To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: : AEL waw Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:26:43 -0500 From: ahatnakht@aol.com Some of it may have been tradition, but I suspect (now that's my personal opinion) that it just did not appeal to them. Not elegant enough :-) Actually, one of the things that struck me fairly early on in my study of Middle Egyptian was that it is actually quite easy to read once you know a reasonable number of signs. Indeed so much so that I strongly suspect many more Egyptians could read than could write. On the whole - once you have learned the signs and spelling - it also is reasonably efficient to write. So apart from the tradition that hieroglyphs were "divine words" (and you don't change the divine!), it probably wasn't changed because there was no real need. We only consider our own system more efficient because we are used to it :-) Tilly ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:16:25 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re : AEL waw Dear Dirk, Maybe this will clarify things a bit more. It is from Gardiner's grammar, page 28, paragraph 20, called "Semi-vowels and weak consonants". "The hieroglyphs /i/ and /w/ are consonant -signs, but the consonants represented by them being closely related to the vowels I and u respectively, they exhibit pecularities in their employment which entitle them to the appellation of semi-vowels....[the reed leaf] is translitered /i/ because it seems, from the start, to have possessed two values in Egyptian--y or i like [the letter] yodh in Hebrew , ex. iaH 'moon' [Hebrew yareach] Coptic 'iokh' [second example] ink, Hebrew 'anoki'..." Most of the time, /i/ has the value of the second example and is as near a glottal stop as Egyptian has. In the Hebrew alphabet, the letter vov came be a v or a u or an o--and the same goes for Egyptian /w/. That's about the size of it for /i/ and /w/. /A/ , also transliterated /3/ is the most complex sign. /A/ once stood for the phonemes r and l [sometimes n] but at some point after the Middle Kingdom became a place holder for a vowel sound, like the Hebrew letter aleph. The main reason we know that /A/ changed is due to some Middle Kingdom orthography--the writing of foreign names. I think, by now, everybody understands that this orthography is very instructive for the values of certain signs at a given point in the timeline of Egypt. Anyway, here are some examples of the "old" group-writing, no longer used by the New Kingdom: iwATi "Ullazi" [note that /T/ still has it's old value of "zi" but later it became the same as /t/ except in a few words] ibwAm "Aburam" No one really knows why the change with /A/ took place. It may be that a "posh" dialect had evolved which dropped the r's and l's--any extra sounds that /A/ might have had retaining only the vowel sounds that made up the syllables. Rather like certain modern peoples say "pahty" for "party". But I really don't know. Marianne Luban http://thetimetravelerreststop.blogspot.com/ ============================================================================== From: Dirk Campbell Subject: Re: Re : AEL waw Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:06:07 +0000 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Thanks Leo. I accept what you say of course. But I still find it a bit odd that the Ancient Egyptians with all their accomplishments would not think it necessary to develop a method of writing down vowels. Maybe it was the thought of all that extra carving on granite with copper chisels. Dirk ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:32:02 -0500 (EST) From: Grant Hicks To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: Re : AEL waw Dirk, This is just speculation, but it may be that the practice of indicating vowels in foreign words (including names) stemmed from the fact that they were foreign, and Egyptian readers would have no way of knowing how to vocalize them if only the consonants were written. - Grant ============================================================================== From: Lance Miller Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:30:56 -0700 Subject: AEL Help with Transcription/Translation To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk I am working on a project that requires a little more knowledge of Egyptian than I currently possess. The project merely involves bringing together information from many experts. However, I have come across a section of the document that has not been properly studied. This is because half of the text is missing, which I'm sure would cause some major problems in translating it. The image is located here: http://lh5.ggpht.com/_-iutL08imV0/S1VBvTI2RCI/AAAAAAAAOKY/RuRzh5anN7I/s800/12-15.png The bottom line is already transcribed, but the rest of it hasn't been. I need to know what hieroglyphs the cursive text represents, at least. If anyone can provide me with an explanation or even a partial translation as well, that would be