatic syllables, Coptic documents, Greek morphology, Akkadian cuneiform, the spirantization of voiceless plosives, the Canaanite shift, the problem of the "reed leaf," page 11 of Osing's Nominalbildung, etc. Unlike with Macintosh, in Egyptian phonology WYSI*not*WYG. So, to conclude these remarks, how did the ancient Egyptians call their sun-god? Perhaps Ra' (as in Ra'mses)? or Re' (as in Merikare')? or perhaps Ri'a (as in Nimuaria in the Akkadian texts)? No, Chefren "wrote" {r'}, "thought" */ri:dVw/, and "called" the sun-god *[li:daw] or *[li:duw] or *[li:du], depending on whether he had read Osing, Schenkel, or Loprieno. As agreed upon, don't ask me why... Best to all A. Loprieno ************** Antonio Loprieno Professor of Egyptology and Chair Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures UCLA Box 951511 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1511 loprieno@humnet.ucla.edu ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 21:41:46 -0500 (EST) From: Suredesign@aol.com To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Barbara Watterson's Books Having studied Gardiner in the late '60s with Leonard Lesko at U.C. Berkeley and again in the '90s at U.C. Berkeley with their Near Eastern Studies Department, (I haven't moved up to Hoch yet) I was wondering two things: !. How well received are Barbara Watterson's two books, "Introducing Egyptian Heiroglyphs" and "More About Egyptian Heiroglyphs". I admit to finding them useful when stuck on some thorny point in Gardiner's dense grammatical style. 2. Are copies of these still to be found in the UK (I am coming over shortly just to see all the Egyptian collections in England). Members of our group (American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter) are interested in obtaining copies of both books. We have been xeroxing a copy of the first book since we could not get a reply from the publisher. Glad to see this list in operation. People looking for texts to translate can acquire a copy of DeBuck's Egyptian Reader from the Oriental Institute's Suq by accessing the Oriental Institute's WEB site. Al Berens ARCE/Northern California Chapter suredesign@aol.com ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 21:32:28 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL Barbara Watterson's Books At 09:41 PM 97/02/14 -0500, you wrote: >!. How well received are Barbara Watterson's two books, "Introducing Egyptian >Heiroglyphs" and "More About Egyptian Heiroglyphs". I admit to finding them >useful when stuck on some thorny point in Gardiner's dense grammatical style. > I found that they are both quite good, however as books for learning from on your own, I found the second one was not as good as the first. One plus is that she recognizes that many students don't know anything about grammar of English, let alone being able to cope with assimilating that of a foreign language and explains basic grammatical concepts. (After six years of Latin, that wasn't a problem for me; and a little Hebrew and Japanese had cured me of thinking that Latin grammar was the only way to go) >People looking for texts to translate can >acquire a copy of DeBuck's Egyptian Reader from the Oriental Institute's Suq >by accessing the Oriental Institute's WEB site. > I don't have deBuck, but I have Mercer's _Egyptian Hieroglyphic Grammar_, which is still cheaply available from Ares Press. It has quite a number of reading selections (e.g. Ptahhotep, Eloquent Peasant, Two Brothers, etc.) which might be useful. Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 08:05:34 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: kasia@humnet.ucla.edu (Kasia Szpakowska) Subject: Re: AEL Barbara Watterson's Books >2. Are copies of these still to be found in the UK (I am coming over shortly >just to see all the Egyptian collections in England). Members of our group >(American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter) are >interested in obtaining copies of both books. We have been xeroxing a copy of >the first book since we could not get a reply from the publisher. >Al Berens >ARCE/Northern California Chapter >suredesign@aol.com I see Barbara Watterson's "Introducing Egyptian Hieroglyphs" is listed in Eisenbraun's catalogue for $20.00. Their number is 219-269-2011 Kasia Szpakowska Kasia Szpakowska Graduate student Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, UCLA ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 21:32:01 +0000 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Marc Line Subject: Re: AEL Barbara Watterson's Books Hi Al and all. Re: Barbara Watterson's two books, "Introducing Egyptian Hieroglyphs" and "More About Egyptian Hieroglyphs". >2. Are copies of these still to be found in the UK (I am coming over shortly >just to see all the Egyptian collections in England). Members of our group >(American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter) are >interested in obtaining copies of both books. We have been xeroxing a copy of >the first book since we could not get a reply from the publisher. When you're over here, get yourself along to the British Museum. You won't regret it. Then, having been overdosed with antiquity, cross the road and turn right. Head along Great Russell Street to No. 36, The Museum Bookshop. (Tel +44 171 580 4086 Fax +44 171 436 4364) You'll find the books you're looking for in there. If you don't then I'll eat my hat. BTW - I don't own shares, I just LOVE that shop!!! :)) Regards Marc X ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 00:24:36 +0000 Subject: AEL More thoughts on Ascii Transcription Dear all, I'm just in the progress of preparing a web page setting out a suggested system of transcription based on that proposed by Geoffrey Graham. It seems to me that the system that Geoff proposes is not that different from the Manuel de Codage format as specified on the CCER web site. The main differences seem to be:- Manuel de Codage Proposed System A 3 a ' H h. Unless I've missed any, and without wishing to argue too much about the {reed-stalk}, the rest are the same. As regards the separation of word parts, the proposed system can look a bit strange if your used to Gardiner, but I think it might be easier to understand than Gardiner because it separates word parts which are clumped together in Gardiner. >From Geoff's original post: 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- Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 17:17:35 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Sobering thoughts (long) While I am greatly enjoying participating in this list, I found Prof. Schenkel's and Prof. Loprieno's recent posts somewhat sobering. They remind me that Egyptian linguistics is a serious academic discipline that scholars have worked in for 150 years and have produced many hundreds of volumes of editions, commentaries, linguistic analyses and lexical studies. They make the point that just about any linguistic question we can pose here has been discussed, perhaps at great length, in the literature and that the most efficient answer to any given question is almost always 'go and read X'. Such an answer is just right for graduate students in a university context. Unfortunately it's not very useful to amateurs who probably can't get access to the referred to work and, even if they can, probably don't have the full range of skills (language, technical knowledge, etc.) needed to make sense out of it. For better or worse, for most of the members of this list the best source of answers to their questions is going to be, after Gardiner and Hoch and Loprieno and Schenkel (see end of message) and whatever other handbooks they may have, the list itself. I think we will have to do our best and answer the questions we can and give up on the ones we can't. I also think we should show some discretion in the questions we ask and give preference to basic ones that are of interest to everyone in the list over more advanced/esoteric ones that may be of interest to only one or two people. Of course that's just my opinion; I realize that only the list owner is really in a position to make statements as to what is or is not appropriate content for the list. In any case I believe the main goal of most people on the list is not to discuss specific technical issues of Egyptian linguistics but to learn the Egyptian language. I think most people agree that they need two things to pursue this goal, "grammars" that they can use to acquire a basic knowledge of the language and "texts" that they can use to exercise, solidify, and extend that knowledge. I actually sense that the field has done a pretty good job of producing grammars, both of the tutorial and the reference variety, for almost all stages of the language. (Demotic appears to be an exception.) As one would expect in an international field, these works are written in a number of different languages including English, German, French, and others. This is a problem for those who know only English, but even within English there is a reasonable range of choices. But I also sense that the situation with texts is not so good. My expectation in coming into Egyptian was that there would be modern scholarly editions of most texts and also "school" editions of a number of them. By school edition I mean an edition of the text with a full general and linguistic introduction, extensive notes, and an exhaustive glossary-- in a word everything that a learner with a basic knowledge of the language needs in order to work through the text without the need of a teacher (though of course a teacher always helps). While I cannot claim to have checked out all sources, the basic impression I now have is that modern (say 