Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 15:24:19 -0700 From: Al Berens To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Artifical AEL One source quoted often in books (sorry I can't remember the reference at the moment) states that a man of the north could not understand a man of the south. Just as the dialect around Cairo is different from Luxor and Aswan (apparently not as prevalent as in the last century before universal education in Egypt) it must have been more pronounced in times when communication and transport were slower (the anaolgy made between England and Scotland being very much in play here). The government in pharaonic times must have needed a a common language for documents which could be used throughout the system. Thus the language was frozen at some point (MIddle Egyptian) and updated only infrequently when older terms became too archaic to have any meaning and Late Egyptianisms which had slipped into the system were formalized and accepted as part of the governmental corpus. The slang which was so prevelant when I grew up in the 50s and early 60s has largely fallen by the wayside along with the movements which created them and some of the words have been altered by succeeding generations to different meanings. "Cool!!" seems to be one of the few survivors. Classical Arabic must have been faced with similar regionalisms which threatened the reading of "God's Word", so the Koran was fossilized and made the standard (to be revised as Modern Standard Arabic in this century). One can assume that the pace of language development ws slower in agrarian society than it is for us today. The number of loan words that have crept into Arabic since the 1880s is another example of the acceleration of change we experience globally. It makes learning modern Arabic easier but so much is lost in the process. Al Berens djoser@pacbell.net ============================================================================== From: Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 19:25:08 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: AEL Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Hi Marianne! Regarding your comment, >Just as Arabic "hal om" (today) is "hayyom" in Hebrew> (the former subsequently corrected to read "al-yoom," the particular point of difference here is in the definite article. The word "yoom" for 'day' is cognate in the two languages, but the definite article is /ha/ in Hebrew and /al/ in Arabic. I'm not sure if that example really supports the interchangability of /y/ and /l/, especially since both languages use both sounds. It would be interesting to trace the historical development of the definite article to find out whether the proto form was actually /hal/, or something like that, from which Hebrew dropped the final glide and Arabic dropped the initial glottal fricative. Or, perhaps more relevantly to AEL, whether other instances (besides the definite article) exist in which Arabic exhibits /l/ or /r/ which is absent in Hebrew. Maybe at the end of certain syllables? Michael Akard Modesto, California ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 19:48:59 -0400 From: Don Feruggia To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Nubkhas@aol.com wrote: > In Coptic, there sometimes is a blank > where /3/ once was in initial place--but more often /3/ is represented by a > letter of the Coptic alphabet and not always the same one. This is a misunderstanding of Coptic script. The Greek alphabet did not have a letter for the glottal stop, and it was the Greeks who defined "grammar" in those days. Therefore the initial glottal stop was not written in Coptic, although it was there. Likewise, the initial glottal stop is never written in English or German, although it is there, because our "grammar" was defined by Latin, which also had none. The vowels at the start of Coptic words do not "replace" /3/, they *follow* it, and were not written in hieroglyphs because no vowels were. The glottal stop in the middle of a word was much too obvious to the Egyptian ear to ignore but still was not written as a consonant because of the Greek influence. So other ways were found to represent it, just as English has found ways to represent a medial glottal stop. For example, in the English interjection "uh-oh", the first "h" is a glottal stop. The Coptic convention was to write the vowel next to a medial glottal stop twice. Thus the word eloole was actually pronounced /3elo3le/. If we write only the consonants, we have /3l3l/ corresponding to the Egyptian i3rrt. The final -t in Egyptian had long been dropped and the i had been replaced by the glottal stop, giving 33rr in pronunciation. If the two middle consonants are switched, we get 3r3r, the Coptic pattern. Switching of internal consonants is a common linguistic phenomenon. Compare the standard English "asked" with dialectical variant "aksed" (which is also Chaucer's spelling). ============================================================================== From: Michael Tilgner To: 'Ancient Egyptian Language List' Subject: AEL AW: Re: AEL Artifical AEL Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 09:05:21 +0200 Al Berens wrote: > One source quoted often in books (sorry I can't remember the reference > at the moment) states that a man of the north could not understand a man > of the south. (your utterances) "there is no foreign-speaking one who can interpret them. They are like the talks of a man from the Delta with a man from Elephantine" (retranslated from German; "Lexikon der Aegyptologie", Vol. I, cols. 1074-1075, entry "Dialekte", citing papyrus Anastasi I 28,6). Best wishes, Michael Tilgner mtilgner@baan.nl ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 08:34:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Dear Marianne, I see that some of what I said might have seemed slightly ambiguous. > Well, do you mean here that there is a blank in the spelling where /3/ used > to be or that /i/ has been substituted? Yes, in many cases, there were complete omissions, such as h3b "send" being written as hb. In several other cases, it suddenly appeared out of the blue when it certainly had not originally been, as in k3w3yw being written for ky.w "others". There are also places where {j} has apparently replaced {3}, such as jH.t being written for 3H.t "field". In Coptic, there sometimes is a blank > where /3/ once was in initial place--but more often /3/ is represented by a > letter of the Coptic alphabet and not always the same one. I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say here. As far as I know there is no Coptic letter which can ever be said to take the place of earlier {3}. The sound had simply fallen out of existence by the date of Coptic. Its last vestiges were nothing more than various vowels. In fact, it had not even been a glottal stop before this, but had probably evolved directly from a liquid sound into a vocallic sound, for there is no glottal stage in the evolution of liquids to vowels in any language about which I know. This conception of {3}'s ever having been a glottal stop in the first place comes from modern scholars tinkering with what {3} MIGHT have represented, and not from any hard observable data. There simply is no good data, because the sound was GONE by the period that Coptic was transcribed into the Greek alphabet. For the glottal stop people should be looking at the reedstalk sign, which has perhaps mistakenly been assigned the transliteration value of {j} before it was adequately understood. In all frankness, it seems to me the {3} behaved more similarly to /y/ than did {j}. Wouldn't it be a hoot if the fact of the matter were simply that the values traditionally assigned to {3} and {j} were reversed? However, I don't actually think it is as simple as this, because there is reason enough to believe that {j} was doing double time for both /'/ and /y/, while {3} was representing some other hard consonant which we have yet to securely identify. One final note on the value of {j}: In the orthography of Old Coptic, the glottal stop was written with the Demotic sign for {j}, but this might not have as much significance as it sounds like, since Demotic no longer seems to have been able to recognize the difference between {3}, {j} OR even {`} anymore. > Somehow, this doesn't seem remarkable to me at all. If /3/ and /i/ were both > used as glottal stops in the initial position in the words that I studied (as > borne > out by Coptic pronunciations of said terms), with much the same pronunciation, > why would they not be seen as interchangeable after awhile? Isn't /3/ > followed by /i/ in Middle Egyptian ever? First of all, there was not any confusion over {3} and {j} UNTIL the New Kingdom. In Old and Middle Egyptian these signs were kept quite distinct, and they pertained to completely different roots! So, be careful about making much about their interchangeability, which could only begin to take place from the New Kingdom on, and does not really become a serious problem until the Saite Period. > >> The reason that people have opted for a liquid designation is, as you > already know, because of the Semitic cognates, the foreign transcriptions > back and > forth, the syllabic orthographies, etc., etc., etc... >> > Well, are they "cognates" or borrowings? I would like to see some proof of > the former. With good reason! I agree, this is not entirely clear, and I am not sure there is any way to truly prove it one way or another. If they are only borrowings, there is a good chance the Semitic > "r" could have been left out due to the way the Egyptians pronounced the > borrowed terms. It seems to me I have seen "garden/vineyard" written both as > "k3m" and "k3mu" in Egyptian using the *upraised arms* sign which is the > biluteral "k3" and has never been suspected of being "k3(r)". We can't have > it both ways. And what can you show me from "foreign transcriptions" that > show /3/ to have been a glide? Syllabic orthography, IMO, doesn't show it to > have been a glide at all. No, I am not talking about syllabic orthographies when I bring up this point, only internal evidence which consists of native orthographies substituting {y} for {3} and then Coptic's use of final {i} where the earlier language had once employed {3}. I have never looked for {3} as a glide in the syllabic orthographies, although I would suspect that it could be found in Albright's work on the subject. Yours, Geoff ============================================================================== From: Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 10:19:19 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? In a message dated 98-06-22 03:33:04 EDT, you write: << Nubkhas@aol.com wrote: > In Coptic, there sometimes is a blank > where /3/ once was in initial place--but more often /3/ is represented by a > letter of the Coptic alphabet and not always the same one. >> This is a misunderstanding of Coptic script. The Greek alphabet did not have a letter for the glottal stop, and it was the Greeks who defined "grammar" in those days. Therefore the initial glottal stop was not written in Coptic, although it was there. Likewise, the initial glottal stop is never written in English or German, although it is there, because our "grammar" was defined by Latin, which also had none.>> I don't know why you are quibbling about this. I am sure that the ancient Egyptians didn't know anything about "glottal stops", consonants or "weak consonants". They wrote what they heard in the alphabet that had been adapted from the Greek. Coptic spellings don't look to me to be a "glyph by glyph" transliteration from any attested spellings we know of. When you say "the initial glottal stop is never written in English"--do you mean transliterating from Egyptian? We write it as /3/! And /3/, in my view, doesn't always appear to have the properties of a "glottal stop" anyway. That is why the term "semi-vowel" has been used to describe it. To me, this is the same as saying, as I believe Geoff did earlier, that the Egyptians didn't differentiate, necessarily, between vowels and consonants like we do. Probably, every glyph had the same purpose to them--to represent a sound or idea as a determinative. >> The vowels at the start of Coptic words do not "replace" /3/, they *follow* it, and were not written in hieroglyphs because no vowels were. >> Just "semi-vowels". And that's why I don't understand why Coptic couldn't *replace* them with one or more letters of the Coptic alphabet, which probably didn't differentiate between vowels and consonants, either. Look, I studied Hebrew and I know what the "aleph" is supposed to do. But I can't say I am positive that this same idea was behind the /3/. >>The glottal stop in the middle of a word was much too obvious to the Egyptian ear to ignore but still was not written as a consonant because of the Greek influence. So other ways were found to represent it, just as English has found ways to represent a medial glottal stop. For example, in the English interjection "uh-oh", the first "h" is a glottal stop. The Coptic convention was to write the vowel next to a medial glottal stop twice. Thus the word eloole was actually pronounced /3elo3le/. If we write only the consonants, we have /3l3l/ corresponding to the Egyptian i3rrt.>> How do you know that Coptic was pronounced any differently from how it is written. Have you ever heard Coptic spoken? >> The final -t in Egyptian had long been dropped and the i had been replaced by the glottal stop, giving 33rr in pronunciation. If the two middle consonants are switched, we get 3r3r, the Coptic pattern. Switching of internal consonants is a common linguistic phenomenon. Compare the standard English "asked" with dialectical variant "aksed" (which is also Chaucer's spelling).>> To me, "i3rr.t" as "eloole" is sensible just as it stands. I think the /i/ and the /3/ are a *combination* that represent a certain sound. /r/ and /l/ are interchangeable. The "oo" is the unwritten sound between two consonants, as evidenced by the Coptic, and that which we call a "vowel". The same for the final "e" sound, the /t/ being dropped, as you say--not exactly an unknown phenomenon in language. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 10:20:47 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? In a message dated 98-06-22 03:33:05 EDT, you write: << Regarding your comment, >Just as Arabic "hal om" (today) is "hayyom" in Hebrew> (the former subsequently corrected to read "al-yoom," the particular point of difference here is in the definite article. The word "yoom" for 'day' is cognate in the two languages, but the definite article is /ha/ in Hebrew and /al/ in Arabic. I'm not sure if that example really supports the interchangability of /y/ and /l/, especially since both languages use both sounds. >> You are right. Under the circumstances, it is no example at all. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Sid Kitchel Subject: Re: AEL Artifical AEL To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 10:12:55 -0700 (PDT) The Dutch differentiate "sprachtaal" and "boektaal". The former indicating the less formal daily speech and the later a more formal academic, written language. The Middle Egyptian we are studying is a more radical version of boektaal. My understanding is that it was a formal and sacred language that might be seen as "artificial". The only problem with calling it artificial is that we normally speak of languages such as Cobol, C++, or Esperanto as artificial. I.e. invented for some task and not evolving as a natural language. ME did begin as a natural language, but became codified and frozen as an official, sacred language of inscription. --Sid AbuElisha@aol.com wrote: |-> |-> Hello! |-> |-> Middle Egyptian an artificial language? Interesting idea. There have been, |-> and are, other artificial languages in widespread use; artificial in the sense |-> that they must be learned through academic media and no native speakers exist. |-> Esperanto is one, but perhaps a rather extreme example. How about Modern |-> Standard Arabic? It's based on Classical (that is, Qur'anic) Arabic, but is |-> only spoken in formal, academic settings. Outside of the classroom or lecture |-> hall, the speaker/professor/politician returns to the local dialect. |-> For that matter, Classical Arabic as it has come down to us was never spoken |-> either, since the only codifications we have of it are works of poetry, such |-> as the Qur'an (all due respect to the Qur'an; I simply refer to its poetic |-> nature and the fact that it does not represent natural speech). Muhammad |-> himself bragged about how great the Qur'an's poetic quality was, challenging |-> the local poets to match it. But I digress. The point is that the variety of |-> Arabic known as "Classical" has never been an authentic representation of how |-> the folks talked to each other. |-> I can't agree that academic English is artificial. One might argue that it |-> is a creole, but not a pidgin. "Pidgin" or "artificial" (no, they are not |-> synonymous) suggest linguistic modes into which a speaker temporarily shifts |-> for specific purposes. I don't know how I come across online, but my spoken |-> dialect is pretty much standard/academic, and I do not shift my lexicon, |-> grammar or pronunciation when I'm among my academic colleagues or when I come |-> how to my family. Nor do I perceive my dialect as significantly different |-> from that of my parents and my wife. It may be argued that I merely employed |-> linguistic forms which were learned at school, but uniform, unconscious |-> application = natural acquisition. My point here is not that my spoken |-> language is great, but that it was naturally acquired and continues to be |-> naturally spoken. I believe the same to be true of my colleagues and friends, |-> or at least most of them! : ) |-> Now, for an artificial dialect of English, how about RP? Known globally as |-> "British English," or "BBC English," it represents a dialect (lexicon and |-> pronunciation) which has no native speakers, with the possible exception of |-> the Royal Family. I find it amusing and annoying when people refer to British |-> English as the "best" English. I've never had so much difficulty |-> understanding my own language as when I travelled to norther England and |-> Scotland! |-> I'm not really sure what all this has to do with Middle Egyptian, but it |-> probably has some connection to the question of ME being an artifical |-> language. |-> |-> Thanks for your patience! |-> |-> Michael Akard |-> Modesto, California |-> |-> -- Sid Kitchel__________________________________________Informix Software, Inc. Email: kitchel@informix.com Suite 670 Voice: 503-721-2369 921 SW Washington St. FAX: 503-221-2633 Portland, OR 97205 ============================================================================== From: Michael Tilgner To: 'Ancient Egyptian Language List' Subject: AEL AW: AEL word for pleasure ? Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 21:00:33 +0200 Francesca wrote on May 19, 1998: > I have been reading an article (available on-line) written by Umberto Eco > which says : > > << Sometimes the hieroglyphic sign is a number : pleasure, for example, is > denoted by the number 16, because (allegedly) sexual activity begins at the > age of sixteen. Since it takes two to have an intercourse, however, this is > denoted by two sixteen's. >> > > Can anyone confirm that this is really how the word "pleasure" is written ? Dear Francesca, your question has not been answered yet, I believe. Today I got Horapollo's "Hieroglyphica" and unexpectedly found the source of Eco's statement. Book I, No. 32 "Quomodo voluptatem?" [desire, lust] "To indicate desire, they paint the number 16. From this age on men begin to be interested in relations with women and be taken with the fathering of offsprings." No. 33 "Quomodo concubitum?" [sexual intercourse] "They paint this same number 16 twice, if they want to indicate the intercourse between man and woman. Since, as said before, children come into being by desire, and the sexual intercourse by double desire; therefore they correctly add another 16." (retranslated from German) It is said that Horapollo had some knowledge of original hieroglyphic signs, mostly ideograms, and their meanings (LAe, II, col. 1275, entry "Horapollo"), but, however, this case seems very strange. Best wishes, Michael Tilgner mtilgner@baan.nl ============================================================================== From: Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 15:49:51 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? In a message dated 98-06-22 14:32:47 EDT, you write: << I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say here. As far as I know there is no Coptic letter which can ever be said to take the place of earlier {3}. The sound had simply fallen out of existence by the date of Coptic. Its last vestiges were nothing more than various vowels. In fact, it had not even been a glottal stop before this, but had probably evolved directly from a liquid sound into a vocallic sound, for there is no glottal stage in the evolution of liquids to vowels in any language about which I know. This conception of {3}'s ever having been a glottal stop in the first place comes from modern scholars tinkering with what {3} MIGHT have represented, and not from any hard observable data. There simply is no good data, because the sound was GONE by the period that Coptic was transcribed into the Greek alphabet. For the glottal stop people should be looking at the reedstalk sign, which has perhaps mistakenly been assigned the transliteration value of {j} before it was adequately understood. In all frankness, it seems to me the {3} behaved more similarly to /y/ than did {j}. Wouldn't it be a hoot if the fact of the matter were simply that the values traditionally assigned to {3} and {j} were reversed? However, I don't actually think it is as simple as this, because there is reason enough to believe that {j} was doing double time for both /'/ and /y/, while {3} was representing some other hard consonant which we have yet to securely identify. > You have explained all these difficult things as well as it can be explained at the present time, I suppose. Thanks for your help. While I'm writing, I want to mention I have a book here called "The Rosetta Stone" by Budge. I bought it yesterday because it has the whole text from the stone in all three scripts, Hieroglyphic, Greek and Demotic (albeit only in transliteration of the latter). I haven't had too much chance to study it yet, but two things impressed me so far--the fact that there is an "and" interposed in the phrases now (Greek influence?) that seems to be a sort of modification of "Hn<" (with) and written (in the Hieroglyphic section) in the regular way or with the *arm* right through the *twist of flax*. and leaving out /n/. Outside of this and a couple of other "irregularities", the Hieroglyphic part seems to be pretty much Middle Egyptian as opposed to Late Egyptian . What I mean to say is, Middle Egyptian grammar is still observed. It is about the same type language as is used in the pAbbot or the Great Harris Papyrus. with a few new wrinkles. My impression is the the "official written language" had not changed much since the 20th Dynasty though it was now Ptolemaic times. Am I right? Marianne Luban ============================================================================= From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 23:40:12 +0000 Subject: AEL Weni P3, 17-19 Carrying on from "His majesty sent me at the head of his army," [17] sT Hat.y.w-aA sT sDA.w-bit.y sT smr.w-wa.t.y-Hw.t-aA Mayors, royal seal bearers, unique confidants of the palace, sT Hr.i.w-tp HqA.w-Hw.t n.i.w Sma.w tA-mH.w chiefs, district governors of upper and lower Egypt, smr.w im.i.w-Ra aw.w [18] im.i.w-rA Hmw.w-nTr n.i.w Sma.w tA-mH.w friends, caravan leaders, chief priests of upper and lower Egypt, im.i.w-rA gs.i.w-prw Xr.i-HAt TAz.w.t n.i.w.t Sma.w tA-mH.w overseers of administrative districts, chiefs of upper and lower Egypt, Hw.w.t HqA.w.t=sn nHs.i.w n.i.w xAs.w.t iptn estates and cities which they govern, and Nubians of those foreign lands. [19] ink wn iri(=i) n=sn sxr * I did command them, sT iA.t(=i) m im.i-rA xnt.i.w-Si prw-aAi my position being (only) that of overseer of palace personnel, n mtr n.i As.t(=i) for exactness of position/duty? ir nfr ** n.i wdd wa im m sn.w=f that (each) one therein did not do harm to his (number) 2 (i.e. his fellow). There are a few points that I am not too sure about: * What is going on in this sentence? It seems a bit strange with the verbs wn and iri, one right after the other. ** What is the meaning of nfr here? Regards, -- Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/index.html ============================================================================== From: "Mark Vygus" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: AEL Weni L17-18 Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 22:07:00 +0100 L17 sT Hat.y.w-aA sT sDA.w-bit.y sT smr.w-wa.t.y-Hw.t-aA (There were) Counts, Seal-Bearers of the King, Sole-companions of the Palace sT Hr.i.w-tp HqA.w-Hw.t n.i.w Sma.w tA-mH.w Chieftains, Mayors of Upper & Lower Egypt L17/18 smr.w im.i.w-rA aw.w im.i.w-rA Hmw.w-nTr n.i.w Sma.w tA-mH.w Friends, Caravan leaders, Overseers of Priests of Upper & Lower Egypt im.i.w-rA prw Xr.i-HAt Tst.w.t n.i.w.t Sma.w tA-mH.w Members of the Administration at the head of the troops of Upper & Lower Egypt Hw.w.t HqA.w.t=sn nHs.i.w n.i.w xAs.w.t iptn Administrative Districts, cities that they governed, Nubians of these foriegn lands Mark V nsw-bit@msn.com ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 19:13:35 -0400 From: Don Feruggia To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Nubkhas@aol.com wrote: > When you say "the initial glottal > stop is never written in English"--do you mean transliterating from Egyptian? > We write it as /3/! No, as any linguist can tell you, *every* English word begins with a consonant. Those that appear to begin with a vowel actually begin with the glottal stop. The word "apple" is actually pronounced /3apl/. The glottal stop is lost before "an", so "an apple" is pronounced /3anapl/. If you repeat these two consecutively, you will hear the difference. There is a slight catch in the throat at the start of "apple" alone... this is the famous glottal stop. The same is true in German, but not French or Latin. In English, the glottal stop also appears frequently in the middle of words but we simply represent it by other consonants. Where I live, the word "little" is usually pronounced /li3l/, for example. Most English speakers don't believe they can "hear" the glottal stop, simply because the alphabet they were trained on doesn't contain a symbol for it. They've been taught to ignore it. Yet speak without it and they will hear a definite "accent". > How do you know that Coptic was pronounced any differently from how it is > written. Have you ever heard Coptic spoken? This is an odd statement. How do you know "how it is written" unless you know the conventions of the orthography? Is English pronounced "how it is written?" Is "right" pronounced "rig-h-t"? I hope you don't think the "oo" in "eloole" is pronounced like the English "oo" in "school". That would be impossible either for Coptic or Greek. It is two short o's pronounced in sequence. If you pronounce two short vowels in sequence in English - or any language where the glottal stop is a feature - you will automatically insert a glottal stop between them. It is to get the stop and not the second vowel that they chose this spelling. Paradoxically, this word is pronounced almost exactly the way an English speaker would read it! English would give /3elo3ole/ where Coptic is /3elo3le/. I have not personally heard Coptic spoken, but Coptic *is* still spoken - in the Egyptian Coptic church. My information is from the best sources I know of. I believe Loprieno also discusses this and has an excellent bibiography if you want more references. ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 18:20:57 -0700 From: "Ron Fellows, CM, Editor, The Glyph" To: Ancien-l@ulkyvm.louisville.edu CC: preservation-l@netcom-com, osirisl@idirect.ca, artifact@umdd.umd.edu, arch-theory@mailbase.ac.uk, ARCH-L@postal.tamu.edu, anthro-l@listserv.ascu.buffalo.edu, eef@pantheon.yale.edu, AEgyptian-l@rostau.demon.co.uk, aegeanet@acpub.duke.edu, AIA-L@brynmawr.edu, museum-l@home.ease.lsoft.com Subject: AEL Exciting news!! Hello World: This is exciting news that I want you all to know about. The Archaeological Institute of America, San Diego Society's trip to Egypt, November 15-28, has been approved for 3-5 units of university credit. Now you can tour Egypt and get credit in anthropology for the trip. See our November itinerary with 20 beautiful photos from our tour in January. Please tell your anthro/archaeo students. http://www.web-sculptors.com/glyph/open.html click on Enter, then on Assignment:Egypt Ron Fellows, CM, Editor, The Glyph and Secretary AIA San Diego Society ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 00:32:52 +1000 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Mike Dyall-Smith Subject: Re: AEL Weni P3, 17-19 Thanks to the two Marks (Vygus+Wilson)!! ;-) for the next installment of Weni. Here are some comments: - >Carrying on from "His majesty sent me at the head of his army," - 'mSa pn', so 'this army'. Actually an interesting slip. Why would Weni NOT say 'his army' meaning the army of the king. Does he do this to give extra weight to his own achievements? MW:> [17] sT Hat.y.w-aA sT sDA.w-bit.y sT smr.w-wa.t.y-Hw.t-aA > Mayors, royal seal bearers, unique confidants of the palace, MV: (There were) Counts, Seal-Bearers of the King, Sole-companions of the Palace, etc. Now the particle 'sT' is problematic to me here. It is not introducing independent sentences, or subordinate clauses. It prefaces each of a series of (plural) nouns. Mark Vygus has added 'There were' in order to make better sense of these (in english). Could it be that they are tacked onto the preceding (verbal) sentence, ie. "... this army, AND (the) mayors, AND (the) royal Seal-Bearers, .... AND (the) Nubians of those foreign lands." Alternatively, they might preface the next sentence: "Now (there were) mayors,... etc. AND it was I (who) was the one who made plans for them". Anyone like to comment ? >sT Hr.i.w-tp HqA.w-Hw.t n.i.w Sma.w tA-mH.w >chiefs, district governors of upper and lower Egypt, > >smr.w im.i.w-Ra aw.w [18] im.i.w-rA Hmw.w-nTr n.i.w Sma.w tA-mH.w >friends, caravan leaders, chief priests of upper and lower Egypt, Questions: - (royal) friends - imi.w-rA. Is an 'overseer of priests' the same as a 'first/chief priest' (Hm-nTr-tp.y)? MW: >im.i.w-rA gs.i.w-prw Xr.i-HAt TAz.w.t n.i.w.t Sma.w tA-mH.w >overseers of administrative districts, .... snip... MV: >Members of the Administration at the head of the troops of Upper & Lower Egypt - Faulkner is a bit dubious about the meaning of gs.i-pr, and lists 'administrative district, or temple'. Both with question marks. My silly german translation program gives Hannig's definition of imi-rA gsw-prw, as 'Director of working-up-business'. Perhaps someone on the list can render "Vorsteher der Verarbeitungsbetriebe, (2)* tragbarer Schrein" a bit more clearly for me ! - Xr.i-HAt, a compound preposition, consisting of a preposition+noun, lit. 'under the front', but meaning in english 'at the front of', 'in front of'. >[19] ink wn iri(=i) n=sn sxr * >I did command them, > - I want to ponder this a bit more, but I'll have a quick stab at it. Looks like a bipartite nominal sentence, but the second nominal phrase (wn iri..... sxr) is not typical. 'wn' is the verb 'wnn', and must be nominal in that position in the sentence, so is probably a participle (past/completed, active). So something like, (lit.) 'It is I who was the one who made plans for them' (ie. directed the army's strategy). If iri also a participle, then a suffix pronoun is not needed. The transliteration indicates a relative clause, but I'm not sure whether this is likely in the circumstances. The antecedent is 'indefinite' but really the identity of person is obvious. The 'them' is clearly all the groups previously mentioned. Discussion please.... ! Regards, Mike D-S ************************************* Mike Dyall-Smith, Ph.D. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Melbourne, 3052 Australia Tel: +(613) 9344-5693 Fax: +(613) 9347-1540 e-m: m.dyall-smith@microbiology.unimelb.edu.au web: www.microbiol.unimelb.edu.au/mds/ ************************************* ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 20:40:57 +0000 Subject: Re: AEL Weni P3, 17-19 Hi, Mike, > - Faulkner is a bit dubious about the meaning of gs.i-pr, and lists > 'administrative district, or temple'. Both with question marks. My silly > german translation program gives Hannig's definition of imi-rA gsw-prw, as > 'Director of working-up-business'. Perhaps someone on the list can render > "Vorsteher der Verarbeitungsbetriebe, (2)* tragbarer Schrein" a bit more I'd say it means: Head of manufacturing, or (2) portable shrine. > > > >[19] ink wn iri(=i) n=sn sxr * > >I did command them, > > > - I want to ponder this a bit more, but I'll have a quick stab at it. > Looks like a bipartite nominal sentence, but the second nominal phrase (wn > iri..... sxr) is not typical. 'wn' is the verb 'wnn', and must be nominal > in that position in the sentence, so is probably a participle > (past/completed, active). > So something like, (lit.) 'It is I who was the one who made plans for > them' (ie. directed the army's strategy). If iri also a participle, then a > suffix pronoun is not needed. The transliteration indicates a relative > clause, but I'm not sure whether this is likely in the circumstances. The > antecedent is 'indefinite' but really the identity of person is obvious. I think I'd like to ponder this one a bit longer too! ;-; Regards, -- Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/index.html ============================================================================== From: "Graham Carey" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL unsuscribe Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 13:43:43 PDT unsuscribe. Graham Carey grahamcarey@hotmail.com ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 01:46:20 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Dear Marianne, Thanks for the note. I am sorry it took me longer to get back this time. > want to mention I have a book here called "The Rosetta Stone" by Budge. I > bought it yesterday because it has the whole text from the stone in all three > scripts, Hieroglyphic, Greek and Demotic (albeit only in transliteration of > the latter). I haven't had too much chance to study it yet, but two things > impressed me so far--the fact that there is an "and" interposed in the phrases > now (Greek influence?) that seems to be a sort of modification of "Hn<" (with) > and written (in the Hieroglyphic section) in the regular way or with the *arm* > right through the *twist of flax*. Yes, in Coptic there is a fully developed word for "and". This is not Greek influence, but natural internal development. In Sahidic, this word shows up as {auO}, in Bohairic as {ouah}, and in several of the other dialects, you get forms like {aoueihen}, {aouOhen}, {oueih}, and even stranger variants. In Demotic, which was the contemporary language of the "Rosetta Stone"'s text, somtimes also called the "Memphis Decree", because this is the subject of the text, and Rosetta is only the place where it was found, the word is spelled {w3H}. The influence is probably from Demotic, and as I mentioned before, there was not a lot of sense concerning the difference between {j}, {3}, and {`} in the Ptolemaic Period, that of demotic Egyptian, so they can spell it with the arm too. Are you sure that this twist of flax, is not actually the broom, which has the value /w3H/? > and leaving out /n/. Leaving out {n} is also a feature of Demotic. By the way, just a small asside: as for the use of the different kinds of brackets, in standard linguistic typesetting, //'s are used to surround actual sounds or phonemes, {}'s are used to surround orthographies, spellings, or graphemes, []'s are used to surround actual realizations of words, and an initial * is used to mark a phonetic reconstruction. Example: The Sahidic Coptic word for "and" {aouO} is the spelling alpha-omikron-upsilon-omega. /awo:/ is what it sounded like. [awo:] is what it was realized as. (?) *ir-walH (from r w3H) is a possible reconstruction of what this word might have sounded like at some very early proto-stage, although, in this case, it is not at all clear that the words which came together and formed this new word, were ever glommed together in this way during the Middle Kingdom. > Outside of this and a > couple of other "irregularities", the Hieroglyphic part seems to be pretty > much Middle Egyptian as opposed to Late Egyptian . What I mean to say is, > Middle Egyptian grammar is still observed. It is about the same type language > as is > used in the pAbbot or the Great Harris Papyrus. with a few new wrinkles. My > impression is the the "official written language" had not changed much since > the > 20th