From: "Lori J.E. Turi" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: AEL Looking for assistance Utterance 297/298 Pyramid Texts Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 07:59:31 -0500 I must reiterate previous disclaimers, as this is my first posting and I apologise in advance for any etiquette violations. In the translation of the pyramid texts by Samuel A. B. Mercer, utterances 297 and 298 have the translation of (mAfd.t) as 'panther-cat', while Dr. Faulkner's Concise Middle Egyptian lists M3fdt as "Mafdet, a cat(?)-goddess". I was wondering if anyone could possibly point to a source for the translation of this as "panther-cat" or to other refs. for Mafdet? Thanks so much. Lori J.E. Turi jet@deadblack.com ============================================================================== From: LawyerMan1234@aol.com Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 18:41:19 EST Subject: AEL which chapters in Allen's text are most crucial? To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Greetings everyone: I've been a subscriber to your list for some time, but am self-taught and do not yet have the knowledge to participate in most of your detailed discussions. I'm planning a trip to Europe in about 6 weeks and want to learn as much as possible between now and then. So far I've read the Collier/Manley introductory book, and have carefully studied the first 16 chapters of Allen's "Middle Egyptian". Given that time is running out, on what chapters of Allen should I concentrate? Should I concentrate on the next few chapters of Allen, and then re-memorize all the basic rules regarding participles from Collier/Manley? Can I skip over any chapters in Allen? Your advice is much appreciated. Thank you. John Corridan ============================================================================== From: "Michael Mac Donagh" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: RE: AEL Looking for assistance Utterance 297/298 Pyramid Texts Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 17:52:21 +0000 Hi! The "Wöterbuch" has an entry for mAfd.t as 'Gepard' which can be translated as 'hunting leopard'. It might be worth while following this line further. Mike ============================================================================== From: "Bert Leyns" To: Subject: AEL transcripts and transliterations Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:28:48 +0200 Hello, In Kurt Sethe's =C4gyptische Lesest=FCcke, pp. 76-77 there is the text of 2 stellae which are to be found in the Louvre Museum, Nos C11 and C12. Not all of Sethe's handwritten hierglyphs are legible (for me, that is). Can anyone provide me with a transcript in Gardiner font and possible also with a correct transliteration ? Thank you very much in advance ! Bert Leyns ============================================================================== From: "Michael Mac Donagh" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: RE: AEL Looking for assistance Utterance 297/298 Pyramid Texts Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 19:01:39 +0000 Hi again! I've just noticed that finger trouble has led to a misspelling. It should be "Wörterbuch". Sorry about that. The "Wörterbuch" , in a modern form, can be consulted on-line at:- http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/egypt/beinlich/beinlich.html Hope this helps. Regards, Mike ============================================================================== From: "Marie Carter" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: AEL THE ROSETTA STONE Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 19:18:27 +1000 Hi Listers, A 6th Grader has asked me about the importance of the Rosetta Stone. Aside from the usual things she has read up on in general literature, I would like to give her something further to think about. My question to this list is "If nothing had been found written in three languages, thereby making it possible to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs, would the code of the hieroglyphs ever been broken? I am not a philologist or even a linguist, so I cannot compare the origins and structures of languages in general,(In other words I haven't a clue), but I know there will be people out there who would know or could make an educated comment. I have no intention of doing her homework for her, but I would like to stimulate her interest to explore hieroglyphs and ancient Egypt more. In case anyone is interested, Peter Rabbit has been translated into Egyptian hieroglyphs and the book has just been released. Regards Marie Carter Archaeological Diggings diggings@ozemail.com.au ============================================================================== From: "Alan Woodcock" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL which chapters in Allen's text are most crucial? Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 12:00:01 +0200 You don't say what you will be doing in Europe, but I suppose you will be visiting the major museums (because Ancient Egyptian is of limited use in other tourist situations). The most language-oriented exhibits are the funerary stelae as treated in Collier & Manley, and I think your best strategy would be to revise their book very thoroughly and commit to memory as much vocabulary and as many of the standard formulae as possible. I don't think more Allen will give you anything at all. Personally I think the best way of working is to have a good digital camera and photograph as many stelae as possible. The camera should work in low-light conditions (no flash) and have some sort of manual focussing because most exhibits are behind glass (but it doesn't have to be a reflex). Then you can study them at home, in your own time. Don't forget to drop into the major Egyptological bookshops. There's one in London quite near to the British Museum (and there is the Museum bookshop) and in Paris you can visit "Cybèle", 65bis rue Galande, 5th arrondissement. Alan ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2005 1:41 AM Subject: AEL which chapters in Allen's text are most crucial? > Greetings everyone: > > I've been a subscriber to your list for some time, but am self-taught > and do not yet have the knowledge to participate in most of your detailed > discussions. I'm planning a trip to Europe in about 6 weeks and want to > learn as > much as possible between now and then. So far I've read the > Collier/Manley > introductory book, and have carefully studied the first 16 chapters of > Allen's "Middle Egyptian". Given that time is running out, on what > chapters of > Allen should I concentrate? Should I concentrate on the next few > chapters of > Allen, and then re-memorize all the basic rules regarding participles > from > Collier/Manley? Can I skip over any chapters in Allen? Your advice is > much > appreciated. Thank you. > > John Corridan > > ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 13:22:12 +0100 (BST) From: ruth collinson Subject: AEL Trip to Luxor To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Hi everybody, this isn't really a reply to the rosetta stone but this was the only way I could get my computer to post something. I have just spent the week in Luxor and have a question. At the back of Karnak Temple past the oldest parts there were some plain blocks in a wall probably about 5-6ft high. They had what looked like the symbol for Tannit, the Carthidge deity, carved into them. There was a group of four spread over a couple of blocks. I am not experienced enough to know whether they were carved in antiquity or are more modern. Can anyone shed any light on the subject? We took a photo on film so when it is transferrd to CD Rom I will post it. Karnak seemed in a fairly good state and there are several restoration projects going on, although appaently the crane hasn't moved in fourteen years! I have some pictures taken at Karnak, Medinet Habu, The Ramesseum and Dendara of a mixture of stuff. If anyone would like to see them then let me know - I would stress that I am a purely amateur photographer. Thanks everybody Ruth Collinson ruthcollinson@yahoo.co.uk ============================================================================== From: "Timofey" Subject: Re: AEL Re: Questions To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 17:19:05 +0400 Hi to everybody! Does anybody know concept of Aker in Pyr. Texts? James Allen gives translation of Aker in his "Cosmology of P. T." as "Horizon", and I haven't got why he gives this translation, cuz Aker is close to Geb (Earth) Does anybody know private e-mail address of James Allen? Can anybody sell to me or help me to get book of J. P. Allen "Inflection of verb in the Pyramid Texts". To buy this book on line is too expensive for me. Tima ============================================================================== Subject: R: AEL THE ROSETTA STONE Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:08:46 +0200 From: "Vassallo Fabio" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" I'd like to give my two euroCents about this issue. Two main things are necessary for the deciphering a language: [A] Identifying names in the unknown language texts: kings, peoples, cities, etc. known from other sources (e.g. Greek historians). This helps to identify phonetical values