Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 00:28:07 +0100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: tsobota@osd.es (Tomas Sobota) Subject: Re: AEL (Fwd) Exercise Geoff, Thanks for your efforts towards us raw beginners. I'm afraid that your first exercise is still a little bit over my head, but nonetheless I will give it a try. Exercise I. ------------ 1.- I (god) see him. 2.- You (f.sing) will feed us. 3.- Look, he will take us. 4.- She hears me (f.) 5.- Look, I will hear him. Exercise 2. ------------- 1.- mk wj jnj-t=Tn 2.- jw=n Hr s-nm=s 3.- jw=sn r jTj-t=st 4.- mk sy Hr m33=f 5.- mk Tn r mrj-t=j 6.- jw=tw Hr jnj-t=sn (or =st if inanimate) 7.- jw=sn Hr s-nm=n 8.- jw=f r m33=f 9.- mk n Hr sDm=T 10.- mk st mrj-t=k Tom Sobota tsobota@osd.es Madrid, Spain ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 20:49:28 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL (Fwd) Exercise Hi, Tomas, Nice to see someone new attempt an exercise. > Thanks for your efforts towards us raw beginners. I'm afraid > that your first exercise is still a little bit over my head, but > nonetheless I will give it a try. It does not seem over your head. You have done pretty well. > Exercise I. > ------------ > > 1.- I (god) see him. Right. > 2.- You (f.sing) will feed us. almost... you (f.) will feed them. > 3.- Look, he will take us. yes. > 4.- She hears me (f.) yes. > 5.- Look, I will hear him. yes. > Exercise 2. > ------------- > 1.- mk wj jnj-t=Tn Yes, almost. mk wj Hr jn.t=tn > 2.- jw=n Hr s-nm=s yes. > 3.- jw=sn r jTj-t=st yes. or just jTj.t=s > 4.- mk sy Hr m33=f yes. > 5.- mk Tn r mrj-t=j yes. > 6.- jw=tw Hr jnj-t=sn (or =st if inanimate) yes. > 7.- jw=sn Hr s-nm=n yes. > 8.- jw=f r m33=f yes. > 9.- mk n Hr sDm=T yes. > 10.- mk st mrj-t=k yes. Wow, for someone so unsure of his abilities, you have done remarkably well with this. Yours, Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== From: "Lynette" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL Lurkers wanted Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 14:03:07 +1100 Hans wrote: : Hello to all lurkers at the threshold (thank you H.P. Lovecraft), : Questions like 'What is the Manuel de Codage' , 'What is meant by : transliteration' or 'How do you pronounce sDm ?' are sensible questions, so : don't hesitate to ask all you want. It took me also a lot of time to figure : all these things out. On that note, could someone post (again!) the main starter books for a beginner (starting from scratch) that would allow a lurker to become a participant. It's nearly xmas - whoe knows what Sandy Claws might bring! Lynette F. Watters Love is the Law. Love under will. lunetta@mountains.net.au ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 20:43:16 +0000 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Marc Line Subject: AEL Westcar P10 L9 Hans van Haarst writes: >L9 : aHa.n rdi.n=s r pds > Then she put in the box, > >L9 begins with the particle 'aHa.n'. This is originally a nominal sDm.n=f >form of the verb 'aHa' ('to stand up'), which in later narrative texts like >this Westcarstory petrified to a particle ('then'), that introduces a new >sentence. Literally you could translate it as : 'stood up and'. (Gardiner Hello This aHa.n business.... Whilst perhaps not a particularly consequential observation, I nonetheless thought I'd express the idea that aHa.n could be regarded as an archaic means of expressing the rather vulgar modern colloquialism, "next up", which I've encountered from time to time. Seeing it that way has certainly helped me to remember the sense of it and at my age, cerebral atrophy being what it is, every mnemonic device has to be grasped! :) Thanks for some wonderfully explicit and illuminating posts Hans. My compliments! Cheers Marc Line (who hopes to have more time to participate soon) ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 10:40:55 +0100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: tsobota@osd.es (Tomas Sobota) Subject: Re: AEL Exercise 1 Comment Stephen wrote: >...and that there was >a possibility that it might have led to people seeing Hr mr.t and attempting to >do the same with sDm namely Hr sDm.t. > >I suppose it comes from designing and writing computer programs... Yes, this is exactly what I was tempted to do...for a moment. Having moved recently, my newly bought Gardiner is still somewhere beyond my reach, so I was pretty much on my own (yes, I have _only_ the Gardiner. A Spanish translation at that, so if you see strange things in my exercises please don't blame me too much. The publishing house went out of business, alas). An excellent moment for coming out from lurkland and introducing myself to the list, as you see ! However, I also noticed that Geoff included in the vocabulary verbs _with_ and _without_ the termination '-t', which gave me a clue, of course. Don't underestimate beginners' luck, Stephen ;-) Also, trying to typeset Geoff's first lesson with Serge Rosmorduc's Sesh system (hoping wildly that there will be more lessons after the first !) I noticed that Geoff and others on this list write 'mrj.t' what in Manuel de Codage syntax would be 'mri-r-t'. At least, this is what I deduce from the hieroglyphs. Am I right? And, in this case, 1.- Can one assume informally that, for example, 'mr' will always (or at least most of the times) be written followed by the redundant 'r' ? 2.- Can the same be said of other bi- and tri-literal symbols? 3.- Are there any rules (or custom) concerning written redundancy? Or perhaps all this is so well explained in Gardiner that I should just keep quiet until I recover (and read!) the book? Thanks Tom Tom Sobota tsobota@osd.es Madrid, Spain ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 13:30:25 +0100 From: grym@prawnik.trybunal.gov.pl (Rymaszewska Grazyna) To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Lurkers wanted Hello Hans, for me: > 1. Was this clarification extensive enough ? > 2. Was it too extensive ? > 3. Are there other points that you would like to be explained ? > 4. Is this the right formula for you ? are YES, NO, YES, YES. Ad.3. I will be grateful if you give some examples of participles 1-4 active and passive. Best wishes, Grazyna Rymaszewska ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 11:10:45 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Exercise 1 Comment Hi, Tomas, > Also, trying to typeset Geoff's first lesson with Serge Rosmorduc's Sesh > system (hoping wildly that there will be more lessons after the first !) I > noticed that Geoff and others on this list write 'mrj.t' what in Manuel > de Codage syntax would be 'mri-r-t'. At least, this is what I deduce from > the hieroglyphs. Am I right? There are various different conventions for transcribing hieroglyphs into Latin characters. A minimalist appraoch would be to write {mrt} and a maximalist would write {mrj.t} as I do. You may see things in between, like Stephen's {mr.t}. It all hinges on how much of the information you desire to represent. We have, on the one hand, what the Egyptian scribe has written, and on the other hand, a relatively good idea of the actualization of what the scribe intended to indicate by writing that. Many people believe in writing precisely what the scribe wrote. However, this often proves to be impractical as you can see in this example. What the scribe wrote was {mr}{r}{t} + deteminative. While there are certain forms of the verb "love" which do exhibit gemination of the {r}, the infinitive is not one of them. So, any person who transliterates makes certain basic (but, hopefully informed) decisions about how he/she is going to do it. The scribe seems to have written {mrrt} but the scribe must mean {mrt}. The {r} is only a phonetic