Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 04:10:57 +0000 From: "Mark-Jan Nederhof" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: AEL yet another hieroglyphic font As all the hieroglyphic fonts I'm aware of have problems, I decided to make my own. As far as I know, this is the first non-commercial font that completely covers the 1071 signs from the Unicode proposal. More information at: http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~mjn/egyptian/fonts/newgardiner.html Mark-Jan ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 23:06:05 -0500 (EST) From: Grant Hicks To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL yet another hieroglyphic font Mark-Jan, Thanks for doing this and making it available. It looks quite useful. When I opened the PDF file displaying the glyphs, though, Adobe Reader popped up the warning "The font 'MOPFZR+NewGardiner' contains bad /Widths." (Even though it then appeared to display the file correctly.) I don't know if this signals a problem with the font, the PDF file or my installation of Adobe. Speaking of fonts, may I ask if anyone's aware of any fonts based on (or similar to) the script used in the Papyrus of Ani (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Bookdead.jpg)? Regards, Grant ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:26:20 -0600 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL yet another hieroglyphic font > > Speaking of fonts, may I ask if anyone's aware of any fonts based on (or similar to) the > script used in the Papyrus of Ani (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Bookdead.jpg)? > > Regards, > > Grant Hi; I have been working on one for some time. Here is a quick sketch of the alphabetic characters from some months ago: http://bubbahotep111.livejournal.com/30127.html Goedicke surmises that hieratic may have actually preceded it, but semi-cursive appears by Dynasty XI for recitation texts, possibly to disambiguate handwriting anomalies for the benefit of lector priests during the MK cultural reconstruction. But, by the time of P. Ani, it has a handful of overly stylized glyphs like the a, k, and g. In creating a font for anything but purely artistic use, I would roll these back to more recognizable forms from earlier papyri. It is my belief that with a bit of careful planning, a semi-cursive font could be useful to any student familiar with the Gardiner List. But, imitating the few peculiarities in P. Ani would not really facilitate legibility for non-specialist students. Bob ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 13:15:39 +0000 From: "Mark-Jan Nederhof" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL yet another hieroglyphic font Sorry about that. I'm still learning about font design. I fixed the issue with widths now. Until today I ignored widths, as my own software (and I assume similar hieroglyph-processing software) takes the dimensions of the bounding box as the only metric of relevance. (But see my recent query about dimensions in the thread on annotated sign lists.) Adobe Reader apparently fell over a few glyphs where the widths had erratic negative values. Mark-Jan ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 17:49:47 -0500 (EST) From: Grant Hicks To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL yet another hieroglyphic font Bob, I mentioned that papyrus only as an example of the general style, not being familiar with a large number of papyri. I happened to borrow an edition of P. Ani from the library last year and was impressed at its overall legibility and aesthetic appeal. I certainly agree that it wouldn't make sense to mimic peculiarities of that particular document, especially if they impede legibility and general usefulness. If you ever make more progress with this I'd love to hear of it. Thanks & regards, Grant ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 21:37:27 -0400 From: Jesse Kelly To: aEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: AEL Introducing myself Hello AEL Members, My name is Jesse Kelly and I am a undergraduate student in Canada. While I study marine biology my #2 interest has always been ancient Egypt, especially the language. I must confess to being quite inexperienced in Egyptian or even reading hieroglyphics, I plan on learning mainly by osmosis. I do have one question though. I have always been fascinated with the names of the Pharaohs or dignitaries, finding the easiest way to get a start on the language was to learn the parts of names that repeat themselves frequently (ie: -hotep, -moses, -mery). I was wondering what something like "earth keeper" in English would translate to in Egyptian. Below I've included one suggestion, and I was wondering if anyone had anything more to add if they could just e-mail me directly so as to not bother other list members. Much appreciated. Looking forward to learning from you all. Cheers, Jesse Kelly j.kelly@dal.ca -- "keeper" in the sense of "the one responsible for", "manager", "caretaker", "administrator", etc, in titles is always iry-. So "keeper of all the lands (=earth)" would then be something like.. iry-tA.w-r-Dr=w (iry-tau-er-djeru) But you probably do not mean an administrator of the earth, but more someone who keeps the earth safe, like environmental protection. Then the word swDA (to keep healthy or safe) could perhaps do, or nx (to protect, to defend). Perhaps: swDA.w-tA.w-r-Dr=w (sudjaw-tau-er-djeru) or nxw-tA.w-r-Dr=w (nekhu-tau-er-djeru) Actually, tA alone is earth as well, but ambiguous (can also be land, country), but fitting a short name: nekhu-ta -- ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:45:41 -0600 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL yet another hieroglyphic font Grant Hicks wrote: > > Bob, > > I mentioned that papyrus only as an example of the general style, not being familiar > with a large number of papyri. I happened to borrow an edition of P. Ani from the > library last year and was impressed at its overall legibility and aesthetic appeal. > I certainly agree that it wouldn't make sense to mimic peculiarities of that particular > document, especially if they impede legibility and general usefulness. > > If you ever make more progress with this I'd love to hear of it. > > Thanks & regards, > > Grant > Hi; The most succinct observations I have seen so far by a non-artist are by Terry Donnelly: http://wesheb.tdonnelly.org/ecursive.html There are prolix explanations on the same blog with my alphabet image that deal with the obstacles posed by materials and conditioning to writing well in semi-cursive. I try to tackle the questions of why the script looks the way it does, and why it is so difficult to sensitively imitate it. I have found only one other semi-cursive artist in the world, and he is a professional calligrapher with a book deal for the British Museum. He has said to me that he may help with a font one day, time permitting. There seems to be no scholarly monograph on the subject. One thing I would mention is that the Ani papyrus includes the work of several scribes. One style I would call "linear"(drawn), and another "semi-hieratic" (written) in order to distinguish between two main styles of semi-cursive. A linear font could be developed by any competent artist who wanted to scan in the glyphs and create SVG images from them. But, with semi-hieratic, a more sensitive approach is needed, as the glyphs exhibit the graphic style of hieratic, with its considerations for how a stalk of rush interacts with a page of papyrus, and how the mind of the better scribe optimized the ductus of each character. Best wishes, Bob ==============================================================================