From: Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 00:24:06 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL : Aleph (Jim Allen's Comments) In a message dated 98-06-28 12:38:06 EDT, I wrote: << 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!). >> That's why I needed to find a magnifying glass. It's actually "dinka". I surely don't like those wavy Amharic characters! Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 10:00:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL : Aleph (Jim Allen's Comments) Dear Marianne, > 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. If that is what happened to it, then why is this "disingenuous"? If this really is the case, then what is the evidence that you need to be able to see it? I think that if you got more familiar with the history of Egyptian orthography, something which will entail readings of large corpora, that you would be able to see that the falling silent of {3} is completely obvious from the available data. However, giving you this axample and that example is not going to satisfy you, becuase with examples, you can get no picture of the OVERWHELMING numerical aspect of this evidence. All you have to do is see the great quantities of the orthographical changes, and then you would stop all this fussing around and feeling like people are in some way trying to "trick" you into believing something which is not so. What motivation would people have to try and fool people about the value of {3} in the first place? > Can this really be true? I don't see that at all in my dictionary! Well, Marianne, if you are still using Budge's dictionary, which I suspect you are, the dictionary is not up to a standard where it can be truly useful. 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. Unfortunately I don't have access to the necessary books or notes right now, and nothing is rolling off the tip of my tongue, but If you will find syllabic orthographies of *Middle Kingdom* date, then you will undoubtedly find some examples of this. I have told you a thousand times already, if I have told you once, that New Kingdom and later examples do NOT yield any results, because {3} was already dead in the water by that time period, so OF COURSE you are not finding any evidence! > 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]),>> Yes, ... AND... what if he is right? Is that "disengenuous" too? > 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? How can you know at which stage these words may have been borrowed? We don't have all documents written in ancient times. We are lucky if we have even one little ostracon from whole centuries of history. Who is saying anything about all these values having been simultaneous? > 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! Read the work of the past two centuries and then offer your comments!!! Allen is one of the world's experts in this subject, and I am not sure you want to be accusing him on a public list of "disengenuity". Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 10:34:16 -0400 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Gerald Kadish Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor line 7-11 On Shipwrecked Sailor, 7-11: 1. Try iswt tn, `this crew', assuming the plural strokes to be erroneous. It's an emendation, to be sure, but, as was pointed out, `your' does not make much sense. 2. pHwy for `north' is a lovely bit of physicality. Just as rsy, `south' is related to the semitic word for head (i.e. the head of the river in this case), the north is the ass-end of the river. If anyone's hindquarters are being referred to, it's the hindquarters of the river. Translating it literally is likely not a good idea here. -- Gerry Gerald E. Kadish Professor of History and Near Eastern Studies Department of History Binghamton University Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 (607) 777-2488 e-mail address: kadishg@binghamton.edu ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 02:30:20 +0100 From: rosmord@iut.univ-paris8.fr (Serge Rosmorduc) To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor line 7-11 about "iswt=tn" another possibility would be to consider iswt=n (see mSa=n next line). The 't' in ='tn' would be there to indicate the final 't' of iswt is not silent, like in late egyptian writing (of course this is not late egyptian, but a number of tendency are suprisingly early, and even some good MK texts and manuscripts display a tendency to write what is heard, ommiting, for example, some prepositions (like 'm') when the previous word end with the consonnant that constitute the preposition. regards, Serge Rosmorduc. ============================================================================== From: Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 21:15:41 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL The Logic of Egyptian Philology Here are the *basics* as they appear to me. I know you will correct me if I get something wrong. FACTS: 1. Egyptian is classified as an Afroasiatic language. 2. Egyptian has a unique writing system. 3. Egyptian resembles Semitic in *some* respects. 4. Not all Asiatic languages are in the Semitic category. 5. Semitic has a limited alphabet of characters, although some Semitic scripts have more than others. 6. Egyptian writing has a large amount of symbols. 