complement to the {mr} sign. Further, on the level of the morphology behind the infinitive {mrt} there is the root of the verb which we know to be /mrj/. mrj is a third-weak verb. That means that its final consonant was a weak or semi-vocalic one. These verbs have feminine .t endings on them when in their infinitive forms. So, analytically, we could conceive of the infinitive of this verb as {mrj.t}. The {j} is only written there because it is a part of the root, and it reminds the reader/student/translator that he/she is dealing with a third weak verb, the final consonant of which is /j/, and that the feminine /t/ ending is affixed to it (because the period (.) comes between it and the rest of the word), and this is because it belongs to a particular grammatical category, in this case "infinitive". Now, as for what the actual pronunciation of this infinitive was, It probably had the consonantal skeleton of /mr/. The final sound was actually a vowel, and would only have been pronounced as /t/ when something else was affixed to it. Possibly: mrj.t = *mara:, mrj.t=f = *mara:tuf But, a transliteration needs to include the right amount of informtation for a translator to be able to translate and recognize the vocabulary and morphology. While, in its infinitive, the /j/ was not likely to have been pronounced as anything, having been replaced by the writing of {t}, it still is a part of the root of this word. This is why I choose to indicate it in my transliterations. Other people choose to render this infinitive as {mrt}. Even these people are writing something artificial, however, since the {t} was not usually pronounced, though it was a feature in the writing. So, for the most part, the answer to your question is that trasliterations are ALL artificial. There is no system which can really capture the language exactly and accurately given the state of our present knowledge. Transliterations do not reperesent actual pronunciation in the least. What they do represent are a scholar's mental notes to him(/her)self and to others to whom he/she would like to communicate. > 1.- Can one assume informally that, for example, 'mr' will > always (or at least most of the times) be written followed by > the redundant 'r' ? Not always, but usually. The ironic thing about the Egyptian writing system is that even when they had created biliterals to represent two sounds in a sequence, they usually did not consider this to be adequate alone, and they usually wrote phonetic complements to these signs anyway, almost defeating the purpose of having biliterals in the first place. Often the use of phonetic complements is very useful, however, because there are many hieroglyphs which have more than one phonetic value. for instance, there is the {chisel} which can be read either /3b/ or /mr/. When the phonetic complement of /b/ is written after it, you know they mean /3b/ and not /mr/. Does this make sense? > 2.- Can the same be said of other bi- and tri-literal symbols? Yes. Most multi-syllabic signs were used in conjunction with phonetic complements. > 3.- Are there any rules (or custom) concerning written redundancy? Well, there are rules, but they are not very easy to define, and they changed over time. In the Old Kingdom, it was very common for the phonetic complements to be written at the beginnings of signs. Thus you will see writings like {`}{`nx}{x} for /`nx/ and {m}{mr}{r} for /mr/. In the Middle Kingdom these same words would have been written with phonetic complements only coming after them {`nx}{n}{x} for /`nx/ and {mr}{r} for /mr/. Furthermore, no one HAD to use any phonetic complements at all, and they could be omitted. What is more than that, many elements of the phonology of words were entirely omitted in writing, not only weak consonants, but also some strong ones. We can reconstruct words slowly, but often there are hidden surprises. So, transliterations are just tools. They do not really reflect the real phonology of the language, and at this stage they almost CANNOT do that for us at all. > Or perhaps all this is so well explained in Gardiner that I should just > keep quiet until I recover (and read!) the book? Yes, you can find most of this in Gardiner somewhere, but that is not the point. The list exists so that people can ask questions and discuss things. Yours, Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 18:26:26 +0000 Subject: AEL (Fwd) Nouns, Gender, & Adjectives The html version of this message is at: http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/exercises/exercise2.html ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 12:07:15 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: Mark Wilson Subject: Nouns, Gender, & Adjectives Hi, I have a new lesson here, and there is an accompanying section for it out on the web too. All the examples are written in hieroglyphs out there so you can see them and compare with this message. Then there is a brief exercise which accompanies this lesson. The idea is to start back on square one and learn about nouns and adjectives in Egyptian. NOUNS: A noun is a person, place, or thing. It is one of the basic building blocks in the grammar of any language. In English we have nouns in the singular and the plural. In other languages there are more options. For instance, in French, German, Arabic, and many other languages, nouns have gender. This means that the person, place, or thing is treated as masculine or feminine, or neuter. English does not have genders associated with nouns, but Egyptian did. Gender can be associated with the real gender of a living being. The words for "man", "boy", "father", and "rooster" might all be masculine because the objects represented by these words are naturally male... they have the male genital organs and not female ones. Similarly the corresponding words, "woman", "girl", "mother", and "hen" might all be feminine because these words represent inherently female beings with female genitalia. However, in most languages that have gender as a grammatical feature, all words have some gender, even if they are not inherently male or female by their nature. This will be easy for speakers of German, French, and various other languages to understand, because their languages have always had words of different genders. German has three genders, and French has two Genders, but English has NO genders. English speakers are often at a loss to understand why a noun should be considered masculine or feminine because the English language does not make any grammatical distinctions except for in very few words like the pronouns: "he, she, it", etc. In Egyptian there were only two genders: masculine and feminine. The masculine was the unmarked form, while the feminine had a feminine suffix ending marking it as such. Some masculine words in Egyptian can be converted to their feminine equivalents by simply adding this suffix. I. Examples: (the feminine suffix ending is .t) nTr "god" nTr.t "goddess" nb "lord" nb.t "lady" zj "man" zj.t "woman" z3 "son" z3.t "daughter" sn "brother" sn.t "sister" j3d.y "boy" j3d.y.t "girl" jH "ox" jH.t "cow" There are, however, many more masculine and feminine words in Egyptian that derive from distinct roots. Note also that some masculine words can end in /t/. These are /t/s which are part of the root of the word, and not a suffix ending. This is why, in my transliteration, I am always careful to point off a suffix /t/ with a period (.t). II. Examples: jt "father" mw.t "mother" hj "husband" Hm.t "wife" pr "house" Hw.t "mansion" xt "tree" jx.t "thing/possession" nbw "gold" m-fk3.t "turquoise" Sfdw "scroll" m-D3j.t "book" X3r "sack" Tj.t "table" As you can see, some of the above words are obviously male or female, such as: "father", "mother", "husband", and "wife", but others are not obviously so. There is nothing inherently masculine about "gold" or feminine about "turquoise". The only way to learn the masculine from the feminine is to memorize them. Fortunately this is very easy in Egyptian because feminine nouns almost ALWAYS have their feminine suffix ending .t on them. The only areas for possible confusion will be masculine words which also end in /t/, such as the words for "father" and "tree" above. Now, every noun also has number in Egyptian. In English we have two numbers: singular and plural. In Egyptian they had three: singular, dual, and plural. Dual means that there is a pair of something, two of them. In Old Egyptian the dual was much more important than it was in Middle Egyptian, and separate pronoun endings existed for each dual form. By the time of Middle Egyptian the dual was already becoming slightly less frequent, so that nouns could be made into the dual, but the adjectives which modified them and the verbs for which they were the subjects, as well as the pronouns which referred to them did not have to agree with them and be dual anymore. They would simply use the plural forms with dual nouns in Middle Egyptian. In both feminine and masculine nouns, the singular was unmarked. This means that there was no special written cue telling you that a noun was singular. The noun written alone is assumed to be singular. The dual and plural were marked. This means that each form, whether masculine or feminine, had morphemes (changeable grammatical features) which showed whether it was dual or plural. The masculine nouns had an ending .wy for the dual, and an ending .w for the plural. III. Examples of number on masculine nouns: pr "house" pr.wy "two houses" pr.w "houses" jt "father" jt.wy "two fathers" jt.w "fathers" nTr "god" nTr.wy "two gods" nTr.w "gods" The feminine nouns had an ending .ty for the dual, and an ending .w.t for the plural. IV. Examples of number on feminine nouns: Hw.t "mansion" Hw.ty "two mansions" Hw.w.t "mansions" mw.t "mother" mw.ty "two mothers" Mw.w.t "mothers" nTr.t "goddess" nTr.ty "two goddesses" nTr.w.t "goddesses" Possession of Nouns: Any noun can have a personal pronoun suffix affixed to it. This indicates possession by the person whose suffix pronoun is used. V. Examples: mw.t=j "my mother" mw.t=k "your (m.) mother" mw.t=T "your (f.) mother" mw.t=f "his mother" mw.t=s "her mother" mw.t=n "our mother" mw.t=Tn "your (pl.) mother" mw.t=sn "their mother" Sometimes it happens that a singular noun has a plural suffix on it, and seems odd to English. In these cases, it is often correct to translate the noun as plural: Example: jb=sn literally "their heart" but actually translatable as "their hearts". Nouns Possessing Nouns: There are several ways to express possession in Egyptian. One of them is called the "direct genitive". This is a construction wherein one noun is followed by another noun. The first noun is the possessed thing and the second noun is the possessor of the first. The possessor is also called the "regens" and the possessed is called the "rectum". VI. Examples: sn j3d.y "brother of a boy" pr Hm.t=f "house of his wife" jx.t hj=s "possessions of her husband" nb.t pr "lady of a house" (house-mistress) X3r nbw "sack of gold" m-D3j.t z3=sn "book of their son" ADJECTIVES: An adjective is a word that characterizes a noun. It "modifies" it. I can tell you that I have a house. But I can modify your concept of my house by specifying more about it with adjectives. "I have a big house." Now, you know that my house is big. It is not just a house, but now it is a "big house". Most languages have adjectives, and those that do not still have ways of making adjectival expressions in other ways. In Egyptian the category of adjective was not as static as it is in a language like English. In Egyptian certain words could move from the category of verb to noun to adjective rather easily. (In Old and Middle Egyptian what we might call adjectives were something like verbs and they became adjectives as participles of verbs. However, increasingly, in Late Egyptian, Demotic, and totally in Coptic these words were all becoming nouns and the category of "adjective" disappeared entirely, and modifications of nouns were carried out by juxtaposition of nouns with a preposition between them.) Suffice it to say that every Middle Egyptian adjective was also an adjectival verb. VII. Examples: nfr "good/become good" bjn "bad/become bad" wr "great/become great" nDs "small/become small" dSr "red/redden" qnj "yellow/become yellow" w3D "green/flourish/become green" jrtyw "blue/become blue" Tms "purple/become purple" km "black/become black" HD "white/brighten" hrw "happy/become content" Dwj "sad/become sad" wsx "wide/become wide" Sm` "narrow/become narrow" jz "light/become light" dns "heavy/become heavy" These verbs were not always conjugated the same way as any other verb, however. So, "good" was not just the adjective "good"... it was also the verb "become good". For the most part however, these adjectives were only used initially with a noun or a dependent pronoun for their subjects. We call this the nfr sw construction. VIII. Examples: nfr wj "I am good" nfr Tw "you (m.) are good" nfr Tn "you (f.) are good" nfr sw "he is good" nfr sy "she is good" nfr st "it is good" nfr n "we are good" nfr Tn "you (pl.) are good" nfr sn "they are good" nfr st "they (inanimate) are good" The same can be done with nouns: IX. Examples: nfr zj "the man is good" nfr zj.t "the woman is good" nfr zj.wy "the two men are good" nfr zj.ty "the two women are good" nfr zj.w "the men are good" nfr zj.w.t "the women are good" Notice that the adjective remains the same throughout the paradigm. It is only the subjects which vary. On the other hand, when an adjective modifies a noun, and "being/becoming" that adjective is not the main event in a sentence, then the adjective has to agree in gender and number with the noun it modifies. This is accomplished by the addition of similar affixes to the ones we just learned about for nouns: feminine .t, masculine dual .wy, masculine plural w, feminine dual .ty, and feminine plural .w.t. X. Examples: z3.w nfr.w "good sons" jH wr "great ox" mw.t nfr.t "good mother" z3.ty nfr.ty "two good daughters" etc... Yours, Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 20:32:26 +0000 Subject: AEL books On 15 Dec 97 at 14:03, Lynette wrote: > On that note, could someone post (again!) the main starter books for a > beginner (starting from scratch) that would allow a lurker to become a > participant. It's nearly xmas - whoe knows what Sandy Claws might bring! Hello Lynette, Have you checked out the books listed on the AEL homepage? The address is at the bottom of this message. When you get there Click on "Learn to read hieroglyphs". A short list of books is given at the bottom of the page. Hope this helps! Best wishes, -- Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/index.html ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 19:26:06 +0100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Hans van Haarst Subject: Re: AEL Difficult Game Decoded At 20:38 13-12-97 -0500, you wrote: >I. >1. Xnw, residence/interior Hi Geoff, I have encountered no.1 once in a text, but I can not remember where. There it represented a cryptic writing formed according to the rebus principle : English : water under pot Egyptian : mw Xr nw mw-Xr-nw --> m-Xnw , the compound preposition 'inside'. Best wishes, Hans van Haarst email-adres: hans@knor.demon.nl ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 07:33:27 +1100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Mike Dyall-Smith Subject: AEL pWestcar vocab. I may as well get a few questions