1950-) scholarly editions are relatively rare and school editions essentially nonexistent. True, some of the grammars include some short texts and excerpts from longer ones, but none that I know of include the kind of long narrative texts that students can really sink their teeth into. I thought that de Buck's _Egyptian Readingbook: Exercises and Middle Egyptian Texts_ might fill the need, but was disappointed to find that while it includes a nice selection of texts it does not include any introduction, notes, or glossary, all of which were deferred to a second volume which never appeared. Of course I may be mistaken, but the impression I get is that the field sees little need to produce anything more than it needs for its own use within its specialized university departments and shows little interest in opening itself up to a broader audience. Just so there's no mistake, I realize that academic publishing can be expensive and publishing involving exotic languages and writing systems especially so. I also understand that the core market is likely to be at least relatively small and the ability to recoup costs limited. Nevertheless, as Prof. Loprieno points out, there is a very large interest in ancient Egypt among the general public, which, if superficial, seems to support a fairly healthy book trade. When I go to a large American chain bookstore such as Borders or Barnes & Nobles I see Egypt coming in a strong third after Greece and Rome in the ancient history section, and well represented in the archaeology and mythology sections. In fact there seems always to be some new book to look at. And yet, there's something kind of strange about the selection. On the one hand there are the recently published, nicely illustrated "coffee table" books; on the other hand there are the cheap Budge reprints. The strange thing is that there is usually very little in between. When I look at the Greek and Roman books, I see that at least half of them are modern text translations and literary studies. I always wonder, where are the Egyptian counterparts of all these books? Every once in a while I see Simpson's _Literature of the Ancient Egyptians_ or a stray volume (one or another of the three) of Lichtheim's _Ancient Egyptian Literature_, but mostly I just see Faulkner's _Book of the Dead_. Surely the people who buy all those Budge reprints and coffee table books would take a chance on a nice, well illustrated book on Egyptian literature or historical records if they saw it sitting on the shelf. Or would they? Something that has struck me almost from the beginning of my exploration of Egyptology is how much a back seat the literature takes to the archaeology (and almost everything else) in the popular literature. It has always seemed strange to me how a person could read a 200-300 page book filled with plates of temples, tombs, sculptures and papyri all covered with writing and never see a quote from a single text. It's as if the authors-- or the publishers-- just didn't think that what the Egyptians actually wrote was interesting enough for the mass market. A book that especially made me think this was Werner Forman and Stephen Quirke, _Hieroglyphs and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt_ (Oklahoma Press, 1996). From the authors to the title to the content the book is really two books within a single cover. The text is Stephen Quirke's overview of ancient Egyptian texts on the afterlife from the Old Kingdom Pyramid texts through the Late Period Documents for Breathing (the "Hieroglyphs"). The illustrations are Werner Forman's beautiful photographs of Egyptian funerary objects of every sort ranging from temple reliefs to Meketra models to illustrated papyri ("the "Afterlife") . Some of objects in Forman's photos are actually inscribed with the texts discussed by Quirke, but the connections are noted in a matter-of-fact and almost inconsequential way and there is no real effort, at least that I noticed, to tie the text and the pictures together. In his Author's Note (p. 179) Quirke explains: 'This book has grown from an original concept by Werner Forman, whose photographs provide the focus and inspiration for the text. I am grateful to him for the opportunity to provide the accompanying text ...'