Dynasty though it was now Ptolemaic times. Am I right? Yes, you are right. This is called "egyptien de tradition". From the Middle Kingdom onwards, Middle Egyptian became the traditional standard for monumental inscriptions. At different periods, the "Middle Egyptian" shows small influences from the current norms and orthographies, but, by and large, they are trying very hard to write in Middle Egyptian, although often not very successfully. One often finds, Late-Egyptianisms, Demoticisms, hyper-corrections, hypo-corrections, and horribly gross errors in New Kingdom through Graeco-Roman "Middle Egyptian". The Ptolemaic variety of egyptien de tradition is filled with funny orthographies, phonetic corruptions of Middle Egyptian, and details like the ones you have astutely noticed, such as new lexical items slipped conveniently into place, or other ones omitted. Yours, Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 02:47:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Dear Don, Thanks for the note. > Nubkhas@aol.com wrote: > > > When you say "the initial glottal > > stop is never written in English"--do you mean transliterating from Egyptian? > > We write it as /3/! > > No, as any linguist can tell you, *every* English word begins with a consonant. > Those that appear to begin with a vowel actually begin with the glottal stop. The I agree with you totally, however, there are still some people around who don't really abide by this. Jozef Vergote, for instance, has classified Coptic syllable types beginning in vowels (v, vc, vcc, etc.). I, like you, would disagree with him, and side more with Steindorff on there being a glottal stop involved, and hence classify such syllables as cv, cvc, cvcc, etc. > word "apple" is actually pronounced /3apl/. The glottal stop is lost before "an", > so "an apple" is pronounced /3anapl/. If you repeat these two consecutively, you > will hear the difference. There is a slight catch in the throat at the start of > "apple" alone... this is the famous glottal stop. The same is true in German, but > not French or Latin. It is important to maintian a distinction between signs which relate to orthography and signs which relate to phonology. I would suggest that we use {3} only to represent the grapheme of the Egyptian vulture, and that we use {'} to represent the glottal stop, otherwise, things can get extremely confusing for people who are still trying to make a distinction between phonemes and graphemes. The main reason I think this is so important is that we haven't satisfactorily assigned an agreed upon value for {3}, so using {3} for the glottal stop really complicates matters more. Some people think that {3} represented /'/, and others think that {3} represented /R/ or /l/, or even other sounds, so when you mean the glottal stop, use {'}, otherwise, people will think you are saying that English had an Egyptian vulture too! ;-P > In English, the glottal stop also appears frequently in the middle of words but we > simply represent it by other consonants. Where I live, the word "little" is > usually pronounced /li3l/, for example. Yes, I am in Boston for the summer, and this is how the local accent pronounces that word too. > > How do you know that Coptic was pronounced any differently from how it is > > written. Have you ever heard Coptic spoken? > > This is an odd statement. How do you know "how it is written" unless you know the > conventions of the orthography? Is English pronounced "how it is written?" Is > "right" pronounced "rig-h-t"? I hope you don't think the "oo" in "eloole" is > pronounced like the English "oo" in "school". That would be impossible either for > Coptic or Greek. It is two short o's pronounced in sequence. If you pronounce > two short vowels in sequence in English - or any language where the glottal stop > is a feature - you will automatically insert a glottal stop between them. It is > to get the stop and not the second vowel that they chose this spelling. > Paradoxically, this word is pronounced almost exactly the way an English speaker > would read it! English would give /3elo3ole/ where Coptic is /3elo3le/. You have brought up a very significant point which I think it would be good to emphasize for the benefit of the list. If we want to keep sounds and orthographies straight, we need to abide by conventions which will let other readers know when we are talking about which. I strongly recommend that we adopt the practice of bracketing the two phenomena differently. {eloole} is how the coptic word was spelled, but /'elo'le/ was how the word was pronounced. If we can remember to do this graphically in our e-mails, then much less time will be wasted on misunderstandings. > I have not personally heard Coptic spoken, but Coptic *is* still spoken - in the > Egyptian Coptic church. My information is from the best sources I know of. I > believe Loprieno also discusses this and has an excellent bibiography if you want > more references. This is very true. Moreover, there are many people who work on Coptic phonology, and there has been considerable progress made in reconstructing what it originally sounded like before Arabic influence began to change it, after Coptic became extinct as a mode of everyday communication around 1700 CE, as well as progress in the direction of reconstructing earlier stages of Egyptian from Coptic orthographies. I have just been working on a project dealing with Coptic syllabication and stress myself. Much information is to be extracted from the Medieval bilingal texts. I have recenlty been examining an Arabic text which was written in the Coptic alphabet, and it is interesting to see how Copts began to write in Arabic using their own script. It is extremely informative about what the sounds of the language were like by the Islamic Period. In fact, I will share with you some of this information (in this case only about the vowels) in a table below, because it is so interesting. To understand my chart, you need to know that: {--} means not present in the examples; /ae/ is like English {a} in "hat", that {ue} is like an umlauted {u}, that {~} means supralinear stroke, and {'} means supralinear dot (only for THIS chart!). Usual Coptic Sahidic- Bohairic- Coptic Greek Dialectal Arabic Arabic Grapheme Value Variants Transcriptions Transcriptions _________________________________________________________________________ {~} -- {e}, {i} --, /i/ -- {'} {a} /a/ {e}, {o} /a/, /a:/ /a/, /a:/ /ae/, /ae:/ {e} /e/ {a}, {i}, /a/, /ae:/, /a/, /ae:/ {~}, {'} /i/ /i/, /u/ {E} /e:/ {e}, {ei}, /ae:/, /i/, -- {i} /i:/ {Ei} /e:y/ {eei}, {ei}, -- /ay/ {i}, {E} {i} /i/ {e}, {E}, /i/, /i:/ /i:/ {ei}, {~}, {'} {ei} /ey/ {E}, {i} /i/ -- {o} /o/ {a}, {O} /u/ /u/, /u:/ {O} /o:/ {o}, {ou} /u/, /u:/ -- {u} /ue/ {ou} -- -- {ou} /u/ {O} /u/, /u:/ /u:/ Yours, Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 23:45:36 -0700 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: AEL More on the meaning of KMT I was just reading in Wente's _Letters From Ancient Egypt_ a letter from Deir el Medina in which the Term "Black Land" (presumably kmt) is used to refer to the cultivated area of the Nile valley, as opposed to the desert where the village was situated. This is in letter 200: O.Prague1826, which was published in Cerny & Gardiner, _Hieratic Ostrace, Vol.1_, 1957, pl.70(2). If anyone has access to this, I would be intersted to check that what Wente translates was in fact kmt. -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== From: Aayko Eyma To: 'Ancient Egyptian Language List' Subject: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor line 7-11 Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 22:58:48 +-200 Hi all, Is someone else working on this text or has the whole beginner's class headed for the mountains? ;) I liked what was said on ANE, about the 'Cyrus Gordon' method, which I translate as: just starting to read in the language one needs to learn is far more pleasant and thus more fruitfull, than wrestling with abstract (and thus easily discouraging) grammars alone, i.e. in 'dry' isolation. And why not start with the Sailor? Have a look at Stephen's page. Lines 7-11 gave me some problems, initially at least, but not too much: (7-11) js.t=tn jy.t 'D.t nn nHw n mS'.w=n pH.n=n pH.w.y w3w3.t sn.n=n sn-mwt m=k r=f n jy=n m Htp t3=n pH=n sw = your crew has returned and has become safe, loss (is/was) not for/to our soldiers [i.e. there were no losses among our soldiers]. (After) we had reached (the) hind-quarters of Wawat [i.e. we had reached the most northern part of Wawat] (and after) we had passed Senmut, voila!, (then) we came/returned in peace, our land we reached it! -- 1) js.t is written as if fem. pl. (js.w.t), but I gather it is a fem. collective? Seeing the Pseudoparticiple on fem.sing. -t(j). 2) It really says =tn "of you all", which makes no sense; likely an error for =n ("our crew"). 3) What gave me some problems is _'D_, being written with AA8 instead of V26, and with a compl. d instead of D. I took this to be a Pseudoparticiple too. As to these PsP, would "is now in a state of being returned and of being safe" be a good literal translation? 