in concerning the teaching aspects of the pWestcar discussion. I have been endeavouring to keep the commentary and vocabulary pages up-to-date in the hope that those without the money to buy Faulkner (or Hannig) could participate just as well. What I would like to know is; a) Has this been at all useful to anyone? b) Are there problems with the web pages? c) What improvements could be made? Thanks, Mike Dyall-Smith Melbourne ************************************* 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/ ************************************* ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 14:30:34 -0800 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: AEL Transliteration, etc. Graham wrote: > > I noticed that Geoff and others on this list write 'mrj.t' what in Manuel > > de Codage syntax would be 'mri-r-t'. At least, this is what I deduce from > > the hieroglyphs. Am I right? > > There are various different conventions for transcribing hieroglyphs into > Latin characters. A minimalist appraoch would be to write {mrt} and a > maximalist would write {mrj.t} as I do. You may see things in between, > like Stephen's {mr.t}. It all hinges on how much of the information you > desire to represent. We have, on the one hand, what the Egyptian scribe > has written, and on the other hand, a relatively good idea of the > actualization of what the scribe intended to indicate by writing that. > Many people believe in writing precisely what the scribe wrote. However, > this often proves to be impractical as you can see in this example. This is a problem we all have to live with - how to transliterate Hieroglyphs (or Hieratic) into our alphabet. There are as Geoff mentions several schools of thought o n the matter - I myself belong to several of them (in other words I'm just as confused as anyone). For one thing, I tend to avoid using "j" to transliterate the reed leaf sound, since for most people who speak a language other than Germanic or Slavic, this usuall suggests an entirely different sound. Using "i" is unsatisfactory too in that it tends to mislead people into thinking that it is a vowel sound. On the whole I think it is a LITTLE closer than the the sound of "j" in "jester" or "j'aime" or "jalapeno." Take your pick! I would not exactly describe myself as a minimalist either in terms of what I include. Geoff would write mrj.t where I would perhaps write mr.t (which corresponds a little more closely to what is actually written down in Egyptian, and possibly to the actual sound) or more likely mr(i).t, to indicate both that what is written does not contain the "i," but remind people that this is a weak verb (final "i" - which in this form is silent). Similar tricks are used in other situations and by different people. Unfortunately, you sort of have to be able to cope with whichever the person writing prefers, and try to make some reasonably logical and consistent decisions about how you will do it (at least this week - you're allowed to change your mind next week!). > > 1.- Can one assume informally that, for example, 'mr' will > > always (or at least most of the times) be written followed by > > the redundant 'r' ? > > Not always, but usually. My answer would be NO, you cannot make any assumption, although you will find it is true most of the time. To confuse the issue for us all there exist two forms of the verb mr(i): mr(i)=f and mrr=f. These have different meanings. Most of the time they are spelled, respectively mr-r-f and mr-r-r-f, which is easy and straighforward. However sometimes they are spelled mr-f and mr-r-f. So if you come across mr-r-f you have to look at it closely to determine which it should be: mr=f or mrr=f. AAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! > > 2.- Can the same be said of other bi- and tri-literal symbols? > > Yes. Most multi-syllabic signs were used in conjunction with phonetic > complements. NO. For similar reasons. I wish the Egyptians had been more consistent with their spelling! > > > 3.- Are there any rules (or custom) concerning written redundancy? SORT OF. About the only thing you can really do is to read lots of Egyptian and gradually get used to it. The Egyptians obviously thought that "Consistencey is the hobgoblin of little minds." > > Or perhaps all this is so well explained in Gardiner that I should just > > keep quiet until I recover (and read!) the book? I don't think any book really totally covers it. If you have Faulkner's dictionary, skim a few pages and see how many ways the Egyptians could think up to spell the same word. -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== From: Neil Parker Subject: Re: AEL pWestcar vocab. To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 14:51:52 -0800 (PST) Mike Dyall-Smith wrote, > I may as well get a few questions in concerning the teaching aspects of >the pWestcar discussion. I have been endeavouring to keep the commentary >and vocabulary pages up-to-date in the hope that those without the money to >buy Faulkner (or Hannig) could participate just as well. What I would like >to know is; > > a) Has this been at all useful to anyone? Definitely. I've been following the discussion closely, and trying to learn whatever I can from it (I've been paying special attention to the stuff about the modern picture of the Egyptian verb, most of my knowledge of which comes from out-of-date sources). > b) Are there problems with the web pages? > c) What improvements could be made? Now that you mention it, yes, there have been some problems. I usually access the pages from my home computer, which is a slow machine (16 MHz 386) at the end of a slow connection (14.4K). It takes several minutes for my Netscape to download a graphic of any size, and I consistantly find that the CCER server times out and drops the connection after downloading about one third of a typical Westcar page. So I can see the top few lines of the text, followed by an entire page of solid black. Fortunately, I have access to faster machines at school, so I can download the pages at school, print them out, and take them home for study, but the problem is still highly annoying. So is there anything that can be done to help those of us stuck using slow equipment? Raising or eliminating the server timeout interval would help, as would breaking up those huge graphics into several smaller graphics (the three-liners on the vocabulary pages work just fine on my machine). - Neil Parker, nparker@llx.com ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 22:34:26 -0500 From: "Oscar H. Blayton" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL (Fwd) Exercise I have finally had a chance to get to the web site for Exercise1, and I want to thank Mark and Geoff, and all the others who are taking time to help those of us who wish to learn. Your assistance is Greatly Appreciated!! Osacar H. Blayton. ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 15:52:42 GMT From: Serge Rosmorduc To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Exercise 1 Comment >>>>> "Graham" == Graham writes: >> 1.- Can one assume informally that, for example, 'mr' will >> always (or at least most of the times) be written followed by >> the redundant 'r' ? Graham> Not always, but usually. The ironic thing about the Graham> Egyptian writing system is that even when they had created Graham> biliterals to represent two sounds in a sequence, they Graham> usually did not consider this to be adequate alone, and Graham> they usually wrote phonetic complements to these signs For THIS particular word (the verb mri), the reading depends on when the text was written. XIIth dynasty texts usually write "mr-A2" for mr, and mr:r-A2 for mrr. The like is true for ir and ir:r, the later writting the nominal form. It seems to be somehow specific of these two verbs, not of the 3inf verbs in general. [ for people wondering what these ':' and A2 are all about : this is a way to represent hieroglyphic texts. The demo versions of Macscribe or glyph will allow you to display them. You can also type them at : http://webperso.