. I take this explanation at face value, but I wish that, if not in this book, at least in some, authors and publishers would reverse the situation and place the focus on Egyptian texts and chose illustrations to support them. Egyptian literature may not be the greatest the world has ever seen, but it is certainly important not to mention interesting, and deserves to be more widely known than it is. Plus-- and this gets me back to my earlier point-- even if most people would be content to read the texts in translation, some would want to go further and read them in the original language-- and be willing to buy the books they needed to do so, if they could find them. It probably won't happen, but then, it could. The incredible stir over _Black Athena_ and its "revisitation" shows that Egypt may after all be as symbolically important in the modern world as it was in the ancient world. If so, then there's an opportunity, if not an outright need, for Egyptologists to present their extensive understanding of the Egyptians to the world at large. And I can't think of a better way to start than by the expanding the hitherto very limited access to and appreciation of the actual words they wrote over the thousands of years of their existence as a civilization. This is just my 2 cents worth. I'm interested in comments but realistically will have trouble responding to them in a timely fashion, so it might be just as well if people would just take this message with a grain of salt and carry on with the normal business of the list. -- John Work referred to above: Wolfgang Schenkel, _Einfuehrung in die altaegyptische Sprachwissenschaft_ (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990). [A book which I do not have myself but which Loprieno, _Ancient Egyptian_, p. 50, describes as an 'indispensible tool for the study of the prehistory of Egyptian phonology and its comparative aspects' and I would assume other matters as well.] ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 01:09:45 +0000 Subject: Re: AEL Ancient Egyptian Texts John, > I realize that only > the list owner is really in a position to make statements as to what > is or is not appropriate content for the list. My original hope for the list was to provide a forum for those studying Ancient Egyptian on their own to discuss the study of the language and hopefully have access to one or two experts via the list. > This is just my 2 cents worth. I'm interested in comments but > realistically will have trouble responding to them in a timely > fashion, so it might be just as well if people would just take this > message with a grain of salt and carry on with the normal business of > the list. I think you've actually raised a very important point. I often find myself frustrated by the lack of reference to the texts in egyptology books in general. Here in the U.K. (in the north at least)the larger book shops, such as Waterstones don't even have the selection you mention. You occasionally see the odd Budge title, plenty of coffee table books and of course popular 'fringe' books. I've *never* seen Lichtheim or the Falkner version of the Book of the Dead which you mentioned. You can always order a book (if it's in print), but the difficulty is staying aware of the relevant titles. I try to pay attention as much as possible to references and bibliographies of the books I do find, but what if I wanted to get a list of all the most important text publications. It seems almost bizarre that the Underworld Books are not more easily accessible for example. Has anyone ever catalogued all the texts that have been published? Well that's my 2 cents worth too, so that makes a total of 4! ;-) Any advance on 4? Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk ============================================================================== From: John Armstrong Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 20:32:37 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL De-lurking down under Dave MacLennan writes: > Someone on this list noted that the Egyptian hieroglyphic language > should not be considered in isolation from other aspects of Egyptian > art and culture. I'd have to agree with this. Two books which I got > the other day look like they will be very useful in placing the > language in this context. They are Richard Wilkinson's two books, > "Reading Egyptian Art" and "Symbol and Magic in Egyptian Art", both > published by Thames and Hudson. Anybody else found these useful? I totally agree with your approach and like the two Wilkinson books. Two other books that treat large numbers of individual hieroglyphs like _Reading Egyption Art_ are: Maria Carmela Betro, Hieroglyphics: _The Writings of Ancient Egypt_ (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1996). Henry George Fischer, _Ancient Egyptian Calligraphy: A Beginner's Guide to Writing Hieroglyphs_ (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988). Betro's book gives the same kind of general background information as Wilkinson's though I think not as incisive. (Also, the book shows many signs of sloppy editing, especially in the figures and tables.) Fischer's book is, as its title implies, primarily focused on the actual forms of the signs, and actually contains hints on drawing them. It is, at the same time, a work of scholarship, and serves as a set of adenda et corrigenda to the annotated sign list in Gardiner's Grammar. As far as I know it is still in print and