of the signs. If we know already the signs values, point [A] is not needed. [B] A known language related to the unknown one. A third one: [C] Bilingual text(s) with at least one already known language does help but it's not strictly necessary. To make examples we can think about the ancient (cuneiform) Persian and the Etruskan. The ancient Persian was fully deciphered because it was available [A] (expecially the countries and peoples names in the Behistun rock inscription) and [B] (the Sanskrit is strictly related to ancient Persian). There is no [C] point here. Concerning Etruskan, we do know the phonetical values of the signs (it's written using an ancient Greek alphabet); we also have [C]: a few short Etruskan-Latin texts and an "almost bilingual" one (Phoenician-Etruskan) from the shrine of Pyrgi. But we don't have any known languages related to it. Etruskan is not fully deciphered, indeed. As far as the ancient Egyptian language is concerned, we have [A]: many Graeco-Roman names and names transcripted in many ancient languages (Greek and Akkadic among the others.) We have [B] (Coptic, plus a few Semitic/Camitic languages.) Of course we also have [C]. Not only the Rosetta stone, but also some others bi-trilingual texts (the Canopo decreet, the Casati papyrus, etc.) IMVHO the Egytian language, sooner or later, would have been deciphered even without the Rosetta Stone; possibly by Champollion himself. Fabio. ============================================================================== From: "Alan Woodcock" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL THE ROSETTA STONE Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 21:18:45 +0200 I've often asked myself the same question. The Rosetta stone is incomplete, so you can't just align the text in the three languages and work it out from there. And that's not what Champollion did. He started by learning Coptic, which was quite "new" in his time, but at least there did exist a grammar and dictionary (translated from the arabic). He hypothesised quite early that Coptic was the last stage of Egyptian. Then built up a large database of all the hieroglyphs and hieratic signs. The Rosetta stone gave him a few letters of the "alphabet", as all the poular accounts tell, but little more. The "alphabetic" signs are not enough to read egyptian. The "revelation" came to him when he was examining a copy of an obelisk which some Englishman had imported for his estate. He saw a sign (F31) which, from other contexts (thanks to his database) he thought might be associated with "birth"; and he knew that "birth" in Coptic was pronounceed "mos" or "mes"; and so he was able to read the royal names "TuthMOSes" and "RaMESses". So he realised that a hieroglyphic sign could represent two or more letters of our alphabet. From then on it was... perhaps not simple... but at least possible to decode the language. I assume the Rosetta stone gave him some information for his database, but I suspect it served above all to check his method when he had avanced a little more. (A sort of "key to the exercises"). So maybe he would have managed, even if the Rosetta stone had not been discovered. And maybe, even with the stone, nobody else could have done it without his thorough preparation. It was his genial perception that Coptic was the key that turned the trick. It is interesting to look at his grammar; often he seems to "transliterate" the hieroglyphs into coptic and then translate from there. http://efts.lib.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/eos/eos_page.pl?DPI=100&callnum=PJ1135.C45&ident=1 Alan ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 11:55:21 -0500 From: Polaris To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL which chapters in Allen's text are most crucial? Hello Everyone! Below Alan mentions the bookshops: "> Don't forget to drop into the major Egyptological bookshops. There's one in > London quite near to the British Museum (and there is the Museum bookshop) > and in Paris you can visit "Cybèle", 65bis rue Galande, 5th arrondissement." Does anyone know the name of the one near the British Museum? I'll also be in London in roughly 6 Weeks (Mid May), and would like to visit the store as well. Cheers, Dave Valentine polaris@northerndragons.ca dval@mts.net ============================================================================== From: "A.P.de Visser" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL THE ROSETTA STONE Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 18:55:52 +0200 Hi Marie A few days ago I was reading in the last issue of ,,Ancient Egypt" that Dr Okasha El Daly of UCL-institute of archaeology in London by studying ancient 9th century-Arabic manuscripts discovered that scholars in that time( he mentions Ibn Wahshiyah) have deciphered many hieroglyphic signs correctly,so the secret signs seem to have been ,,cracked" a thousand years before Champollion. Regards Bram ============================================================================== From: "Brian Yare" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL which chapters in Allen's text are most crucial? Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:53:27 +0100 << Don't forget to drop into the major Egyptological bookshops. There's one in London quite near to the British Museum >> The Museum bookshop, more or less opposite the front entrance to the British Museum, closed some time ago, although a mail-order facility exists. Brian Yare ============================================================================== From: "Marie Carter" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL THE ROSETTA STONE Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 22:30:00 +1000 Hi Bram, Thanks Bram Yes, I picked up that story Hieroglyphics Cracked 1,000 Years Earlier Than Thought in Science Daily. It is still on the web if anyone's interested. I had forgotten about it. Oh dear advancing age! I am collecting a nice lot of contributions for Maddie from Iowa - my 6th Grader email correspondant. Many thanks all. Marie diggings@ozemail.com.au ============================================================================== From: "Marie Carter" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL which chapters in Allen's text are most crucial? Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 20:27:45 +1000 For Dave Valentine and anyone interested: I have emailed a friend at the British Museum Bookshop asking where they = have moved to. So we will soon know if they are still in business as a = shop apart from the online sales. Marie Carter diggings@ozemail.com.au ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2005 20:55:29 +0200 From: Marwan To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: AEL dendera and name of the stars Hello everyone! first of all, excuse me for my terrible english... I have a "problem": where may i find a good image of the dendera's horoscope and temple, in which the hieroglyphs are legible? Moreover, where can i find the translation of the name of the deans (decans?) stars? Thank you! Marwan If you speak italian or french, it's ok anyway ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2005 13:51:51 +0400 From: Len & Jan Bailey Subject: Re: AEL which chapters in Allen's text are most crucial? To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Unfortunately, that great bookshop near the British Museum, "The Museum Bookshop" has closed recently. Ashley could no longer compete with the likes of Amazon, and with rent rises, he called it quits. Quite the best book shop for anything on Egypt, out of print especially. I shopped by mail for years and years with him, and always stopped there after a visit to the BM, whenever I was in the UK. There is a bookshop inside the British Museum, but just another that stocks the usual things found everywhere, not as good. regards Jan Bailey ============================================================================== From: "Michael Tilgner" To: "AEL" Subject: AEL Mafdet (was: Looking for assistance Utterance 297/298 Pyramid Texts) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:00:36 +0200 Lori J.E. Turi wrote: > I was wondering if anyone could possibly point to a source for > the translation of this as "panther-cat" or to other refs. for > Mafdet? Below are some recent articles on the topic. Best wishes, Michael Tilgner ---------------------------------------------- AEB 94.0302 "KAMMERZELL, Frank, Panther, Löwe und Sprachentwicklung im Neolithikum. Bemerkungen zur Etymologie des ägyptischen Theonyms mAfd.t, zur Bildung einiger Raubtiernamen im Ägyptischen und zu einzelnen Grosskatzbezeichnungen indoeuropäischer Sprachen, Göttingen, Seminar für Ägyptologie und Koptologie, 1994 = Lingua Aegyptia. Studia monographica, 1. Study of the etymology of the name of the panther goddess mAfd.t. First the author discusses various scholarly explanations of the word. Although among these that of Westendorf (an m-formation of the verb i/Afd, see AEB 66626) meets the semantic, lexical and morphological requirements, the author follows a different approach. He opts for a word compound of mAj, "lion" and the root fd, i.a. on the basis of puns between ifd, "the 'four' cloth," fdj, "to tear out" and the name Mafdet in the Dramatischer