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~rosmord/try0.html, or follow the link: http://webperso.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~rosmord/cgi-bin/mdc0.cgi?mr-A2 http://webperso.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~rosmord/cgi-bin/mdc0.cgi?mr:r-A2 The last two links can be used to communicate in a non violent way hieroglyphic words. You only load the drawing if you follow the link. simply write the Manuel de Codage text after the '?' ] On the other hand, for the verb mAA, the writting mA-A is mA, and you have normaly mA-A-A for mAA. regards, -- Serge Rosmorduc, (rosmord@iut.univ-paris8.fr) 66, rue Alexandre Dumas 75011 Paris tel 01 48 70 37 09 fax 01 48 70 86 49 http://www.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~rosmord/AEgypt.html ============================================================================== From: Tokapu Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 10:22:09 EST To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL pWestcar vocab. Dear, Brave Mike, You have made possible something wonderful and amazing, and I wish I could give you details of how smashing your work is -- but every detail is perfect! I have never before been able to read Egyptian from transliterations into English letters, only from the visual clues of the glyphs, but you have found a way around that, and I am understanding better than ever. The world needs this -- especially in our computers! Thank you so much for all your intense work! Ramona Wheeler ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 18:36:08 +0100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: tsobota@osd.es (Tomas Sobota) Subject: Re: AEL Transliteration, etc. Hi, Stephen Thanks for elaborating further on my questions. I have a few comments about your mail: At 14:30 15/12/1997 -0800, you wrote: >For one thing, I tend to avoid using "j" to transliterate the reed leaf sound, >since for most people who speak a language other than Germanic or Slavic, this >usuall suggests an entirely different sound. As a born Czech (i.e. Slavic), it is becoming clear to me that I have certain advantages in the study of Ancient Egyptian. Not only the 'j' issue, but take for example genders: we have genders not only on nouns but even on verbs. Not to speak of declinations, but at least egyptians seem to have spared us _that_. Also, being Czech a language with relatively few vowels, transcripted Egyptian comes almost homey to me. If you can say the classic Czech tonguetwister "Strc prst skrz krk" (a few diacritics omitted) which means "Put your finger through your throat", you feel comfortable with anything... Pity I didn't realize this when I was younger... :) >> > 1.- Can one assume informally that, for example, 'mr' will >> > always (or at least most of the times) be written followed by >> > the redundant 'r' ? >> >> Not always, but usually. > >My answer would be NO, you cannot make any assumption, although you will find it >is true most of the time. I don't understand this. I ask whether something is true 'at least most of the times' and you say emphatically 'NO', only to add inmediately that 'it is true most of the time' ? >...So if you >come across mr-r-f you have to look at it closely to determine which it should >be: mr=f or mrr=f. AAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! > Oh? You mean to say that there isn't a BNF description of Egyptian grammar ? Oh my, if I had known this before, I'd have switched to Sanskrit while there still was time :) All languages have their difficulties and traps. But perhaps it is best not to show them to the beginning student until later, when he will be in a better position to allow and understand exceptions and irregularities. >...About the only thing you can really do is to read lots of Egyptian and >gradually get used to it. Yes, I agree. That's the way I learned English, by the way... Bye Tom Tom Sobota tsobota@osd.es Madrid, Spain. ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 17:52:38 +0100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: tsobota@osd.es (Tomas Sobota) Subject: Re: AEL Exercise 1 Comment Geoff, my slaves just gave me notice that the scribes have finished engraving your Answers to my questions on the west wall of my tomb, so that they will shine eternally under the light of Re Harakhti. However, some of the syntactic constructs in your text were not representable, so they had to invent something they call metahieroglyphs :) Thanks for explaining these things. I had really the wrong idea that the transcription should adhere completely to the written representation, hence my questions. I should have known better, so today, rather than Tomas I feel slightly /Tms/, at least in my face! Thanks also for correcting my exercise. I realize that I've been somewhat sloppy, interchanging the '-'s and the '.'s in some places. A 11:10 15/12/1997 -0500, you wrote: >...When the phonetic complement of /b/ is written after it, you know they >mean /3b/ and not /mr/. Does this make sense? > It certainly does. Even today a little redundancy wouldn't harm. In most western languages it is difficult to impossible to know the sound of many letters if taken out of context. Not to speak of the meaning of words... > So, transliterations are just tools. They do not >really reflect the real phonology of the language, and at this stage they >almost CANNOT do that for us at all. > Yes, this I know. I was only speaking of _written_ representations. Ok, time to start working on lesson II. This one is harder... Bye Tom Tom Sobota tsobota@osd.es Madrid, Spain ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 16:55:10 -0500 From: Raven Brooke To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL (Fwd) Exercise Hi Geoff, Thanks for the great excersise-here is my attempt: 1.jw.j hr mAA.f I (god) see him. 2.jw.t r snm sn You (s.f.) will feed them. 3.mk sw r jTjt n Look, he will take us. 4.jw.s Hr sDm.j She hears me (f.). 5. mk wj r sDm.f Hey, I will hear him. 1.mk wj hr jnjt Tn 2. jw.nhr snm s 3. iw.sn r jTjt.s 4. mk Tn hr mAA.f 5. mk Tn r mrj.t.j 6. jw tw hr snm sn 7. jw.sn hr snm n 8. iw.f r mAA.f 9. mk n sDm.T 10. mk st mrj.t hr.k As you can probably see I am unfamiliar with the current method of transliteration, having taught myself from Gardiner and never having had to type the latin letters. Could someone help me out? Also, I'm not sure I understand how this is easier than the sDm.f form to learn, though I'm psyched to have something new to tackle! Cheers! Raven Mark Wilson wrote: > I'd like to say a big thank you to Geoff for preparing this > beginners' exercise for the list. Things really are moving quickly > around here at the moment! > > An html version of what follows, which includes the hieroglyphs, is > available from: > > http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/exercises/exercise1.html > > Mark Wilson. > > ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- > Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 21:32:41 -0500 (EST) > From: Graham > To: Mark Wilson > Subject: Exercise > > Hello, > > People are requesting basic exercises in Egyptian. I have created one > as an experiment. This exercise which you can find at the AEL website > introduces the personal suffix pronouns, the pseudo-verbal construction, > dependent pronouns, gives some examples of the use of these features, some > vocabulary, and then asks you to do some exercises. > > Let me put some of this information into ascii format for you here so you > will know how to render your answers in e-mail format: > > Suffix Pronouns: > > =j "I, me, my" > =k "you, your" masculine singular > =T "you, your" feminine singular > =f "he, him, his" (or "it" when the referent is m.) > =s "she, her, hers" (or "it" when the referent is f.) > =n "we, us, ours" > =Tn "you, your" plural > =sn "they, them, theirs" > =tw "one, one's" > > Pseudo-Verbal Construction: > > This construction consists of a subject introduced on a kind of > conjugation base jw which is basically untranslatable into English. Its > only purpose is to provide a base upon which the suffix pronoun can > adhere. This is followed by a preposition and the infinitive of a verb. > Prepositions which can be used in this construction are Hr "upon", r > "at/to/toward", and m "in". The usage of each prepostion depends on > different factors, but this will be introduced later. For now, just learn > the paradigms which are presented. > > Paradigm I: > jw=j Hr mrj.t "I am loving", "I was loving", or "I love". > jw=k Hr mrj.t "you (m., sing.) are loving" > jw=T Hr mrj.t "you (f., sing.) are loving" > jw=f Hr mrj.t "he is loving" > jw=s Hr mrj.t "she is loving" > jw=n Hr mrj.t "we are loving" > jw=Tn Hr mrj.t "you (pl.) are loving" > jw=sn Hr mrj.t "they are loving" > > Paradigm II: (using the r of futurity) > jw=j r mrj.t "I will be loving" > jw=k r mrj.t "you (m., sing.) will be loving" > jw=T r mrj.t "you (f., sing.) will be loving" > jw=f r mrj.t "he will be loving" > jw=s r mrj.t "she will be loving" > jw=n r mrj.t "we will be loving" > jw=Tn r mrj.t "you (pl.) will be loving" > jw=sn r mrj.t "they will be loving" > > Dependent Pronouns: > These are a different kind of pronoun from the suffix pronouns and they > can stand alone. They serve various different functions, one of which is > as subjects of pseudo-verbal constructions, but they must also be > introduced by certain words. We will have a particle what introduces them > in a moment. For now just learn the paradigm. > > wj "I, me" > Tw "you" (m., sing.) > Tn "you" (f., sing.) > sw "he, him" (or "it" when the referent is m.) > sy "she, her" (or "it" when the referent is f.) > st "it" (inanimate objects which are not defined as m. or f.) > n "we, us" > Tn "you" (pl.) > sn "they, them" (mostly animate beings) > st "they, them" (mostly inanimate objects or animals) > > Non-enclitic Particle: > This particle introduces the dependent pronouns as subjects of sentences. > > mk "look/behold/hey" (it need not be very strong and does not always > have to be translated at all.) > > Examples: > Notice that the subject of these sentences is a dependent pronoun > introduced by mk, and that the object of these sentences is a suffix > pronoun affixed to the infinitive of the verb. > > mk wj Hr mrj.t=k "Look, I love you" or "hey, I am loving you" > mk Tw Hr mrj.t=s "Look, you (m.) love her." > mk Tn Hr mrj.t=f "Look, you (f.) love him." > mk sw Hr mrj.t=Tn "Look, he loves you (pl.)" > mk sy Hr mrj.t=j "Look, she loves me." > mk n Hr mrj.t=sn "Look, we love them." > mk Tn Hr mrj.t=n "Look, you (pl.) love us." > mk sn Hr mrj.t=s* "Look, they love it/her." > > *I just noticed that I wrote st in stead of =s, which is perfectly good > Late Egyptian, but not really Middle Egyptian. So, treat it as =s. > > Vocabulary: > Here are five more verbs in their infinitives for you to use in the > exercises. > > sDm "hear" > jnj.t "bring" > m33 "see" > s-nm "feed" > jTj.t "take" > > The exercises are out there on the web. The first one is from Egyptian to > English. Transliterate them and then translate them. The second one is > from English into Egyptian. Simply transliterate them. I realize that > you will not be able to send them in hieroglyphs to the list. > > Then, after this, see how many other sentences you can make out of the > given vocabulary and paradigms. > > Yours, Geoff Graham > sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 19:11:18 -0500 From: herburgauer@sprintmail.com To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL pWestcar vocab. Mike Dyall-Smith wrote: > > I may as well get a few questions in concerning the teaching aspects of > the pWestcar discussion. I have been endeavouring to keep the commentary > and vocabulary pages up-to-date in the hope that those without the money to > buy Faulkner (or Hannig) could participate just as well. What I would like > to know is; > > a) Has this been at all useful to anyone? > b) Are there problems with the web pages? > c) What improvements could be made? > > Thanks, Mike Dyall-Smith > Melbourne > > ************************************* > 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/ > ************************************* I am only a silent participant to this project, and have been interested in hierglyphs for a long time. Your effort has given me a better understanding of them and the chance to learn more as this discussion goes on. Many thanks to your and the other instructors! Herbert J. Burgauer ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 21:34:27 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: AEL Exercise + sDm=f explanation Hi, all, This is a response to Raven's questions. First I will deal with her exercise and at the end I will give a synopsis of why the sDm=f is not the easiest place to begin in learning Egyptian grammar. Hi, Raven, Nice work! Looks like you are getting this pretty well. I am so glad you asked for assistance with the transliteration. Someone needed to bring this up so that we would have the opportunity to dicuss it and make it very clear. Once people understand how the system works, maybe more of them will be able to participate on the list. It is one thing to post lists of transiteration rules, and priciples, and quite another to learn how to apply them when acutually working with texts. The fact that we are working from different kinds of computers also limits the characters which we can employ rather severely. We have to stick to the ten bit ascii character set. These will seem at first like picky little details since you have gotten almost everything right in the exercise, but other people on the list might get confused if we use too different of transliteration systems, so I am going to attempt tostandardize yours. I have no problem with people using the Manuel de Codage symbols (A, a, and i) which I do not like to use, but, we need to be consistent if possible with the points and remembering which letters should be capitalized. This will avoid ambiguities, like xt "wood" and jx.t (also spelled in the Egyptian as {xt}) "thing" and X.t "body", or suffixes: .t v/s =T, or other potentially ambiguous writings. > 1.jw.j hr mAA.f I (god) see him. ^ ^ ^ jw=j Hr m33=f The translation is correct. notice that the suffix pronouns are joined with an equal sign. This is to distinguish them from other kinds of suffixes which are more integrally connected with words, such as the feminine ending, which is connected by a dot. Also notice that the second-H, the dotted-H, is transcribed in ascii with a capital-H. It is fine to use capital-A for the sound represented by the Egyptian vulture, but I, myself, prefer to use a three. You need not do this too though. > 2.jw.t r snm sn You (s.f.) will feed them. ^ ^ ^ Right: jw=T r s-nm=sn... Notice that the underscore-T is transcribed in ascii with a capital-T. The {s} in s-nm is a prefix. We have not talked about prefixes yet, but they should be dashed off from the roots when you recognize them as prefixes. Some people do not do this, but I think that it is good to get in the habit at an early date so that later you will be aware