7. Some Semitic alphabets don't indicate vowels. 8. In some Semitic scripts (Babylonian, Ethiopic) vocalization is always indicated. 9. Egyptian has no terms for "consonant" or "vowel". 10. Egyptian signs represent vocalization in syllabic orthography (foreign names). 11. Egyptian is not an Indo/European language. CONCLUSIONS: 1. Egyptian is not a Semitic language. 2. The writing system of Egyptian does not resemble any Semitic one because it retains ideograms (determinatives) until finally its writing system is replaced by a totally different one (Coptic). 3. Although Egyptian glyphs represent vocalization (or vowels) in syllabic orthography, it is not possible for these same signs to represent vocalization outside of consonants in ordinary Egyptian writing. 4. Egyptian must follow the same rules as *some* Semitic scripts--the ones with only one "r". 5. Ancient Egyptian had more than one "r". 6. Egyptian must clearly differentiate between consonants and vowels like IE scripts do, although it has syllabic signs, both biliteral and triliteral, instead of dipthongs. 7. The syllabic signs usually have phonetic compliments which, even though logic dictates some are pronounced like vowels, they must remain consonants because they must follow the rules of a certain type of Semitic writing system which has no biliteral or triliteral signs. 8. ONE Egyptian glyph changed from a glide over time to a glottal stop when all others seemed to retain their original value (depending upon if you believe that /r/ and /l/ were the same sign but pronounced differently regionally). Later still it was transliterated as a vowel in the ultimate stage of the Egyptian language, which acquired a new IE-like alphabet. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 06:54:07 -0700 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor line 7-11 Aayko Eyma wrote: > 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. One of the things I like about this text as a beginning place for reading REAL Middle Egyptian is that there are few really difficult parts, and even in those it is fairly clear what is happening, so the flow of the story isn't disrupted too badly. Frequently it seems that the meaning is clear even when the grammatical construction isn't. And of course, in the best story-telling style, there are lots of repeated phrases and parallel constructions. > (7-11) > js.t=tn jy.t 'D.t ist=n ii=t(i) aD=t(i) > 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 ii=(wy)n m Htp The stative means "we are in a state of having come" or, less wordy, "we have arrived" > t3=n pH=n sw tA=n pH(.n)=n sw > your crew has returned and has become safe, Our crew has arrived and is safe > loss (is/was) not for/to our soldiers > [i.e. there were no losses among our soldiers]. without loss of our soldiers > (After) we had reached (the) hind-quarters of Wawat > [i.e. we had reached the most northern part of Wawat] We have reached the end of Wawat > (and after) we had passed Senmut, we have passed Senmut - (Senmut was the fortified road from the first cataract to Elephantine - The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt, p.51) > voila!, (then) we came/returned in peace, See, we have arrived 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). Collectives often have the plural strokes, being conceptually a plurality, but are treated as a single unit, and so are grammatically singular. > 2) It really says =tn "of you all", which makes no sense; likely an error for =n ("our crew"). Gerald Kadish wrote: >1. Try iswt tn, `this crew', assuming the plural strokes to be erroneous. Serge Rosmorduc wrote: > about "iswt=tn" another possibility would be to consider > iswt=n (see mSa=n next line). The 't' in ='tn' would be there > to indicate the final 't' of iswt is not silent The general meaning here is fairly clear, however the writing of it is not. The usual is to assume that it is a mis-writing of some kind for is.t=n "our crew". Gerald Kadish's suggestion is one I hadn't heard before, and has merit. The only thing against it is that it breaks the parallel with mSa.w=n in the following line. Spurious writing of plural-strokes atc. was not uncommon. I should comment that the sign for "t" in the hieratic could also be taken as an "r" > 3) What gave me some problems is _'D_, being written with AA8 instead of V26, and with a compl. d instead of D. According to Gardiner's comments, it was not uncommon for AA8 to be used in place of V26 in hieratic. I followed deBuck in the hieroglyphic transcription and used V26, although I should probably have stayed with AA8 (maybe I'll change it). The d complement rather than D is, of course because even at this period (early 12th Dynasty) there was progressive loss of palatization of D and T, leading to them sounding like d and t. > 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? Actually "is arrived" and "is safe" would do just fine, since the emphasis is on the resulting state from the verbs. > 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? ;) The English verb "leave behind" is a separable verb, like the German "hinterlassen" to which it is related. > * 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 rf and irf are described as "enclitic particle, often left untranslated." The basic phrase here is mk n ii=wyn "see, we have arrived" In English the closest equivalent with the rf