awesome. Thank you for your help! --Lance Miller ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:13:16 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: : AEL waw ---------- Original Message ---------- From: ahatnakht@aol.com > Actually, one of the things that struck me fairly early on in my study of > Middle Egyptian was that it is actually quite easy to read once you know a > reasonable number of signs. Indeed so much so that I strongly suspect many > more Egyptians could read than could write. On the whole - once you have > learned the signs and spelling - it also is reasonably efficient to write. I did not find Egyptian easy to read "early on" or even after years. There are what--700 signs? And even before I started I had already been instructed in Hebrew, the nature of which I believe makes Egyptian seem less unfamiliar. [The "no vowels" thing, for one.] I maintain that no language is easy to read unless you have a working knowledge of it--even if you have memorized every single sign of its graphic system. And having a working knowledge of a dead language is hardest of all. Easy--I don't think so. The simple exercises in a grammar do not count. That's just the start--like "see Spot run" in the books children learn from. This list is proof of the difficulty. When it comes to something on which one can state an opinion, it lights up like a Christmas tree. But when it comes to translating texts, there are few taking part. Hieroglyphs aren't efficient to write now nor were they ever. That's why the "shorthand" called hieratic script was devised--so one could write faster. Hieroglyphs were for monuments and objects. The're easier for us to read now, especially with hieroglyphic fonts, because we don't have to decipher some scribe's handwriting. I imagine that some Egyptians, when they looked at the hieroglyphs, knew what certain signs represented, but that doesn't mean they could read them all well. To do that, you have to be willing to put in the time--and what for? Why did most Egyptians need to read? Was there something useful to their lives on the monuments around them? Was a book [scroll] easy to come by? Of course not. If it were all that simple, hieroglyphs wouldn't have become meaningless and required so much effort to decipher in more modern times. Or the Egyptians, themselves, would not have adopted an alphabet once the Greek language became known in Egypt due to conquest--and used that for their traditional language, as well. They already knew their graphic system was not the most efficient. Even where there was a simple alphabet involved, few people knew how to read before compulsory education. Because it was not necessary to their lives and there was no reading for recreation because books were difficult to obtain before the printing press was invented. Literacy for the masses is a very recent phenomenon in the history of the world. > So apart from the tradition that hieroglyphs were "divine words" (and you don't > change the divine!), it probably wasn't changed because there was no real need. > We only consider our own system more efficient because we >are used to it :-) It really is more efficient. The fewer the signs/letters, the easier to learn and retain them. But, if the ancient Egyptians had wanted to make a change--where to start? And how to implement that? A new writing system would have been very difficult to disseminate and those who already knew the old one well would have been reluctant to begin anew. But you're right about the "divine", the monumental graphic system an langage. Even after the Ptolemies ruled Egypt, speaing Greek in their palaces, a slightly-evolved Middle Egyptian was still used for monuments. That's why there's the Rosetta Stone--except it wasn't enough. Middle Egyptian was so archaic that it was useless for a proclamation and so Demotic and Greek are on that stone, as well. Thank goodness. Marianne Luban http://thetimetravelerreststop.blogspot.com/ ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:55:50 +0100 (CET) From: "omezzab@tin.it" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: AEL instructions of Amenemhat Hi all! No matter how hard I tried I couldn't find the hieroglyphic transcription of "The instructions/teachings of Amenenhat". I found a transliteration and many translations, but no hieroglyphic text. Is it available somewhere? Thank you all Orlando Mezzabotta ============================================================================== From: Rhio Barnhart Subject: Re: AEL instructions of Amenemhat Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:28:31 -0800 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List I did not find a web source, but the this page has a decent bibliography: http://www.maat.sofiatopia.org/amenemhat.htm This work is cited as having a comparative hieroglyphic transcription of all available sources: Volten, A. : Zwei Alt=E4gyptische Politische Schriften, Analecta Aegyptica, vol.6, Einar Munksgaard - Kopenhagen, 1945, Merikare (pp.3-103) & Amenemhat (pp.104-128). Regards, RHB ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:03:13 -0600 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: Re : AEL waw There are a lot of homonyms in Japanese that come from the huge number of loan words from Chinese. These words have been phonetically reduced because Japanese does not feature the intonation system that Chinese does. And, in Japanese speech, there is a cadence that allows the listener to better disambiguate homonyms, beyond the important consideration of context, by contrast with the monotone we often encounter in literate speakers of English. There is no proto-Afro-Asiatic, but there were likely proto-Hamitic and proto-Semitic languages that may have blended into Egyptian. We can see in Urdu how a Sanksrit-like infrastructure was completely washed over with Arabic vocabulary. Due to its position at a geographical crossroads, Egyptian may have undergone a similar vocabulary re-fit. So, in a certain similarity with Egyptian, Japanese retains the kanji spellings not only to make the written language more sophisticated, but so that these simplified Chinese words can be more readily understood than they would be if everything were spelled out in kana. This is not insist that Egyptian is full of loan words at the outset of writing, though it may well be. I think we can see a slight parallel with Japanese and Egyptian with its use of multiliterals and determinatives. The Sinaitic script (perhaps) developed so that the Hyksos language could be written by Egyptian scribes never held enough appeal, because it lacks the necessary depth. An alphabetic language may have been aesthetically repulsive to Egyptians, but it may also have simply seemed inadequate. ============================================================================== From: William Glidden To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:39:05 +1000 Subject: RE: AEL instructions of Amenemhat AFAIK, the most complete source was the Papyrus Millingen, copied by A Peyron in 1843, but now lost. It was written in hieratic. All other sources are fragmentary. I couldn't find a copy Googling. Maybe someone here knows where to find a copy of: Griffith 1896. F. Ll. Griffith. 'The Millingen Papyrus', in Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 34 (1896), 35-51 Still looking, William Glidden ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:10:43 +0000 (GMT) From: bert_hramm Subject: Re : AEL instructions of Amenemhat To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Hi ! You can find an edition of this text by F. Adrom, Die Lehre des Amenemhet. It is the most recent publication of this text (Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca 19, 2006). But I don't know if it's still available. Regards. Bertrand Gajeot ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:11:18 -0600 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: Re : AEL waw Dirk Campbell wrote: > > Thanks Leo. > > I accept what you say of course. But I still find it a bit odd that > the Ancient Egyptians with all their accomplishments would not think > it necessary to develop a method of writing down vowels. Maybe it was > the thought of all that extra carving on granite with copper chisels. > > Dirk > > Just look at the tendency in Manhattan-ese to render what most English has as short -o in "golf" as a dipthong of long -o and -a as in "Goa". And, since Dr. Oz is Turkish, he can render "kefir" properly. In Manhattan-ese, it becomes "kee-fah". It may be that Egyptian scribes heard most vowels as unstable and often collapsed, as they really are in regional English dialects. Thus, their orthography may have dispensed with vowels that varied from village to village, and stuck with stable, enduring phonetic content. ============================================================================== From: Dirk Campbell Subject: Re: : AEL waw Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:49:27 +0000 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Marianne How would opening vowels be shown in the hieroglyphs for words such as Osiris (Ausar) and Isis (Auset)? Perhaps these names do not begin with vowels as we imagine they do. If so, what consonants do they begin with? Thanks and best wishes Dirk ============================================================================== From: Serge Rosmorduc Subject: AEL New web publication : Natural Language Processing and Ancient Languages Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:05:53 +0100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List It's a bit off-topic for the list, but for those among you who are interested in Textual Databases, the latest (on-line) issue of the journal "Traitement automatique des langues" has just been published ; the focus of this issue is "Natural Language Processing and Ancient Languages". It covers lots of topics, from the conception of a textual database to the identification of cognates in different