of which words have these prefixes on them, as opposed to word which have consonants which resemble the prefixes. Also, notice that the final {sn} should be connected to s-nm with the equal sign because this is the suffix pronoun sn and not the independent pronoun sn. In this case, they look identical, but actually they are two separate forms, compare =f and sw, for example. > 3.mk sw r jTjt n Look, he will take us. ^ ^ Right: mk sw r jTj.t=n... Notice that the final {t} on jtj.t is a grammatical suffix, in this case indicating that the word is grammatically feminine. Therefore, it might be good to point it off with a dot, so as not to confuse it with part of the word's root. In other forms, besides the infinitive, which jTj can take the {t} will disappear. Once again, the final n is the suffix =n. > 4.jw.s Hr sDm.j She hears me (f.). ^ ^ Right: jw=s Hr sDm=j > 5. mk wj r sDm.f Hey, I will hear him. ^ Right: mk wj r sDm=f > 1.mk wj hr jnjt Tn ^ ^ Right: mk wj Hr jnj.t=Tn ^ > 2. jw.nhr snm s ^^^ ^ ^ Right: jw=n Hr s-nm=s > 3. iw.sn r jTjt.s ^ ^ ^ Right: jw=sn r jTj.t=s > 4. mk Tn hr mAA.f ^^ ^ You have one detail incorrect here: mk sy Hr m33=f > 5. mk Tn r mrj.t.j ^ Right: mk Tn r mrj.t=j > 6. jw tw hr snm sn ^ ^ One detail incorrect: jw=tw Hr jnj.t=sn > 7. jw.sn hr snm n ^ ^ ^ ^ Right: jw=sn Hr s-nm=n > 8. iw.f r mAA.f ^ ^ Right: jw=f r m33=f > 9. mk n sDm.T ^ ^ One detail incorrect: mk n Hr sDm=T > 10. mk st mrj.t hr.k ^ ^^^^ One detail incorrect: mk st Hr mrj.t=k > As you can probably see I am unfamiliar with the current method of > transliteration, having taught myself from Gardiner and never having had to > type the latin letters. Could someone help me out? ;-P That is what I have tried to do. You did a very good job as it is, and these critiques are really rather minor points. If other people want help in using ascii transliteration, this is your big chance to get it. Just try to do one of the exercises, and I will see if I can help you out. > Also, I'm not sure I understand how this is easier than the sDm.f form to > learn, though I'm psyched to have something new to tackle! OK, since you are interested in the question, I will try to present an answer. The sDm=f is difficult, not so much because of its outward appearance, which at first glance seem rather straight forward: sDm=j sDm=n sDm=k sDm=Tn sDm=T sDm=f sDm=sn sDm=s However, beyond this initial simple picture there lie at least four separate grammatical forms in the Egyptian language. Leo Depuydt claims to have isolated some 12 of them if I am not mistaken, so the last word on sDm=f's has certainly NOT been written. This multiplicity of forms was realized because some Egyptian verbs are irregular and others have weak or geminating consonants. The verbs of these categories were noticed to have behaved differently in their outward appearance, and eventually it was realized that more than one grammatical form was involved. Gardiner attempted to explain the odd phenomena in the weak and irregular verbs as features of perfective and imperfective forms. If you learn Egyptian from Gardiner alone, you will only get part of the picture of the Egyptian sDm=f. This does not mean that his grammar is not excellent, but newer grammars, such as Hoch's have incorporated new understandings of the verbal system. Later H.J. Polotsky, having done major research on the Coptic translations of the New Testament, had realized that Coptic had special forms which emphasized adverbial adjuncts. Then he applied this knowledge to Late Egyptian and discovered that the same was true of that stage of the Egyptian language. Eventually these theories were applied to Middle and Old Egyptian and the following forms are now recognized for Egyptian sDm=f's by most present-day Egyptologists: Indicative Subjunctive Circumstantial Emphasizing sDm=f sDm=f sDm=f sDm=f mr=f mrj=f mr=f mrr=f qb=f qb=f qbb=f qbb=f rdj=f dj=f dj=f dd=f m3=f m3(n)=f m33=f m33=f jn=f jn.t=f jn=f jnn=f jj=f jj.t=f jj=f jj=f Notice that many of these verbs have subtle changes in the different forms, however, the regular verbs, like sDm, do not show any changes at all. The reason that learning the sDm=f in the beginning is a difficult proposition is that beginners have a terrible time recognizing which of the four recognized forms each sDm=f actually is in a given text. And, in order to translate them, one has to figure this out first. Here are some examples of what I mean: "sDm=f" could be translated as one of four (if not more) possible meanings: Indicative: "he heard" (sometimes also present or aorist, but rarely) Subjunctive: "may he hear", "he will hear", or "let him hear" (actually there are three forms subsumed in the "subjunctive", one is the real subjunctive, the others are prospective and jussive) Circumstantial: "when/while/as/though(etc.) he hears" Emphasizing: untranslatable out of context, see following sentence for example: dd=f sw r ktx.t "it is for a pittance that he gives/sells himself." The point with the emphasizing form is that it puts all accent and importance on the prepositional phrase in the sentence "for a MERE pittance". The verb itself is therefore de-emphasized. In English, one way to accomplish this is with a cleft sentece, in which the prepositional phrase is moved forward in the sentence like I have done in this translation. Another reason that the sDm=f is not really the place to begin is that sDm=f's are rarely translated as straight-forward present indicative verbs like the ones we would teach students who were learning English. A simple sentence like "I hear you" would not likely be expressed in Egyptian with a sDm=f. If one finds "sDm=j Tw" it is much more likely to mean "may I hear you" than anything else, but, depending on the context, where it falls in relation to other words in its proximity, its context, it could also mean several other things. Eventually, we will have to come to the sDm=f, if we are going to learn the entire Egyptian language on this list.... OH DEAR, I hope that I will have the strength and preseverance to manage that some day! ;-P Of course, there are plenty of others here who might just as well teach you! However, I think we should learn the sDm.n=f and some of the suffix conjugations and participles, etc. first. Let us leave the hardest parts like sDm=f's and relatives to a time when we already have had some successes with the language, so that people will not get too discouraged early on in the game. Yours, Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== From: "Lynette" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL books Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 14:39:50 +1100 Thanks Mark. Funny how you never think of the obvious places first, or is that just me?! Lynette F. Watters Love is the Law. Love under will. lunetta@mountains.net.au : > On that note, could someone post (again!) the main starter books for a : > beginner (starting from scratch) that would allow a lurker to become a : > participant. It's nearly xmas - whoe knows what Sandy Claws might bring! : : Hello Lynette, : : Have you checked out the books listed on the AEL homepage? The : address is at the bottom of this message. When you get there Click on : "Learn to read hieroglyphs". A short list of books is given at the : bottom of the page. : : Hope this helps! : : Best wishes, : -- : Mark Wilson : weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk : http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/index.html ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 14:06:33 +0100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Hans van Haarst Subject: AEL Participles in pWestcar. At 13:30 15-12-97 +0100, Grazyna Rymaszewska wrote: > I will be grateful if you give some examples >of participles 1-4 active and passive. > >Best wishes, > Grazyna Rymaszewska > Hello Grazyna, Here are a few examples from the Westcarpapyrus. 