inserted would be See, now, we ..." -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== From: Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 15:37:55 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL The Brouhaha of the /3/ Here's the evidence on which a good part of this theory of /3/ = r/l has been based. It is upon these terms, thought by some to be cognates with Semitic, although it is not certain they really are: b3q (bright, shining) Ar. baraq Heb. barak bk3 (morning) bakir boker k3m (vineyard) karm kerem w3D (green) waraq (foliage) "k3m" cannot be a cognate with Semiitc "vineyard" as is claimed because such vines never grew in the Nile valley and had to be imported. If the Egyptian "k3m" merely means "garden" then it is not going to equate "kerem" because, as far as I know, Semitic "garden" is something like "gan". Attestations show us that the Egyptian "vineyard" was "k3mw n irpw" and from this philologists have jumped to the conclusion "My God, /3/ must be an "r" because the Semitic vineyard is "karm" or "kerem!" Meanwhile, nobody says much about the fact that, half the time, the Egyptian term "k3m" (including "k3mw n irpw) is written with the *upraised arms* (k3) and that /3/ is just the phonetic compliment! I haven't seen yet where anybody has gone so far as to claim that the biliteral sign"k3" really should be "kar". Then, lo and behold, the Coptic term survives as "kme" for "k3m". That indicates, to me, that the Egyptian garden was not pronounced "karm" at all but probably "kamu"--in other words, it may be only an "adaptation" of something Semitic (if it is even related) and nothing is going on with the /3/ at all and it just represents an "ah" sound. Similar scrutiny of the other Semitic "cognates" yield similar results. Now let's look at "w3D" vis a vis "waraq". I don't even think the two are a suitable match for comparison. I think the Egyptian term that the Semitic "waraq" should be comparable to is "w3rx" "to grow, to flourish". The /r/ is there in every attestation. Another Semitic term is "warda" (rose). Egyptian has a good equivalent in "w3rti" (also rose). No /r/ missing there at all. But why no /r/ in "w3D" when it can also refer to things that are blooming and growing? Because it is simply a different word and probably just means "the color green". It is applied to dead stones as well as growing things--just as we call some vegetables "greens". At the same time, there is another word spelled without an /r/ which is "w3x" and has to do with "blooming, lake with growing plants, pool with plants and even a hall full of columns (they being like growing plants ?). Then there is the word "w3rS" (to enjoy) which also has a plant determinative. ALL of the above-mentioned spellings survive differently in Coptic, the penultimate one being probably "ouash" and the basis of our word "oasis". (w3x.t--The Great Oasis). Maybe all these terms grew out of some basic concept, but why does that mean they all have to contain an "r"--which would be supplied by /3/? It is even possible that sometimes"w3rx" and "w3x" are even the same word with the /r/ sometimes written and sometimes left out due to weakness. Something like this appears to be going on with the word that means a "hall or chamber". However, I think they are possibly all different terms: w3x hall of columns or country house w3xyr indoor garden w3rx.t courtyard with plants Whatever is going on, it need have NOTHING to do with the /3/ at all. Plus, words that are like "w3D"(green) NEVER include an "r' in Coptic, while a term like the "w3rx.t", the courtyard, comes out "oureH" in Coptic. Similarly those "oasis" terms also do not contain any "r" in Coptic. What about "b3q" compared to Semitic "barak"? Well, we do have Egyptian "b3rg3" (to illume, give light) for that purpose. "b3q", I believe, is really related to "b3q.t", "the olive tree", noted for its shiney leaves, which is "zeitun" and "ets zayeet" in Semitic. It is just something different, and some attestations of "b3q" even have the "tree" determinative to show from whence they come. Again, the comparison is not necessarily correct nor has implications for /3/. "bk3" for Semitic "bakir: and "boker" (morning)? Well, "bk.t" is the morning sky, the dawn" and "bk3" is spelled IN EVERY ATTESTATION (for some reason I can't guess at) with a *downscaled* version of the *upraised arms* (k3) making /3/ again, a phonetic compliment, and not a likely candidate for any "r". Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Aayko Eyma To: "AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk" Subject: AW: AEL : Aleph (Jim Allen's Comments) Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 21:52:46 +-200 >> 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 ooks like by /n/ but it seems to be a miswriting >because /r/ soon follows. ****Yes, in the NK this is certainly true: j.s.q.(3).r(w).(3).n.