Ramesseumspapyrus (lines 107-113). He traces the Egyptian root fd back to Afroasiatic *prd-/prg-, which covers a wide variety in Egyptian (fdj, fd-, fAg, fgA, fag, pAx) and the variants of which share, to some extent, a common semantic core. The relationships with words in other Afroasiatic languages are listed. The Afroasiatic root *prd-/prg- is then compared to Indo-european *perd-/perk-; e.g., Latin leo-pardus offers then more than just an analogy with mAj-fd. A table giving the above-mentioned roots and words - with the meanings "to tear," "panther," "speckled," "sweat, humid" - in Afroasiatic, Egyptian and Indo-european reveals a common basis. The author proceeds with relating Egyptian rw/lw, Semitic *LB' (cf. Coptic laboi, "lion") and Indo-european *leu-, "lion" with r-variant). As a consequence of these relationships, the author offers various reconstruction models relating language families, and he assesses Renfrew's theory of the heartland of Indo-european, which is based on a dissemination of Early Neolithic economies from the Anatolian/Levant/Zagros regions. It is hardly a coincidence that not only the terminology of certain felines is shared in the Afroasiatic and Indo-european contexts, but also their symbolic functions. Since Egyptian bears, on the one hand, strong similarities with and divergences from a number of Afroasiatic languages, and, on the other, also with Indo-european, the author holds it more probable that Egyptian did not reach the Nile Valley with the migration from some original homeland, but developed on the spot, and at that, not very long before the historical period. The obvious contacts of Egyptian with other than purely Afroasiatic language systems entails a modification of the Afroasiatic character of the language; it would explain the failing attempts to reconstruct a common ancestor. Appendix 1: the source texts (mostly P.T., C.T., B.D.); appendix 2 is a concordance between the classical Egyptian transliteration letters and their phonological interpretations. Extensive bibliography, and register of languages used added." ---------------------------------------------- * Wim van Binsbergen, The leopard and the lion. An exploration of Nostratic and Bantu lexical continuity in the light of Kammerzell's hypothesis, submitted to the journal "Marges linguistiques" for 2003 "Kammerzell1 sets out to establish the etymology of the Ancient Egyptian divine name of Mafdet ... in terms of a root *pr/*prd, which primarily means 'to rip, to tear', and (since a feline rips with a claw containing four nails), 'to [give one a taste of the] four'; hence the numeral 'four' (4) attaches to this root, and the feline becomes the 'four-animal'. This surprising identification can be developed further ..." - 25 pp., pdf-file: 620 KB http://www.shikanda.net/ancient_models/linguistic%20article%20lw-prd%20def.pdf ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2005 13:41:19 -0800 From: Stephen Fryer To: EEF List , Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: AEL "Lute" Does anyone know what the Egyptians called the Egyptian "lute?" -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== From: "Alan Woodcock" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" , Subject: Re: AEL THE ROSETTA STONE Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 16:00:07 +0200 Sorry, an error crept into my previous reply. It was not from an obelisk that Champollion deciphered the names "Ramses" and "Tuthmoses", but from copies of inscriptions (Abu Simbel?) sent to him from Egypt by his friend Jean-Nicolas Huyot. The "Banks Obelisk" had previously provided him with the name "Cleopatra", which served in the establishment of the "alphabet". Maybe, for the purposes of a school report, the rest of the story is of interest (human-interest angle) - as soon as he had made his discovery, Jean-François Champollion ran to his brother's office, cried "je tiens mon affaire" ("I have it", - like Archimedes; but he was fully clothed) and, according to the most romantic versions, fell to the floor in a faint which lasted several weeks (though the family story simply says "We put him to bed"). It is also worth remembering that his brother Jacques-Josephe Champollion provided constant support for Jean-François, in particular finding him appropriate jobs (not an easy thing for someone who devotes his time to deciphering dead languages) and editing his work after Jean-François' untimely death. They should be considered as a team. Maybe Jean-François could have deciphered Egyptian without the Rosetta stone, but one suspects that he could not have done so without his brother. Alan ============================================================================== From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Agust=EDn_Barahona?