obtainable from the MMA. Some of the issues touched on in _Symbol and Magic in Egyptian Art_ are discussed in greater detail in: Heinrich Schaefer, Principles of Egyptian Art (Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1986) (edited by Emma Brunner-Traut, translated and edited by John Baines). Though it almost goes without saying, you can get a lot out of just looking closely at Egyptian art. It's most enjoyable to see the actual objects but studying good quality photographs can also be very rewarding. -- John ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 20:43:24 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL More thoughts on Ascii Transcription Hello, Mark, Thank you for the update. You said that these wre the differences between mine system and the Manuel de Codage: > Manuel de Codage Proposed System > A 3 > a ' > H h. > > Unless I've missed any, and without wishing to argue too much about > the {reed-stalk}, the rest are the same. Actually, just to set the record straight :-) , I proposed {<} for Manuel de Codage {a} (but {'} would work just as well, and might be easier to type), {H} for Manuel de Codage {H} (agreeing with that system: the dot in {h.} would be confusing in light of the {.} which is used to separate morphemes) and {j} for Manuel de Codage {i} (but either one is easy enough to recognize, and I don't believe it really matters so much anyway). Sincerely, Geoff sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== From: John Armstrong Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 23:11:01 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Ascii & Exercises Geoff responds to me (from last week): >> xnmw. But I thought that initial x (and/or X) could be represented as >> X (kh) in Greek, as for example in Gk Khemmis = Copt Shmin (but also >> Khmin) Mod Achmim 'Panopolis' < Xntj-mnw (Westendorf) or Gk (?) Pakhon = >> Copt Pashons (but also Pakhon) Month 9 < p3 n Xnsw. I realize the kh >> letter indicates a stop in Coptic as I assume it did in Egyptian >> Greek; I assume that words in which kh represents old x or X involve >> some kind of "hardening" of the h-sound. > > Are you certain that the {khemmis} to which you are referring is actually > Akhmim? I believe that that is the name applied to earlier Akhbit, the > Delta location of the birth place of Horus. Akhmim is usually refered to > as "Panopolis" in Greek sources. I checked this and found that there are two Khemmis's, one in Upper Egypt (the one I refer to) and one in Lower Egypt (the one you refer to). They are both mentioned in Herodotus (cited in the Loeb translation): II.91 'The Egyptians shun the use of Greek customs, and (to speak generally) the customs of any other men whatever. Yet, though the rest are careful of this, there is a great city called Chemmis in the Theban province [= nome] near the New City [= Neapolis ?]; in this city is a square temple of Perseus son of Danae, in a grove of palm trees.' (Upper Egypt) II.156 'but of the things of lesser note, the most wondrous is the island called Chemmis. This lies in a deep and wide lake near to the temple of Buto, and the Egyptians say that it floats.' (Lower Egypt) II.165 'The Hermotubies are of the provinces of Busiris, Sais, Chemmis, and Papremis, the island called Prosopitis, and half of Natho ...' (probably Lower Egypt) Diodorus Siculus also refers to a Khemmis (actually, he uses the form Khemmo- acc sg) in Upper Egypt and directly equates it with Panopolis (Loeb translation): I.18.2: 'He also took Pan along on his campaign, who is held in special honor among the Egyptians; for the inhabitants of the land have not only set up statues of him at every temple but have also named a city after him in the Thebaid, called by the natives Chemmo, which when translated means City of Pan.' As far as I can tell neither Strabo nor Ptolemy mention any Chemmis. The only other reference I have is one in How and Wells, _A Commentary on Herodotus_ Volume I (Oxford, 1912; 1988) p. 245 to fr. 284 of the early lost historian Hecataeus, who refers to the same floating island as Herodotus II.156 and calls it Khembis. (The commentators assume that Hecataeus is the source from which Herodotus got the reference.) > Clearly Greek {khi} was adopted by the Egyptians for later use in Coptic > at a stage when Classical Greek was still spoken, however, simultaneous > with the extant Coptic that we have, was the _Koine_ Greek of the Eastern > Roman Empire, in which {khi} was steadily coming to represent the /x/ > sound. Therefore, Coptic displays a certain degree of ambiguity with > regard to exactly which phoneme {khi} represented. The majority of > Egyptian examples of /x/ had by this period evolved into // sounds, > and new writings with {khi} would tend to take either the traditional > Coptic reading of /kh/ (/k/ + /h/ derived from Classical Greek