(3) = Asqalana However, in the Execretion Texts, which are older, it is suggested that the alef is r/l. Ahituv (Canaanite Toponyms in Ancient Egyptian Documents) invariably renders it thus. The problem would be that identification of the place and what 3 sounds like is not totally seperate, I guess. F.e. in the Execretion Texts there is a place: j.s.q.3.n.nw.nw.w thought again to be Asqalon [extra problem: likely you could say that the l is represented here by one of the n's, and not the 3, right? :)] Famous example: 3w.w.S3.3.m.m Taken to be (U)rusalimum = Jerusalem So I doubt I can come up with fully convincing examples. kind regards, Aayko Eyma ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 17:24:17 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: AEL AEL: More on aleph (Allen) Dear Friends, Professor Allen has asked me to forward the following message to the list on his behalf. __________________________________________________________________________ The evidence for {3} as a phoneme with a value in the range of /n/ and /r/ before LE is quite extensive. I only cited a few representative examples in my previous post. I can't cite all of it here, but the following is representative: 1) {3} ~ {n} variations in lexical items: 3wr/nwr "tremble," 3hw/nhw "injury, loss," 3sb/nsb "glow, burn," 3qdqd/nqdqd "sleeper" 2) {3} ~ {n} as occasional phonological variant: Pyr. 1098a M dw3-cnw for normal dwn-cnw "Long-Claws" (a god); Pyr. 712b Pb snS for normal (TPaMN) snS "unplug" (S =3D shin); OE-ME m3n as occasional variant of m33 in the subjunctive and infinitive (*mV33V- ~ *mV3nV-) 3) in MK writing of foreign words, {3} is never a vowel-marker and regularly corresponds to Semitic /l/ or (less often) /r/; this is true both of {3} by itself and of {3} as part of biliterals such as {H3}. There are many examples in Posener, Princes et Pays d'Asie, and Sethe, =C4chtung feindlicher F=FCrsten. The most compelling are place-names such as jsq3nw = Askelon, jw3T = Ullaza, y3mt = Yarmut, and Tb3nw = Zebulon, which occur numerous times in MK texts; some of these have NK variants with other graphemes for /l/: jsq3rwnw/jsqrwn3/jsq3rnj/jsq3nrn3; jwnrTw/jwnrT3. Personal names show the same correspondences: for example, jb-S3 = Abi-Sar, jbw-3m = Aburam (Aviram), ykn-j3 = Yakin-il. The element il "god" is always spelled j3, vs. the standard NK spelling j3r. There are simply too many correspondences of this sort to explain away in order to maintain that /3/ was ALWAYS a glottal stop/glide. The likeliest explanation is that it was originally a consonant with a value in the range of /n/ and /r/. Since (a) /r/ is almost certainly (flapped) [r], (b) {3} is most often associated with /n/ rather than /r/, and (c) {3} most often represents Semitic /l/ rather than /r/, /3/ most likely was /l/ rather than a kind of /r/. On the question of "dwarf," the variants are Pyr. 1189a N d3g (divine determinative) vs. PM d3ng (human determinative); Urk. I, 128, 15 dng (dwarf determinative); also MK d3g/d3gj =3D NK dnrg (Ranke, Personennamen I, 396, 3-5 and 400, 14). The variation {d3g} ~ {dng} is probably dialectical: {dng} comes from a dialect/speaker that did not have the sound represented by {3} IN THIS WORD, and used the closest equivalent (like Japanese arukohoru =3D alcohol). The group {3n} is a digraph (two sign for one sound, like English {sh} as in "shoe"), indicating a sound between /3/ and /n/; it is exactly like the NK digraph {nr} =3D /l/ (a sound between /n/ and /r/). Exactly the same variation occurs in the Pyr. 194a q3nt =3D MK q33t =3D NK q3rt/qrt =3D Coptic klle/keli "doorbolt." What we are dealing with here are two different orthographies. NK {nr} for /l/ does not exist earlier. OE and ME used {3}, {n}, or {3n} for the same purpose--the different conventions probably corresponding to different dialects. When analyzing the probable value(s) of {3}, we need to consider ALL the evidence, not just some of it. The evidence from the NK onward is consistent that /3/ =3D ['] (glottal stop) or [zero] (glide). BUT the earlier evidence is also consistent, and that evidence indicates that /3/ was a phoneme with the value of a kind of [l] or (less likely) a kind of [r], at least in the dialect(s) represented by Old and Middle Egyptian. There is really no question about either of these values. To argue that /3/ ALWAYS had ONLY one of them is to force consistency where it doesn't exist. The real question is the relationship between the two values. And here the factors of dialect, diachronics, and variant orthographies are simply too complex and too uncertain to permit a single explanation, or even to make a single explanation likely. James P. Allen, Curator Department of Egyptian Art Metropolitan Museum of Art ============================================================================== From: Aayko Eyma To: "'AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk'" Subject: AW: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor line 7-11 Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 21:52:28 +-200 Thanks to Gerald, Serge and Stephen for their comments! There was one thing in Stephen's reply that made me wonder: > (7-11) > js.t=tn jy.t 'D.t ist=n ii=t(i) aD=t(i) > jy=n m Htp ii=(wy)n m Htp ***What is the prefered way of indicating such stative endings? 