4) Lichtheim translates pH.n=n pH.w.y w3w3.t as "We have left Wawat behind" which seems a bit free. Her behind and the Sailor's behind are two different things, not? ;) 5) _m'krf=n_ was totally obscure to me at first; seeing the context I expected a verb at =n. But no such verb to find. Well, then i realized chopping things up in common particles would be a good idea: * m=k + [] = "see!""voila!","here is..[]!" (pendant: nn + [] = "[]...is not (t)here!" "[]...is absent") to open the sentence. * and the mouth-viper particle often used to give emphasis: (i)r=f = "concerning him", "at his turn" -> "then...HE..." Often 'frozen' for all persons, then followed by the dependant pronoun (like m=k is followed by the dependant pronoun, and so do some other particles). Aayko Eyma ============================================================================== From: Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 03:36:08 EDT To: geoffrey.graham@yale.edu, owner-AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk, AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Hello from Modesto! I feel that the statement, > as any linguist can tell you, *every* English word begins with a consonant. calls for at least a little linguistic comment. The glottal stop is not phonemic in English; that is, it does not transmit a message which is perceived to alter the meaning of a word. Thus, unlike Arabic, which has a specific letter/symbol (the 'hamza' to indicate the production of a glottal stop, English has no letter to represent such a sound. Even ancient Greek had a symbol to clarify the pronunciation of a vowel-initial word, but the symbol merely indicated the presence or absence of the spirant /h/. Orthography is used to designate sounds which differentiate the meanings of words, and since the glottal stop doesn't make a meaningful difference in the pronunciation of English, we do not have a symbol to represent it. That's why we are able to discuss the possible phonetic realizations of /3/; however it was pronounced, it was important, or it would not have warranted the creation of a symbol. Michael Akard Modesto, California ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 14:51:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: AEL AEL: Aleph (Jim Allen's Comments) Dear Friends, Dr. Jim Allen, just asked that I forward the following to the AEL on his beahlf. _______________________________________________________________________ There is no question that what we call "aleph" was indeed a phoneme (hereafter /3/; the slash marks indicate phonemes), rather than a writing convention for some kind of vowel or vowel+consonant. The evidence indicates that this phoneme originally fell in the consonantal range of the dentals /n/ and /r/. The latter was almost certainly a "flapped" /r/ (probably single-flapped as in Spanish "pero," rather than "trilled" as in Spanish "perro"); this is why /r/ is sometimes for Semitic /d/, and vice-versa (see Hoch, Semitic Words, 430). Both /n/ and /r/ were probably pronounced with the same articulation (a single flap of the tongue at the top of the mouth in the area back of the teeth) but differed in other respects, such as the nasality associated with /n/. The phoneme /l/ ("light" /l/ as in "light," rather than "dark /l/ as in "full") also has the same articulation. It is clear that both /n/ and /r/ are sometimes ancestral to this phoneme: e.g., /ns/ "tongue" = {las/les} in all Coptic dialects (< */lis/, cognate with the Semitic root /ls/) vs. /ns/ "to/for her" (n.s) = Coptic {nas/nes} < */nis/; /crq/ "bend" (where /c/ is "ayin") = Coptic {Olk} < */calaq/ vs. /crq/ "swear" = Coptic {Ork} (except in Fayumic, which uses {l} for {r}) < * /caraq/ (the curly brackets inducate graphemes, or written signs). It is not clear, however, when this phoneme emerged in the history of the language: the two hieroglyphic words /crq/, for example, could originally have been homonyms (like English "wait" and "weight"), and only later differentiated into /crq/ and /clq/ (like the group {ough} has become differentiated in English "tough" and "though"). This means that both /n/ and /r/ spanned the consonantal range [n-l-r]: i.e., that in some words in some periods in some dialects /n/ = [l] as well as [n], and /r/ = [l] as well as [r] (the square brackets indicate sounds). The written history of the language indicates that [l] was originally an allophone (alternative pronunciation) of /n/ and /r/, and that it became phonemicized in this role only later: thus, /ns/ "tongue" = *[nis] > *[nis/lis] > *[lis] and /crq/ "swear" = *[caraq] > *[caraq/calaq] > *[calaq]. Coptic /l/ in native words (as opposed to loanwords) is mostly descended from this allophone: that is, in most native Coptic words, /l/ is the descendant of hieroglyphic /n/ or /r/. There are a few cases, however, where it comes from /3/: for example, {klka} "pustule" < {k3k3wt} "blister," and {hlpe} "navel" < Demotic {Xlpy} < {Xp3(j)} "navel" (with metathesis, where {X} is "fourth h"). (There are also a few words in which /r/ comes from hieroglyphic /3/, such as Bohairic {k'robi} "sickle" (where {k'} is chi) < the root /X3b/ "crooked," but this is rarer and more limited dialectically). We see the same descent in the OE-ME particle /H3/ "would that" (where /H/ is "dotted h") > LE {Hnr} = /Hl/, which has no Coptic descendant. Coptic /l/ also derives from hieroglyphic {3} in words that have various hieroglyphic spellings with {3/3n/n/nr/r}: for example, {hloq/hloc} "sweet" (where {q} is qima and {c} is djandja) < Ptol. {Hrg} < LE {H3nrg/Hnrg} < ME {H3g}. In Middle Egyptian writings of foreign names, {3} is constantly used for Semitic /l/, less often for Semitic /r/. These data suggest that {3} was originally a consonant like /n/ and /r/. Since (a) it is a phoneme and (b) it is mostly associated with later /l/ in the cases just mentioned, the chances are that it originally represented phonemic /l/--that is, an original [l], rather than an allophone of /n/ or /r/. It is likely, however, that not all early dialects of Egyptian had this phoneme. This would explain, for example, why we find the word /dlg/ "dwarf" spelled not only as {d3g} but also as {d3ng} and {dng} in OE texts. Such spellings suggest that in dialects without phonemic /l/, /3/ was pronounced by its nearest allophone--[n] or [r]. But it could also have been simply omitted: this is suggested by early spellings such as {hb} for /h3b/ "send" (compare the fate of original /l/ in English "talk" and "walk"). Of course, Egyptian /3/ has mostly disappeared or become a true "aleph" (glottal stop) in most Coptic words. This undoubtedly happened between ME and LE: by the 18th Dynasty, {3} was used as a "vowel-marker" in group writing (e.g., {b3} = [bi]), and the language had to invent a new grapheme {nr} for [l]. Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian are not only different stages of the language but certainly also different dialects (see Edgerton, BASOR 122 (April 1951), 9-12), so it is not clear to what extent this change in the value of /3/ was due to time as opposed to dialect: i.e., it is possible that the dialect represented by Late Egyptian was one of those that originally had no phonemic /l/. When analyzing the original value of {3}, it is necessary to take ALL of these data into account. As Peter Dorman has said about another set of data, "One cannot force consistency onto a corpus demonstrably void of it" (The Monuments of Senenmut, 161). Despite the general relationship between hieroglyphic {3} and Coptic "aleph"/zero, there is also a substantial body of evidence indicating that {3} was originally a phonemic /l/. The picture is complicated enormously not only by the long history of the language but also by the presence of numerous dialects throughout that history. In my opinion, this makes it fruitless--in the absence of firm written evidence--to speculate about how /3/ = [l] might have developed into /3/ = [']. The evidence we do have suggests that /3/, like /n/ and /r/, was a phoneme that had a number of different allophones in all periods and dialects of the language. James P. Allen, Curator Department of Egyptian Art Metropolitan Museum of Art ============================================================================== From: "Mark Vygus" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: AEL Weni L20-22 Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 22:45:59 +0100 L20 ir nfr-n nHm wa im xAD Tb.w.t m-a Hr wAt so that no-one took away dough or sandals from one who was on the road L20 cont. ir nfr-n iTT wa im dAiw m niwt nb.t so that no-one seized (from) there a loin-cloth from any town L21 ir nfr-n iTT wa im waty nb m-a s.w nbw so that no-one seized (from) there any goat from any man L21cont. mAa ki sn m iw mH.w.t sbA n ii Htp war.t nt Hrw-nb-mAat I led them from the Northern Isle (from) the gate of Iyhotep (in) the district of Horus-lord-of-Truth L21cont. sT wi m iAt tn ///////////// (while) I (was) in this Office L22 /////////////////////// xt-nb.t wbA n (=i) Tnw TAs.w.t ptn ////////////////////// everything. (I) determined the number of these troops L22cont. n-sp wbA.t n bAk nb on no occasion had any servant determined (it before) (never before had any servant determined it) Mark V nsw-bit@msn.com ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 19:07:44 -1000 From: rlarsen To: AEL Subject: AEL Re: Does anyone know of references on the Serpent Rod?; OM references. Dr. Glazov and listmembers, I am posting this message to the AEL list in the hopes some list members will know