usage) or > the more recent Koine reading of /x/ with no real systematization. I assume there is no question of spirantized kh in the time of Hecataeus and Herodotus. On the other hand, there is no guarantee that the forms they use bear any close resemblance to the Egyptian originals. BTW, while I was checking Herodotus I noticed that he has not only Ammon etc. but also Amoun: II.42: 'It was from this that the Ammonians [Ammo-nioi] got their name too; for Amun [Amoun] is the Egyption name for Zeus.' -- John ============================================================================== From: John Armstrong Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 21:43:36 -0500 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Ancient Egyptian Texts Mark writes: > Has anyone ever catalogued all the texts that have been published? I'm sure the answer is yes but I'll let someone else fill in the details. :-) However I will point out three commercial websites that might be of interest: http://www.amazon.com "1 million books" huge online catalog of general books in print in the US, with powerful associative search engine and online ordering. http://www.blackwell.co.uk/bookshops Online virtual shelflist of Oxford store plus search engine, online ordering. There are also other Blackwell online services but I'm not sure what they are or who they're for. I think the one I mention is the main retail service but I may be wrong. http://schoenhofs.com (no www.) Online catalog of Schoenhof's Foreign Books, a small bookstore in Cambridge, MA devoted to grammars, dictionaries, and texts in a wide range of ancient and modern languages including ancient Egyptian and other ANE languages, with search engine and online ordering. If others know of comparable commercial sites, especially ones specializing in Classics and ANE books, I'd be interested in hearing about them. -- John ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 17:55:43 +0000 Subject: AEL Would anyone like to learn some Egyptian? Dear all, During the 'incubation period' of the list, a few people mentioned to me that they were studying from Gardiner and would like to see some related material in the list because:- - It would be more interesting to work through an exercise together than on your own. - It would give you an incentive to actually do the work! ;-) - If you get stuck you can ask someone. Perhaps a few of you who are interested in working from Gardiner might give an indication to the list (or to myself privately if you prefer) of how far you have got so far, so that we can decide at what level or levels material should be aimed at. If anyone else would like to present something based on other text books such as Hoch, Loprieno, or any other, that would be great too! In particular, Geoffrey Graham has some Lessons prepared which he hopes to adapt for net-based use soon. Moving back to Gardiner, one possibility would be to agree on doing a particular lesson, allow week or so for everyone to have a go at it and then discuss our solutions. Anyone feeling brave enough to do so, could submit solutions to the list, or if hieroglyphs are required, could send their solutions to me for list members perusal via the web page. I'd just like to mention where I see myself fitting into all this. As I am the list owner it, by necessity, falls to me to set out an initial set of rules and define the scope of the list. BUT, what I am doing here is providing a resource on the net that people can use for the discussion of the language(s) and texts of Ancient Egypt. If list members would like to see a change of certain rules or a shift of focus (within reason!), speak up and if a consensus seems to be forming we can take a vote. I couldn't agree more with John Armstrong's view in a recent post that the ancient texts tend to receive remarkably little attention. If this list can also serve to raise awareness of what the Ancient Egyptians actually wrote themselves, IMHO that would be a good thing. Best Regards, Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 11:10:41 +0100 (MEZ) From: schenkel@uni-tuebingen.de To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Textbooks and phonemes Prof.Dr.Wolfgang Schenkel Aegyptologisches Institut Schloss,D-72070 Tuebingen schenkel@uni-tuebingen.de Antonio Loprieno hat ein grosses und wuerdiges Schlusswort zu allen Diskussionen gesprochen. Dennoch: the show must go on! A propos Textbooks: Neben dem Problem der geringen audience sehe ich das Problem der geringen man power auf Seiten derer, die die Buecher schreiben sollten. Um wirklich aktuell zu bleiben, muessten Lehrbuecher alle paar Jahre ueberarbeitet werden. Ist es schon ein Ding der Unmoeglichkeit, den staendigen Fortschritt auch nur inhaltlich voll zu rezipieren, ist es erst recht unmoeglich, die Aenderungen dazu noch didaktisch aufzuarbeiten. Siehe die