'D.t(i) (in Borghouts) or 'D=t(i) as Stephen does? How do you transcribe sDm.n=f, Stephen? Aayko ============================================================================== From: Aayko Eyma To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor line 12-14/imperative Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 21:52:54 +-200 On to lines 12-14a: sDm r =k n=j H3.t.y-' jnk Sw[=j] H3.w j'j tw jmj mw Hr Db'.w=k = "Listen to me, prince, I, I lack excess, Wash yourself, place water upon your fingers." For sDm r=k and j'j tw [i.e. j'j Tw], see below. The obscurish part here is Sw H3.w. Firstly, the 1st person suffix is lacking, which one certainly would expect, in the common emphasis construction: jnk sDm=j ," *I*, I listen". So writing error I think. And even I Purist am tempted to add it in the transcription. ;) The phrase as such is no doubt a special saying. Sw = to lack, to miss H3.w = wealth, excess, surplus For a lack of financial wealth makes no sense here, of course. It is thought to be a figurative speach in the sense of "I am not exaggerating" (Lichtheim). I must say that I do not find this fitting the context very much either, as Sailor is not telling some wild story the next moment. He is telling his master to go wash himself, to put himself together, which is sort of boldish, so I wonder whether the phrase could not mean "Excuse me for being straightforward", "I speak plainly to you", "I speak without much ado, straight away" "I speak without an excess of words, i.e. without verbosity/verbiage/wordy frippery", so as to excuse himself in advance for possible offensive directness. Anyone? kind regards, Aayko Eyma Seeing it occures here often, I scrambled together what I could find about the IMPERATIVE: 1) no distinction in gender, only singular and plural 2nd person: sg. stem of verb sDm "Listen!" pl. stem + _.w_ (rarely written) sDm.w "Listen you all!" 2) addressed person can go before or after sDm H3.t.y-' "Listen, O prince!" H3.t.y-' sDm "Prince, listen!" 3) for emphasis, the imperative can be reinforced in four ways - "Now YOU listen!": a) 2nd person dependant pronoun follows: sDm Tw/Tn sDm.w Tn b) reflexive dative 2nd person follows: sDm n=k/T sDm.w n=Tn c) emphasis particle _(j)r =_ follows: (it can become fixed _r=f_ for all) sDm r=k/T sDm.w r=Tn d) Adding _m_ ({owl}{arm}) particle, can come before or after m sDm "Now listen!" sDm m 4) The negative imperative, or VETITIVE, is formed by the imperative of the negative auxiliary verb _jmj_ (imp.: _m_ {owl}), plus the negative complement of the verb (= root + .w) m sDm.w "Do not listen!" Can also be reinforced (3). ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 18:08:59 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL The Logic of Egyptian Philology Dear Marianne, Yes, your facts you have presented seem to be correct, however, there are a few insignificant details in the conclusions which might stand correction. Some of my comments are, of course, only my opinions. > 2. The writing system of Egyptian does not resemble any Semitic one > because it retains ideograms (determinatives) until finally its writing > system is replaced by a totally different one (Coptic). Akkadian also had ideograms and determinatives. > 5. Ancient Egyptian had more than one "r". We don't really know about this. It may have, or it may not have. Those who believe that {3} represented /R/ would perhaps say "yes", and those who do not, would certainly say "no". > 6. Egyptian must clearly differentiate between consonants and vowels like IE > scripts do, although it has syllabic signs, both biliteral and triliteral, > instead > of dipthongs. I don't see how we can know whether or not they "clearly differentiated" them in all cases. Certainly there is a degree of overlap with weak consonants like /j/, /y/, and /w/. In the sense that they often dropped these sounds when they were in syllable final position, one might say that they consistently did not write vowels, and hence they made some kind of distinction. But we cannot really determine what their thinking processes on the subject might have been. > 8. ONE Egyptian glyph changed from a glide over time to a glottal stop when > all others seemed to retain their original value Here are you refering to the value of {j}? Yours, Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== From: Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 20:25:45 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AW: AEL : Aleph (Jim Allen's Comments) In a message dated 98-06-30 19:15:49 EDT, you write: << ****Yes, in the NK this is certainly true: j.s.q.(3).r(w).(3).n.(3) = Asqalana However, in the Execretion Texts, which are older, it is suggested that the alef is r/l. Ahituv (Canaanite Toponyms in Ancient Egyptian Documents) invariably renders it thus. The problem would be that identification of the place and what 3 sounds like is not totally seperate, I guess. F.e. in the Execretion Texts there is a place: j.s.q.3.n.nw.nw.w thought again to be Asqalon [extra problem: likely you could say that the l is represented here by one of the n's, and not the 3, right? :)] Famous example: 3w.w.S3.3.m.m Taken to be (U)rusalimum = Jerusalem So I doubt I can come up with fully convincing examples. >> Aayko, I don't think there is any quarrel that, in lingusitics, "r", "l" and "n" are often interchangeable among languages. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 18:13:51 -0700 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor line 12-14/imperative Aayko Eyma wrote: > The obscurish part here is Sw H3.w. > Firstly, the 1st person suffix is lacking, > which one certainly would expect, in the > common emphasis construction: > jnk sDm=j ," *I*, I listen". > So writing error I think. And even I Purist am tempted > to add it in the transcription. ;) Sw is an adjective in a bound construction with the noun H3.w. It means "free of exaggeration" The whole sentence ink Sw H3.w translates fairly literally as "I am one who is free of exaggeration," or more stylishly "I'm not given to exaggeration." This sort of bound construction is not uncommon: 3w ib happy "wide of heart" 3w D(r)t generous "wide of hand" nfr ib good natured "good of heart" bnr mr.wt lovable "sweet of love" The structure of the sentence is one very common in tomb inscriptions, and is a type of "nominal" sentence. You have to sort of think of the independent pronoun at the beginning of the sentence as "I am one who..." (it is used almost exclusively in the 1st pers. sing.) Examples of phrases you might find in tomb inscriptions: ink nfr "I am one who was good." ink iqr "I am one who was worthy." ink bnr mr.wt Hr ib n nb.f "I am one who was loved by his lord." -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 18:21:04 -0700 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AW: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor line 7-11 Aayko Eyma wrote: > ***What is the prefered way of indicating such stative endings? > > 'D.t(i) (in Borghouts) or 'D=t(i) as Stephen does? > > How do you transcribe sDm.n=f, Stephen? Well, MY preferred way of dealing with it is to separate all personal endings from the rest of the word with =. Grmmatical endings for tense, gender, etc. I generally use a . (dot). I consider the stative endings are personal suffixes, just like the =f in sDm.n=f (and, yes, that is how I write sDm.n=f). How someone else does things may differ, but this works for me. -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 21:10:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL The Brouhaha of the /3/ Dear Marianne, > /r/ is there in every attestation. Another Semitic term is "warda" (rose). That one is a borrowing from Persian however. > Egyptian has a good equivalent in "w3rti" (also rose). No /r/ missing there > at all. But why no /r/ in "w3D" when it can also refer to things that are > blooming > and growing? This is a borrowing from Aramaic, which or course got it from Persian. Because it is simply a different word and probably just means > "the color green". yes, and it should be then cognate with yaroq. > Whatever is going on, it need have NOTHING to do with the /3/ at all. > Plus, words that are like "w3D"(green) NEVER include an "r' in Coptic, > while a term like the "w3rx.t", the courtyard, comes out "oureH" in Coptic. This word is from Demotic wrH "liberate/open up", and may come from earlier w3H, although it is not clear. See Vycichl, _Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue copte_, p. 237. Geoff ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 10:36:24 -0400 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Gerald Kadish Subject: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor Dear AEL-ers: A mea culpa is in order from me. Stephen Fryer's comments reminded me that the Summer heat is softening my brain. Alas. It is not the plural strokes that are in error; the problem is the `t'. So, it should read iswt=n, `our crew'. Why the extra `t' is there is another matter. I seem to recall an old suggestion that we have hear some sort of error stemming either from the scribe's mishearing of a dictated passage or from the scribe's own saying the line to himself while copying and making the sound mistake in a moment of distraction (or whatever). Some of you might want to try that on for size. In any case, my regrets for the lapse. -- Gerry Gerald E. Kadish Professor of History and Near Eastern Studies Department of History Binghamton University Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 (607) 777-2488 e-mail address: kadishg@binghamton.edu ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 19:23:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: AEL New Egyptian Grammar Dear Friends, I am pleased to announce that there will be a new Egyptian grammar available within the year. Dr. James P. Allen is the author. This grammar has been tested on Allen's own students, and will be used in my first year Egyptian class during the coming year at Yale University as well. I just thought that everyone would be interested to know that yet another option was about to become available. I will let you know as soon as there is more news about it, how you can get a copy etc. Yours, Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 22:43:14 +1000 To: Ancient Egyptian Language From: Mike Dyall-Smith Subject: AEL Westcar: concordance Just letting you know I have been playing with making a concordance of the westcar transliteration. This will allow you to look up every occurrence of the use of a word, for example the verb, gmi, you will find: ---------------------------------------------------------- X.2 pw (2: iri.n=sn r pr ra-wsr gmi.n=sn sw aHa(.w) dAiw s-xdi(.w) (3: XII.3 wn.in=s Hr dbn tA a.t n gmi.n=s bw irr.w st im (4: aHa.n rdi.n=s XII.4 rdi.n=s mAa=s r pA XAr gmi.n=s iri=tw m-Xnw=f aHa.n rdi.n=s (5: r XII.13 xrw SAs (13: pw iri.n=s gmi.n=s sn=s n.y mw.t=s smsw Hr mr XII.20 n rd-Dd.t in (20: pAy=s sn gmi.n=f rd-Dd.t Hmsi.ti tp=s Hr m (21: As.t VII.15 pw iri.n=f r wSd=f (15: gmi.n=f sw sDr Hr (T)mA m sS n.y sbA=f ------------------------------------------------------------ Where the left reference uses the Erman numbering system shown in de Buck. You have a bit