of relevant references on the Serpent Rod used in the Egyptian Opening of the Mouth ritual. Philological articles are especially appreciated. If you made an exhaustive review of the literature you probably saw most of the following references. In case there is something you might have missed I have attached a few references from my files. I will try to find some more references for you on the serpent rod. I think you are on the right track in finding parallels with the rod in passages in Exodus and Isaiah. My speculation is that the Egyptian serpent rod is in the form of a serpent because it overcomes the serpent. Fighting fire with fire is a common idea in the tribal magic of the region. If you overcome someone or some thing, you "take its scalp" you gain its power and strengths." A serpent is used to overcome a serpent. Fire is used to fight fire. A poisonous serpent is also used to remove poison from the mouth of the initiate. This also seems appropriate in the ancient world view. Take another look at PT utterance 298 in this context. In 298 the serpent is overcome and the poison is drawn out of his mouth at line 498. Another possibility is that serpents were sometimes associated with rivers or water. The water of purification could be administered with a serpent rod signifying power over water. I'll see if I have any specific references to the serpent rod in my files. Do you know of anything else by Roth on the OM other than what I have mentioned here? Here's what I have that may be of interest to you concerning the OM. The references are not guaranteed to be accurate please verify any of interest. Baly, T. J. Colin. "Notes on the Ritual of Opening the Mouth." JEA 16 (1930), 173-186. Bleeker, C. J. "Initiation in Egypt." Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965, from Bleeker, (ed.) Initiation, Studies in the History of Religion. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965. Supplement to "Numen" 10:49-58. Bjerke, Svein. "Remarks on the Egyptian Ritual of 'Opening the Mouth' and Its Interpretation." Numen, 12 (1965), 201-216. Blackman, A. M. "The Rite of Opening the Mouth in Ancient Egypt and Babylonia." JEA 10 (1924), 47-59 Budge, E. A. Wallis. "The Book of Opening the Mouth." London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Tr=FCbner and Company, Limited. 1909, 2 vols. Davies, Norman De Garis. "The tomb of Rekh-mi-re at Thebes." New York: Arno Press, 1973. As Ebeling ... in (Tod u. Leben, p. 101) etc. (Otto, 1960, II, 83; cf. J.G. Griffiths, Chron. d'Eg., 33, 182-193. Firmicus Matern. in Hopfner, Fontes, p. 520 ? Louvre Papyrus No. 3284, edited by J. de Horrack with a translation in Biblioteque Egyptologique, XVII [1878], pp. 110-137, plates vii- xiii)[Note.=20 de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 2:372-341 Gee, John. "Notes on the sons of Horus" (GEE-91). Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), 1991. Goyon, Jean-Claude. "Rituels fun=E9raire de l'ancienne =C9gypte ." Paris: Les =C9ditions du Cerf. 1972. Lepsius, R. "Saite Recension of the Book of the Dead." (1842). Morenz, S. "Aegyptische Religion." Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1960, being Band 8 of "Die Religionen der Menscheit, ed. C. M. Schroeder. Otto, Eberhard. Das =E4egyptische Mund=F6ffnungsritual, II, (Weisbaden: O= tto Harrassowitz, 1960). Roth, Ann Macy Roth, "The Pss-kf and the 'Opening of Mouth' Ceremony: A Ritual of Birth and Rebirth," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 78 (1992), 113-147. Roth, Ann Macy Roth, "Fingers, Stars, and the 'Opening of the Mouth': The Nature and Function of the NTRWJ-Blades," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 79 (1993), 57-79. Schulman, Alan R. "The iconographic theme, 'opening of the mouth' on stelae", JARCE 21 (1984), 169-196. Shaw, Ian, and Paul Nicholson, "British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt." London: British Museum Press. Urrutia, Benjamin. "Psalm 51 and the 'Opening of the Mouth' Ceremony." Egyptological Studies, Volume 28 (1982), 222-223. Urrutia is a very short and very hard to find article by a young LDS student. A well respected Catholic scholar commented on ANE that he found the article a waste of time. IMO that depite the article's length, it did stir up coals which had been slumbering on this subject. Regards, Randall Larsen ============================================================================== From: Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 14:07:11 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL : Aleph (Jim Allen's Comments) >> It is likely, however, that not all early dialects of Egyptian had this phoneme. This would explain, for example, why we find the word /dlg/ "dwarf" spelled not only as {d3g} but also as {d3ng} and {dng} in OE texts. Such spellings suggest that in dialects without phonemic /l/, /3/ was pronounced by its nearest allophone--[n] or [r]. But it could also have been simply omitted: this is suggested by early spellings such as {hb} for /h3b/ "send" (compare the fate of original /l/ in English "talk" and "walk").>> Sorry to be harping on this "dwarf" business, but it really interests me. First of all, I am not arguing that there was no dialect in OK Egypt that had an "l", but may I ask what region it was supposed to be in? However, I still think that "dwarf" is not going to be of much help in concluding the significance of /3/ in OE. The only attestation of "d3g" as "dwarf" , as far as I am aware, appears to be from what Budge refers to as "N. 1179, (the funerary text of King Pepi II). It is written *d3g* followed by the *falcon on a standard* and interpreted by Budge as "the dwarf-god". However, this may not be correct. The same text, (N. 1047) has a writing of "dqq" followed by the same *falcon on a standard* and Budge has this as "the name of a title or a god". I think it is very possible these two attestations are the same thing and may have nothing whatever to do with "dwarf". Perhaps someone who has access to this text can look up these references. Or perhaps someone else can find another attestation of "d3g" as "dwarf". Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 11:18:53 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL : Aleph (Jim Allen's Comments) In a message dated 98-06-28 06:36:48 EDT, you write: << Dr. Jim Allen, just asked that I forward the following to the AEL on his beahlf. _______________________________________________________________________ There is no question that what we call "aleph" was indeed a phoneme (hereafter /3/; the slash marks indicate phonemes), rather than a writing convention for some kind of vowel or vowel+consonant. The evidence indicates that this phoneme originally fell in the consonantal range of the dentals /n/ and /r/. The latter was almost certainly a "flapped" /r/ (probably single-flapped as in Spanish "pero," rather than "trilled" as in Spanish "perro"); this is why /r/ is sometimes for Semitic /d/, and vice-versa (see Hoch, Semitic Words, 430). Both /n/ and /r/ were probably pronounced with the same articulation (a single flap of the tongue at the top of the mouth in the area back of the teeth) but differed in other respects, such as the nasality associated with /n/.>> But is the Spanish "r" have any kind of "d" sound when there is only one? In standard British English, double "r" also takes on a sound that is like "d". It looks to me like Prof. Allen is claiming this for both /r/ and /3/ alone. And, if they are so alike, why is /3/ NEVER used in initial place as "r" in the orthography? Other glyphs are interchangeable in the orthography, but /3/ not being interchangeable with /r/ ever (at least in initial place) is explained away by saying "it fell silent". To me, this seems a bit disingenuous. >> The phoneme /l/ ("light" /l/ as in "light," rather than "dark /l/ as in "full") also has the same articulation. It is clear that both /n/ and /r/ are sometimes ancestral to this phoneme: e.g., /ns/ "tongue" = {las/les} in all Coptic dialects (< */lis/, cognate with the Semitic root /ls/) vs. /ns/ "to/for her" (n.s) = Coptic {nas/nes} < */nis/; /crq/ "bend" (where /c/ is "ayin") = Coptic {Olk} < */calaq/ vs. /crq/ "swear" = Coptic {Ork} (except in Fayumic, which uses {l} for {r}) < * /caraq/ (the curly brackets inducate graphemes, or written signs). It is not clear, however, when this phoneme emerged in the history of the language: the two hieroglyphic words /crq/, for example, could originally have been homonyms (like English "wait" and "weight"), and only later differentiated into /crq/ and /clq/ (like the group {ough} has become differentiated in English "tough" and "though"). This means that both /n/ and /r/ spanned the consonantal range [n-l-r]: i.e., that in some words in some periods in some dialects /n/ = [l] as well as [n], and /r/ = [l] as well as [r] (the square brackets indicate sounds). >> Excuse me, but I don't necessarily see what this has to do with /3/. The examples for /3/ being interchangeable with "n-l-r" are rare in either Egyptian or Coptic and can easily be explained away. And /n/ and /r/ are not in doubt, no matter how they were pronounced in certain dialects. It is /3/ that is in doubt. >>The written history of the language indicates that [l] was originally an allophone (alternative pronunciation) of /n/ and /r/, and that it became phonemicized in this role only later: thus, /ns/ "tongue" = *[nis] > *[nis/lis] > *[lis] and /crq/ "swear" = *[caraq] > *[caraq/calaq] > *[calaq]. Coptic /l/ in native words (as opposed to loanwords) is mostly descended from this allophone: that is, in most native Coptic words, /l/ is the descendant of hieroglyphic /n/ or /r/. There are a few cases, however, where it comes from /3/: for example, {klka} "pustule" < {k3k3wt} "blister," and {hlpe} "navel" < Demotic {Xlpy} < {Xp3(j)} "navel" (with metathesis, where {X} is "fourth h"). (There are also a few words in which /r/ comes from hieroglyphic /3/, such as Bohairic {k'robi} "sickle" (where {k'} is chi) < the root /X3b/ "crooked," but this is rarer and more limited dialectically). We see the same descent in the OE-ME particle /H3/ "would that" (where /H/ is "dotted h") > LE {Hnr} = /Hl/, which has no Coptic descendant. Coptic /l/ also derives from hieroglyphic {3} in words that have various hieroglyphic spellings with {3/3n/n/nr/r}: for example, {hloq/hloc} "sweet" (where {q} is qima and {c} is djandja) < Ptol. {Hrg} < LE {H3nrg/Hnrg} < ME {H3g}. In Middle Egyptian writings of foreign names, {3} is constantly used for Semitic /l/, less often for Semitic /r/.