= To: Ancient Egyptian Language List , EEF List Subject: Re: AEL "Lute" Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2005 22:16:11 +0200 El Sat, 02 Apr 2005 13:41:19 -0800, Stephen Fryer escribi=F3: >Does anyone know what the Egyptians called the Egyptian "lute?" Dear Stephen, Depending on what is your interest, the topic could be very extense or not. I'll try to summarize. In effect, what is meant nowadays by "lute" is a plucked-string wooden musical instrument of the organological family of composite chordophones -after Hornbostel and Sachs classification system- with the string bearer and the resonator inseparately joint, with the plane of the string running parallel with the sound table and with a neck or a spike with or without frets. Summarizing, at the present time the prototypical model is a middle or short neckled plucked-string wooden instrument with a concave sound box more or less pear-shaped, but there are indeed several types of lutes -with neck or with spike, with bowl or with box, etc.-. It's played by nails, fingers or a plectrum while the other hand shorten the strings length -and thus the resulting tuning- with its fingers. Modern Egyptians call this type of instruments _al-'=FBd_ in Arabic -with 'ain preceding the d.amma/waw-. It is believed that the lute was not an Egyptian autochthonous instrument. That is, partly, because this type of instrument was not represented in Egyptian mural paintings until the 18th dynasty. Ancient Egyptians had the type of lute that is usually classified as _long necked_. But, as I have said a lot of times -and now I'm going to repeat again in this forum-, the right way to classify ancient Egyptian lutes is as _long spiked_, because the neck usually passed *through* the resonator and was not simply _attached_ as it is in _long neckled lutes_. The Egyptian lute had a tortoise-shaped body, was apparently unfretted and with the strings attached to the lower end of the spike and bound to the top without pegs. The Egyptian name of the ancient lute is still not very clear. In WB II 266 is proposed [n:A TA Z1 Aa1:Z4 M3] transliterated this way, _nTx_, but the name could be pointing only to the general type of wooden chordophones. Also, in a different level, in WB V 177 is proposed _gngnty_ as _Laute (Musik)_ though it is likewise uncertain. The late Greek name of the instrument was _pand=FBra (Gr. transcript._pandoura_)_. Some useful bibliography could be -extracted form AEB-: .- REEVES, C. Nicholas, "A lute player of the Amarna period", GM 87 (1985), 79-83. .- BOSSE-GRIFFITHS, Kate, "Two Lute-Players of the Amarna Era", JEA 66 (1980), 70-82. .- HICKMANN, H., =C4gypten, Leipzig, VEB Deutscher Verlag f=FCr Musik, [1961] = Musikgeschichte in Bildern herausgegeben von Heinrich Besseler und Max Schneider. Band II. Musik des Altertums. Lieferung. .- HICKMANN, H., 45 si=E8cles de musique dans l'=C9gypte ancienne. A travers la sculpture, la peinture, l'instrument; documents photographiques r=E9unis et class=E9s; textes d'introduction et commentaires, Paris VIe, 7, Place Saint-Sulpice, La Revue musicale. Richard-Masse, =E9diteurs, [1956] .- HICKMANN, H., "Terminologie musicale de l'=C9gypte ancienne", BIE 36 (1955), 583-618. .- GILBERT, P., "La joueuse de luth en bronze d=E9coup=E9 du mus=E9e du Cinquantenaire et le d=E9cor m=E9tallique dans l'architecture =E9gyptienne", in CdE XXIV (1949), 223-234. .- HICKMANN, H., Miscellanea Musicologica, ASAE 48 (1948), 2. "Sur l'accordage des instruments =E0 cordes (lyres, herpes, luths)", 646-663. .- SCOTT, Nora Elizabeth, "The lute of the singer Har-mose", in BMMA: n. s., vol. 2 (1943-1944) 159-163. I hope this little orientation could be helpful. Best wishes, Agust=EDn Barahona -- Agust=EDn Barahona Drn=BA en Historia y Ciencias de la M=FAsica Esp. en Egipto y Oriente Pr=F3ximo Antiguos Universidad Aut=F3noma de Madrid. ============================================================================== From: "Siang Kim Chia" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: AEL Champollion's Works Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 12:00:10 +0800 Hi list members, If you read French and interested in Champollion's original works, they are available in pdf format at http://gallica.bnf.fr Click recherche, and search, and you will find Champollion's works including his famous Dictionnaire ¨¦gyptien en ¨¦criture hi¨¦roglyphique, Lettre ¨¤ M. Dacier and Panth¨¦on ¨¦gyptien. ==============================================================================