of the preceding and following text, so you have some idea of the context. You will find this additional info in the 'concordance' section of the home page, or go straight to: http://www.ccer.theo.uu.nl/texts/ael/westcar/CONCRDNC/CONC_INT.HTM Regards, Mike D-S ******************************** Mike Dyall-Smith, Melbourne, Australia m.dyall-smith@microbiology.unimelb.edu.au ******************************** ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 15:13:19 -0700 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor Gerald Kadish wrote: > It is not the plural strokes that are in error; the problem is the `t'. > So, it should read iswt=n, `our crew'. Why the extra `t' is there is > another matter. I seem to recall an old suggestion that we have hear some > sort of error stemming either from the scribe's mishearing of a dictated > passage or from the scribe's own saying the line to himself while copying > and making the sound mistake in a moment of distraction (or whatever). Some > of you might want to try that on for size. While I don't think your suggestion was correct, it was definitely something possible, and quite interesting as being something I had never thought of before! So there's no need to go the whole "Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!" route! -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 15:39:26 -0700 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor line 12-14/imperative Aayko Eyma wrote: > He is telling his master to go wash himself, to > put himself together, which is sort of boldish, Actually, on thinking about this, it si not obvious that the "sailor" is talking to his master, or even his superior. He never addresses him as nb=i "my lord." He addresses him simply by the title HAty-a, which I believe was a fairly exalted rank in the Middle Kingdom, equivalent to Nomarch, I believe. He himself is referred to only by the title(?) Smsw (or perhaps Smsw iqr). It seems possible that Smsw "follower" might even be a more exalted postion than HAty-a, if the one he followed was the king. I mean the whole tone here is far from humble - in a few more lines he says "s.wrd pw Dd n=k" (It's wearisome talking to you), for instance. He also refers to "OUR crew," etc., whereas an inferior would surely refer to them as "your crew." I'm starting to develop the impression that the "sailor" is someone of high rank, rather than a servant, and that he is an older man talking to a younger. So what do others think of these ideas? Does anyone have anything concrete on the title Smsw, or for that matter on the title HAty-a, in the early Middle Kingdom? -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== From: Michael Tilgner To: 'Ancient Egyptian Language List' Subject: AW: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 18:38:02 +0200 Stephen Fryer wrote: > Gerald Kadish wrote: >> It is not the plural strokes that are in error; the problem is the `t'. >> So, it should read iswt=n, `our crew'. Why the extra `t' is there is >> another matter. I seem to recall an old suggestion that we have hear some >> sort of error stemming either from the scribe's mishearing of a dictated >> passage or from the scribe's own saying the line to himself while copying >> and making the sound mistake in a moment of distraction (or whatever). Some >> of you might want to try that on for size. > > While I don't think your suggestion was correct, it was definitely something > possible, and quite interesting as being something I had never thought of > before! So there's no need to go the whole "Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea maxima > culpa!" route! My proposal: Rainer Hannig, Grosses Handwoerterbuch Aegyptisch-Deutsch (2800-950 v.Chr.), Mainz, 1995 (1) p. 101: ist (izt, iswt) [fem. collectivum] (1) crew, team ... (2) p. 387: n:Z2, n, Late Egyptian too n:n:Z2, t:n:Z2 (after fem. noun) =n [suffix, 1 pl.] ... Best wishes, Michael Tilgner mtilgner@baan.nl ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1998 22:29:24 -0700 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AW: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor Michael Tilgner wrote: > My proposal: > > Rainer Hannig, Grosses Handwoerterbuch Aegyptisch-Deutsch (2800-950 v.Chr.), > Mainz, 1995 I'm going to have to try to afford this book before too long! > (2) p. 387: n:Z2, n, Late Egyptian too n:n:Z2, t:n:Z2 (after fem. noun) =n > [suffix, 1 pl.] ... Actually, in the early 12th Dynasty, this was a spelling error, which had become fairl standard practice by Late Egyptian. It arose because the "t" at the end of feminine nouns was becoming silent (it happened to Hebrew too), however when followed by a suffix it was no longer at the end of a syllable and so it WAS pronounced. This occasionally confused the scribes into writing it twice, since they thought of the t at the end of the word as silent, but yet they were hearing it, and so they wrote it as part of the suffix. There were many similar errors which gradually accumulated, and were later enshrined as standard in Late Egyptian. Now if instead of a "t" what is in the hieratic is an "r" (which it *could* be) where does that leave us? -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 05 Jul 1998 18:41:23 +1200 From: fsmith@netsource.co.nz To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL saying M.E. Greetings