verzweifelten Versuche mit Neuauflagen in ca. Dreijahresanstand bei Graefe und gegenwaertigem Schreiber. Es ist ein riesiger Aufwand, ein Lehrbuch von Gardiner auf Polotsky umzustellen, oder von Polotsky auf Fortentwicklungen der Standardtheorie, oder wieder weg von der Standardtheorie auf irgendetwas noch Fortgeschritteneres oder auch Rueckschrittlicheres. Auf der anderen Seite: Ich habe meine erste Uebersetzung aus dem Aegyptischen anhand der 1. Auflage von Ermans Aegyptischer Grammatik von 1894 (!) gemacht. Ich habe diese Uebersetzung noch. Ich wuerde heute nicht viel anders uebersetzen! Erst recht Gardiner: Er ist immer noch brauchbar. Das Hauptproblem ist dann aber das der Kommunikation. Ich kann mich schlecht mit anderen Leuten auf einer x-beliebigen Basis verstaendigen. Ich kann mich z.B. kaum mit jemandem ueber das Verbalsystem unterhalten, der sich an Erman (oder sogar Gardiner) orientiert. Wenn jemand fuer sich zuhause, ohne andere Leute damit zu belaestigen, mit Erman (oder Gardiner) arbeitet: bitteschoen. Aber, wieder zurueck zum Anfang: Wie soll ein Fortschritt zustande kommen, wenn man immerzu an alten, ueberholten Einsichten festhaelt??? W.S. ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 15:28:47 +0100 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: "Hans van den Berg (CCER)" Subject: AEL - "Manuel de Codage" Just as information to all who haven't yet seen the so-called "Manuel de Codage" standard computer transcription of Ancient Egyptian: A for Aleph i for i/j (flowering reed) y for y (two reeds) a for Ayin w for w (quail chick) b for b (foot) p for p (stool) f for f (viper) m for m (owl) n for n (water) r for r (mouth) h for h (reed shelter in fields) H for emphatic h (wick of twisted flax) x for the "placenta" X for h-dash (animal's belly with teats) z for s (door bolt) s for s (folded cloth) S for sh (pool) q for k-point/backward k (hill slope) k for k (basket with handle) g for g (stand for jar) t for t (loaf of bread) T for t-dash/tsj (tethering rope) d for d (hand) D for d-dash/dj (snake) The system also allows the use of dash (-), point (.), comma(,) and space. Egyptian numerals are simply transcribed as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0. Apart from this phonetic encoding of the one-consonantal signs as 'Egyptian Alphabet', the Manuel de Codage further offers a standard way of encoding the hieroglyphic signs itself, as well as their relative positioning in groups. For more information, see this page (which is targeted at a more general audience): http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/codage/codage.htm Kind regards, Hans van den Berg ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Centre for Computer-aided Egyptological Research (CCER) Faculty of Theology Utrecht University Trans 2 Heidelberglaan 2 NL-3584 CS Utrecht The Netherlands Tel: +31-(0)30-2531982; Fax: +31-(0)30-2540413 e-mail: vdplas@cc.ruu.nl WWW: "http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 14:31:46 +0100 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: "Hans van den Berg (CCER)" Subject: Re: AEL More thoughts on Ascii Transcription...?!? As a member of the CCER and a long time participant of the Informatique et Egyptology working group (since 1986) I feel the need to express my aversion about the current discussion on the "suggested system of transcription based on that proposed by Geoffrey Graham". In my point of view it is nothing more than a useless visitation of a subject that was already discussed in Egyptology many years ago and sufficiently (note: I do not say effectively) dealt with by the introduction of the 'Manuel de Codage'. Why reinvent the wheel when it is already there?!? I see no point at all in having yet another system of transliteration as Geoffrey Graham proposes, since the Manuel the Codage system is already well established in Egyptology. Apart from being used in hieroglyphic software packages like Glyph for Windows and MacScribe, it has also been adopted by Saqqara Technologies (Oxford) for their hieroglyphic text processor Inscribe, and is already widely available to users of the Internet in both Mac and PC fonts (see our Web-site). Just disliking one or two character assignments in the Manuel de Codage system is not a valid excuse to introduce yet another system. Egyptology's history had many such discussions before and as a result the moment of having a uniform way of transcribing Ancient Egyptian is still far away. Let us at least agree about the way we transcribe Egyptian transliteration to our computers and use the system that is already there, the Manuel de Codage. Not that it is perfect, it still needs improvement in the way we transcribe Egyptian capital letters and it still lacks facilities for the use of modern phonetic encoding (a la Schenkel), but --for the sake of compatibility to already