>> Can this really be true? I don't see that at all in my dictionary! I see /r/ being used for Semitic "l" and /3/ being used where the vowel sounds would have been in the Semitic pronunciation--as we know it from the later- introduced diacritical marks. Can anybody give me any examples of where /3/ is used for Semitic "l" in the foreign names? I don't see this at all. For example, there is the Semitic "Ashkalon", a toponym. It is attested several times with slightly varied spellings. The "l" in the term is variously indicated by the *lion*, by /r/ and once it looks like by /n/ but it seems to be a miswriting because /r/ soon follows. Never once is the Semitic "l" written in this name with /3/. /3/ is there all right, though--it follows the /q/, making the vocalization "qa"! >> These data suggest that {3} was originally a consonant like /n/ and /r/. Since (a) it is a phoneme and (b) it is mostly associated with later /l/ in the cases just mentioned, the chances are that it originally represented phonemic /l/--that is, an original [l], rather than an allophone of /n/ or /r/.>> I do wish he had given some examples of "the cases just mentioned". >> It is likely, however, that not all early dialects of Egyptian had this phoneme. This would explain, for example, why we find the word /dlg/ "dwarf" spelled not only as {d3g} but also as {d3ng} and {dng} in OE texts. Such spellings suggest that in dialects without phonemic /l/, /3/ was pronounced by its nearest allophone--[n] or [r]. But it could also have been simply omitted: this is suggested by early spellings such as {hb} for /h3b/ "send" (compare the fate of original /l/ in English "talk" and "walk").>> "talk" comes from ME "talken" and "walk" from "walken" and the ''l" likely disappeared in pronunciation because it was too clumsy before the next consonant, in this case "k". If "dlg" is the "standard" spelling for "dwarf", shouldn't there, by common sense, have been vowel sounds between these consonants, i.e. "d*l*g"--or this would would have been quite a mouthful? How can we be sure that the /3/ in "d3ng", which Allen gives as an alternative spelling, does not stand for one of those usually invisible sounds instead--heretical talk as that may be? The same for "h3b and "hb". Given what /3/ became in the orthography, that is just as plausible an explanation, IMHO. That is, if one can allow that Egyptian glyphs should not be separated into consonants and vowels--just signs that represented certain vocalizations. We can't actually lose sight of the fact that Egyptian, despite its affinities with Semitic--is not *actually* a Semitic language and what is law for one (no vowels at all) need not be law to the other. But here comes the disclaimer that I find "disingenuous" (not that it is any invention of Prof. Allen) >> Of course, Egyptian /3/ has mostly disappeared or become a true "aleph" (glottal stop) in most Coptic words. This undoubtedly happened between ME and LE: by the 18th Dynasty, {3} was used as a "vowel-marker" in group writing (e.g., {b3} = [bi]),>> It seems to me somewhere above he said it was used for Semitic "l" and "r"! And those Semitic words really came into use after the 18th Dynasty! Why don't I understand how one sign can be both a "glottal stop" and a "glide" simultaneously? >> and the language had to invent a new grapheme {nr} for [l]. Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian are not only different stages of the language but certainly also different dialects (see Edgerton, BASOR 122 (April 1951), 9-12), so it is not clear to what extent this change in the value of /3/ was due to time as opposed to dialect: i.e., it is possible that the dialect represented by Late Egyptian was one of those that originally had no phonemic /l/.>> Wait. I am really not trying to be nasty, but doesn't this strike anybody but me as being somewhat disingenuous, too? Now instead of basing conclusion on examples, it suddenly goes to conclusion by assumption. Eeep! >> When analyzing the original value of {3}, it is necessary to take ALL of these data into account. As Peter Dorman has said about another set of data, "One cannot force consistency onto a corpus demonstrably void of it" (The Monuments of Senenmut, 161). Despite the general relationship between hieroglyphic {3} and Coptic "aleph"/zero, there is also a substantial body of evidence indicating that {3} was originally a phonemic /l/.>> Lack of consistency is right! Is there any chance this /3/ as phonemic /l/ is just an illusion brought on by a great need to cram Egyptian into the Semitic (consonants only) mold--just like a dream can be a wish fulfillment? >>The picture is complicated enormously not only by the long history of the language but also by the presence of numerous dialects throughout that history. In my opinion, this makes it fruitless--in the absence of firm written evidence--to speculate about how /3/ = [l] might have developed into /3/ = [']. >> This looks to me like "Better not ask because you might not like the answer", which might be "Because /3/ was never anything like an "l" or "r"." The evidence we do have suggests that /3/, like /n/ and /r/, was a phoneme that had a number of different allophones in all periods and dialects of the language. James P. Allen, Curator Department of Egyptian Art Metropolitan Museum of Art >> ============================================================================== From: Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 12:38:06 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL : Aleph (Jim Allen's Comments) In a message dated 98-06-28 11:24:07 EDT, I wrote: >> It is likely, however, that not all early dialects of Egyptian had this phoneme. This would explain, for example, why we find the word /dlg/ "dwarf" spelled not only as {d3g} but also as {d3ng} and {dng} in OE texts. Such spellings suggest that in dialects without phonemic /l/, /3/ was pronounced by its nearest allophone--[n] or [r]. But it could also have been simply omitted: this is suggested by early spellings such as {hb} for /h3b/ "send" (compare the fate of original /l/ in English "talk" and "walk").>> "talk" comes from ME "talken" and "walk" from "walken" and the ''l" likely disappeared in pronunciation because it was too clumsy before the next consonant, in this case "k". If "dlg" is the "standard" spelling for "dwarf", shouldn't there, by common sense, have been vowel sounds between these consonants, i.e. "d*l*g"--or this would would have been quite a mouthful? How can we be sure that the /3/ in "d3ng", which Allen gives as an alternative spelling, does not stand for one of those usually invisible sounds instead--heretical talk as that may be? The same for "h3b and "hb". >> What am I saying? I'd better stay home today or somebody might sell me a bridge. "dlg"?? How can there be a "dlg" when there is no "l" in Egyptian? This goes to show you how we get pursuaded by some of this reasoning. In my dictionary, "dwarf" is spelled "d3ng", "d3g" , "dirg3" and "dng". That's it. >From these examples, one could reach a couple of conclusions: One, that /r/ and /n/ are interchangeable sometimes. In "dirg3", "i" is written with Z4 (\\) and should really be /y/. So what are we supposed to think? That in one case, the "d3n" in "d3ng" is equal to "dir", possibly making /3/ a kind of "r"? Or should we think that /3/ and /y/ are the interchangeable ones? Or should we conclude that /3/ in "d3g" is equal to the /n/ in "dng"? But how does that explain the spelling of "d3ng'? Two /n/'s?? And what about the /3/ at the end of "dirg3"? What do we think about that? There is nothing after /g/ in any of the other spellings. It seems to me that the example of "dwarf" is not very useful for anything--except to create further confusion. PLUS, Budge gives a very similar word for "dwarf" in Amharic and, according to the Amharic syllabary, that term did not end with a consonant like /g/ ("k" in the Amharic word) but ends in "u" and appears to me to be "danku" (just be glad you are not studying Amharic. It is tough to read!). Marianne Luban ==============================================================================