all. I have just started on Middle Egyptian and joined AEL. You have some great study materials here. As a complete beginner however, I find these vowelless words a problem. I want to be able to say to myself the words and sentences of M.E. - this will be more interesting and easier to learn. Take for example the 1st line of Ptahhotep : sbA.it nt imy-r niw.t TAty ptH-Htp . You people who know this language - how do you actually say this to yourselves? Surely not as "s" "b" "A". -it "n" "t" ....... I realise that we may not know exactly how the ancient Egyptians said it, but does one therefore not say it at all, or pronounce it like code, or insert a's and e's in a completely arbitrary way, or what? Are there any rules at all that one could follow? I have looked at some of the archives but can't find any direct reference to this matter. Bruce Smith ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 10:53:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL saying M.E. Dear Mr. Smith, > Take for example the 1st line of Ptahhotep : sbA.it nt imy-r niw.t TAty > ptH-Htp . > You people who know this language - how do you actually say this to > yourselves? It depends on at what level you want to look at it. If you just want to know how Egyptologists usually say these words out loud, that is a pretty easy question to answer, but if you want to know how these words were really originally pronounced, that is a very hard one. Modern "Egyptologese" would pronounce this phrase more or less as: "seba'yet net imi-ra niwet tja'ti ptaH-Hetep" the symbol {'} means a glottal stop, the click that is made in the back of the throat at the inception of syllables beginning with vowels. However, one reconstruction of this phrase which might come close to the *actual* pronunciation in ancient times is: *sibalya na 'amiral na:wa calti ptaHHatpu However, getting to this is too long and difficult of a process to warrant expending the effort in most situations. The general rules for how to say these words out loud in a class environment are something like the following: One inserts short colorless vowels (generally /e/) between consonants to make them utterable. Some of the Egyptian consonants were sem-vocallic and can be conceived of as vowels in syllable-final position: {j} and {w}. These ones therefore, often get pronounced as /i/ and /u/. The rule is generally that when it is in syllable initial position it has its consonantal value, and when it is in syllable final position, it has its vocallic one. This does not mean that this is exactly what happened in ancinet Egyptian, however. here is always the chance that we have not divided the syllables up properly, and don't know if it is truly syllable initial or syllable final, or there could have been other vowels inserted before them causing diphthongs like /ay/, /aw/, etc... Moreover, there are differnt ways of handling initial /j/, one is to just pronounce the vowel /i/, and the other is to make the first syllable begin with /ye/. This is a matter of choice on the part of the scholar, and many scholars are not consistent as to which way they do with this particular instance. Finally, some of the Egyptian consonants because they are difficult for speakers of non-Afroasiatic languages to pronounce tend to get read (incorrectly) as if they were the vowel /a/. These consonants are {3} and {`} (written by many even in Manuel de Codage as {A} and {a}, a practice of which I am rather leary myself.). In actuality these two consonants were quite distinct in Egyptian and were never confused, but English speakers tend to pronounce them both the same nonetheless, and this is rather ambiguous. {`} represented the voiced pharyngial fricative, otherwise known as an `ayin in some of the Semitic languages. {3} represented an as of yet unidentified sound, but Egyptologists have the long-standing habit of calling it "aleph" and pronouncing it either as the vowel /a/ or as the glottal stop. Yours, Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 06:44:21 +1000 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Mike Dyall-Smith Subject: Re: AEL Weni L20-22 Hi Mark, >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 ir, preposition nfr-n, (eg. see Gardiner section 351) denies an occurrence of something. Predicat adjective 'nfr', but with a negative meaning. Followed by the dative, so refers to a 'contingent accidental qualification' rather than some intrinsic property. nHm, verb (infinitive?). OK, so the subject of the verb nHm is wa im, "one there(in)". The determinative on wa indicates it is a person. The context indicates Weni is talking about one of his army. The first object of the verb is the noun, xAD, 'dough, or bread'. The second object is sandal. The determinative is double, so should it not be Tb.w.t.y, dual, for sandals? m-a, prepsn., 'from' as well as other meanings (lit. in the hand) Hr wAt: now, you have the right meaning, a noun "one who was on the road". The transliteration should reflect the preposition Hr(upon) being converted to a nisbe adjective (one who is upon), ie. Hr.i (or Hr.y) and Geoff's OK spelling of road is wAi.t Regards, Mike ************************************* 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/ ************************************* ==============================================================================