computer-transcribed texts-- it is a good and promising compromise. Having 3 for Aleph and ' for Ayen and "h." represents a far from modern concept, anyway. >Dd-mdw.w jn r<-Hrw-3x.t.y Looking at this I cannot help but asking what do you plan to do with Egyptian numerals? "3" is already used for Aleph! That presents a lot of problems once you start incorporating such texts in databases! Just to keep the discussion on the right track...! Kind regards, Hans van den Berg ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Centre for Computer-aided Egyptological Research (CCER) Faculty of Theology Utrecht University Trans 2 Heidelberglaan 2 NL-3584 CS Utrecht The Netherlands Tel: +31-(0)30-2531982; Fax: +31-(0)30-2540413 e-mail: vdplas@cc.ruu.nl WWW: "http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================================== From: "M. A. R. Barker" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: Website? Date: Tue, 18 Feb 97 10:39:33 -0600 Dear mark, I have been trying to reach the webpage (the one marked "Week 1") but all I get is an error message telling me "there is a break in the pipeline." Is this site still active, or has the address changed? Thanks, Phil Barker ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 10:40:05 -0800 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Stephen Fryer Subject: Re: AEL De-lurking down under At 02:04 PM 97/02/14 +1200, you wrote: >I'm really pleased to see this list up and running, and it certainly >seems to be generating a lot of traffic. As a total beginner I have >to say that some of the posts dealing with arcane grammatical points >are way above my current level of understanding of the ancient >Egyptian language, but I hope to get there some day! > As one of the people guilty of talking about "arcane subjects" I thought I should probably respond to your message. Believe me, I think of myself as a total beginner! Sometimes struggling to understand material that is way above my current level advances my own understanding; sometimes all I get is a headache! Do but persevere, and now that we have this list, ask questions or make comments (polite ones, I hope!) so that those people monitoring the list who know more can perhaps help you to learn more than you might do struggling in total isolation. I should point out that I did 35 years of struggling in isolation, so I have some idea what it can be like. Only recently, and largely through the help of the internet in finding resources, bibliographies, etc. have I managed to make much progress. I don't know what your background is. Fascination with languages in general in my highschool and university days, plus 6 years of Latin at school, gave me at least a basic background in historical and comparative linguistics. Studying Hebrew a little also gave me a little insight into Semitic grammar, which helped greatly in figuring out Egyptian. Practically all of this was learned through reading everything I could find. The only topic I did not find particularly enlightening was Chomskyite linguistic theory. >Here in Wellington, NZ there are no available courses in the language. > Auckland University, several hundred kms to the north, does offer >some courses Here in Lund, the nearest university that teaches courses in Egyptology is a couple of thousand km away. I suspect that there are libraries in Wellington that can supply you with material also. So persevere, and make use of all the resources available to you via this wonderful internet! >Part of the problem is that I've never been much of a >linguist, at least in terms of learning all the grammatical rules. If >someone asked me to define an infinitive or a participle I couldn't do Barbara Watterson's books are good in this regard, because they explain the grammatical concepts as applied to English first, before going on to Egyptian. As for DEFINING an infinitive or participle, I think most people would be hard put to come up with a definition that described what those terms meant in both English grammar AND Egyptian (or Semitic) grammar. >(yes, I've heard of Hoch's grammar, but some >posts to this list would seem to indicate it suffers from some of the >same faults as Gardiner). > It is much more readable than Gardiner, and his understanding of the grammar benefits from the 40 years of research since the last revision of Gardiner. It is the one I have primarily been learning from for the past couple of years. >Thanks for bearing with a novice's first posting! > I hope we haven't scared you off! I hope this is only the first of many postings. And please forgive my ramblings. Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services Lund, BC V0N 2G0 Canada ***************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have. ***************************** ==============================================================================