languages, with articles on akkadian morphology, or text layout for interlinear edition (an article by M-J Nederhof about his work on PhilologEg (previously known as AELalign). Some articles are very technical, but others are quite readable even if you are not in the field. You can find it here : http://www.atala.org/-Traitement-automatique-des-langues- Best regards, S. Rosmorduc ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:49:06 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: : AEL waw ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Dirk Campbell >Marianne >How would opening vowels be shown in the hieroglyphs for words such >as Osiris (Ausar) and Isis (Auset)? Perhaps these names do not begin >with vowels as we imagine they do. If so, what consonants do they >begin with? Hi, Dirk They begn with those very same "semi-vowels" I mentioned in an earlier post. It is "wsir" for Osiris and "ist" for Isis. The pronunciation of Osiris [the names Osiris and Isis are the Hellenized versions] is fairly obvious but Isis was vocalized something like "Ese". The final /t/ was not vocalized, so there is really nothing resembling "Auset". In vocalization, even consonants were omitted. /m/, /n/, /b/, /p/ were famous for eliding into the following consonant. That is why the Egyptian word for "star", which is spelled "sbA" was actually spoken as "siou". The /b/ disappeared, the /A/ was "ee" and the final vowel sound unwritten. However, the term for "teaching", sbA--and the sbA that represented "door" were "sbo" and "sbe" respectively. On the other hand, the crocodile god, sbk, was the "souxos" of the Greeks, /b/ gone again. If one wants hard and fast rules, one should not look to Egyptian. Marianne Luban http://thetimetravelerreststop.blogspot.com/ ============================================================================== From: derek presley To: Subject: RE: : AEL waw Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:45:16 +0000 Dirk (and anyone else who can advise me!), Your mentioning the issue, of how do we know that Egyptian words such as Ausar really began with vowels, reminded me of an article I read (unfortunately I've forgotten by whom) in which the author suggested - as part of a complex historical, rather than purely linguistic thesis (if there is such a thing) - that Teti's name was actually Atta. Though a converse situation, this seems to me highly similar to the problem you are positing and I look forward to hearing the explanation. I hope the AEL doesn't mind a mere member of the EEF intruding into what ha= s been a very interesting thread. Thanks. Best wishes, Derek Presley ============================================================================== From: "Michael Tilgner" To: "AEL" Subject: Re : AEL instructions of Amenemhat Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:01:21 +0100 Orlando Mezzabotta wrote: > "The instructions/teachings of Amenenhat". .... > Is it available somewhere? The hieroglyphic text is also available in: Wolfgang Helck, Der Text der "Lehre Amenemhets I. f=FCr seinen Sohn", Wiesbaden, 1969. Helck uses pMillingen, pSallier II and 3 further papyri fragments, a leather roll, 3 wooden tablets and 59 ostraca. Faried Adrom, Die Lehre des Amenemhet, Brepols, 2006 could add another papyrus fragment and 173 ostraca; the no. of sources are now 242. That is certainly not the end! Please note the review of Adrom's work by Maxim Panov in GM 219, pp. 103-106 (2008). In another posting William Glidden mentioned F. Ll. Griffith, The Millingen Papyrus, in Z=C4S, vol. 34, pp. 35-51 (1896). Z=C4S vols. 32-34 [bound together] - pdf-file (17 MB) http://ia350635.us.archive.org/2/items/zeitschriftfrgy00bruggoog/zeitschriftfrgy00bruggoog.pdf The article starts on p. 361 of the pdf-file. BTW: For other egyptological journals which are available online see: http://www.egyptologyforum.org/EEFDigijournals.html Best wishes, Michael Tilgner ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 04:11:36 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: RE: : AEL waw ---------- Original Message ---------- From: derek presley > Your mentioning the issue, of how do we know that Egyptian words such as Ausar really > began with vowels, reminded me of an article I read (unfortunately I've forgotten by > whom) in which the author suggested - as part of a complex historical, rather than > purely linguistic thesis (if there is such a thing) - that Teti's name was actually > Atta. Though a converse situation, this seems to me highly similar to the problem you > are positing and I look forward to hearing the explanation. That information comes from Manetho, who wrote the name of Teti as "Othoes". I think "Atta" is quite reasonable for the older version of the name, given the nature of /i/. Manetho wrote with the Greek alphabet and his kingly names reflect their vocalization. Marianne Luban http://thetimetravelerreststop.blogspot.com/ ==============================================================================