1. Imperfective active participle. Characteristic : (A) the doubling (gemination) of the last but one radical of verbs belonging to the ult.-inf. group ( ultimae infirmae, which means that the last radical ( the last i of iri for instance ) is weak ) (B) the full writing of verbs belonging to the 2-ae gem. group ( secundae geminatae which means that the last radical can be doubled , for instance mAA, 'seeing' or wnn, 'being'). It is sometimes difficult to decide between imperfective and perfective participles of verbs from other groups, that do not show the gemination. The context makes the decision sometimes but not always possible. Context means : If you think of the sentence you are trying to translate in a logical manner, what is meant by this participle, what is the scribe trying to express ? Meaning : expresses a verbal act that occurs frequently or is repeated often. P10 L10 : wnn.t which (often) is 2. Imperfective passive participle. Characteristic : same as the imperfective active participle ( gemination ) + morpheme ending .w . Meaning : expresses a verbal act that is usually or habitually done. P10 L2 : irr.t that what is usually done ( morpheme .w not written ) An example where the .w is written : Sin. 304 : didi.w which are (habitually) placed Sinuhe is another masterpiece of the Egyptian Language. Sinuhe is a courtier who fled Egypt after the assassination of his king, Amenemhat I. He was afraid of rebellion and went to Palestine. There he prospered, but homesickness for Egypt overtook him. Then the new king Sesostris writes him a letter in which he invites Sinuhe to come back. Sinuhe is afraid to do so, but eventually returns. After his return he is showered with gifts and even a pyramid is built for him. 3. Perfective active participle. Characteristic : no gemination. Meaning : no special meaning with respect to the verbal act, just indicating it. P9 L10 : rdi who caused/let (Imperfective would be didi) 4. Perfective passive participle. Characteristic : no gemination, morpheme ending .w . Meaning : no special meaning with respect to the verbal act, just indicating it. P10 L10 : istn.w that is bound (There is yet another rare passive participle, it can be found in Gardiner p.276) 5. Prospective participle. Characteristic : feminine ending .ti Meaning : expresses a future or modal tense. P9 L16/17 : xtm.ti that could be locked 6. sDm.ty.fy participle Characteristic : ending ty.fy ( not always fully written ) Meaning : expresses a future tense. P8 L23 : iri.ty.fy who will fulfill/accomplish In general the characteristics are not always written. If not, you can sometimes decide what aspect of the participle is meant by comparing other occurences of the same verbform in the same papyrus or in other sources. I hope this is clear, otherwise tell me. Other examples can of course be found in a grammar. Best wishes, Hans van Haarst email-adres: hans@knor.demon.nl ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 13:47:55 -0600 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Christina Paul Subject: AEL Online "Class" via IRC - Sunday, December 21, 1997 AEL List Members: Last Sunday I had the pleasure of "meeting" Geoff Graham on IRC (Internet relay chat) where we discussed the Egyptian language. Geoff sent me a gif of a 30th Dynasty inscription and we went at that. I have to admit we (meaning 'I') progressed pretty slowly! :P At any rate, Geoff was most patient and as helpful and informative as usual! Thank you, Geoff! :) Geoff and I thought we would try to see how the list membership would respond to meeting or discussion of the Egyptian language online. It is just another option - another tool to help those fo us interested in the Egyptian language. The meeting would take place on IRCnet. (Not DAL, or Undernet etc.)If you do not have an IRC client, mIRC and others are available for free at the following site: http://www.shareware.com If you do a search on CNet's searchable site for your type of operating system, you will be given several choices. For PC users, mIRC is about the best out there. I belive v. 5.11 is the latest. OT chat and Mac-IRC are available for our Mac users. The time is as follows: Date: Sunday, December 21, 1997 Time: 2:00 PM EST, 1:00 PM CST, 12:00 PM MST, 11:00 AM Pacific; 7:00 PM GMT, & 5:00 AM Monday for the Australians! ;) IRC Server: IRCnet Channel - #AEL Duration: As needed or as time permits. There are many servers provided in the download of the mIRC program. Please use the server closest to you, many of the servers will boot you off if you arent geographicallly close enough. Under seperate cover I will attempt to send the naos.gif for the session. If you have a problem getting it please let me know and I will email privately to all who cannot get it via the list. Looking forward to meeting more of you all on line on Sunday! Cheers, Christina http://www.netins.net/showcase/ankh/ ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 01:40:19 +0100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: tsobota@osd.es (Tomas Sobota) Subject: AEL Answers to Exercise II Geoff, Here goes my attempt at exercice II. Plenty doubts remain, but each time I make a change it comes out worse, so I better send it as it is. Anyway, I am enjoying this very much! 1.- jw=j Hr sDm Hm.t=k nfr.t "I (m.) hear your (m.) good wife" 2.- mk mw.t=Tn r jTj.t jx.t jz.t "Look, your (p.) mother will take a light thing" 3.- jw=sn f r jnj.t jH.t dSr.t "His brother [or He (brother)?] will bring the (or 'a') red cow" (Sentence 3 looks like a pseudo-verbal construction, but the function of what seems to be a /sn/ before the /f/ and the /r/ is for now a baffling mistery to me.) 4.- w3D xt.w=n "Our green trees" 5.- bjn z3=f nDs "His small son is bad" 6.- wsx Tj.t Hu.t=s "Her mansion has a wide table" 7.- mk nb.t pr Hr s-nm hj=s wr "Look, the lady of the house feeds her great husband" 8.- jw=sn r m-D3j.t.wy nfr=wy "They will bring two good books" 9.- dns nbw=n mk n r jnj.t "Our heavy gold, look, we will bring." 10.- wr jt.w nb=sn nfr sw "Great fathers, their lord is good." (I don't like n.10 at all, but it's the best I could make!) Bye Tom Tom Sobota tsobota@osd.es Madrid, Spain. ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 19:33:19 -0800 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Naos GIF for the AEL Online Disucssion 12/21/97 Christina Paul wrote: > Please see attached GIF for the discussion group for Sunday, December 21, 1997 I'll try to log in but at that time of day it may be a little difficult to not have other things to take care of. I have one preliminary question - the provenience of this naos. -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== From: "Mark Vygus" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: AEL Translation Westcar P10/L13-28 Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 00:51:31 -0000 Happy Christmas ! Here is another go at translating, sorry there is so much but I will be away for a couple of weeks. hope we can finish it all before 1998 P10/L13 wn.in rd-Dd.t Hr wHm n=f mdw.t tn Reddjedet repeated to him this matter P10/L14 wn.in ib=f nfr r ix.t nb.t his heart was happy, more than anything P10/L15-16 Hmsi.t pw iri.n=sn Hr hrw nfr xr m-xt hrw.w s-wAi Hr nn They sat down to a happy day (day of feasting) ? After some days had passed concerning this (event) P10/L17-18 aHa.n SnT rd-Dd.t ix.t n tA-wbA.y.t rdi.n=s xsf=tw n=s m Hwi.t Then Reddjedet questioned (argued ?) things with the maidservant she caused one to punish her with a beating (she had her punished with a beating) P10/L19-20 aHa.n Dd.n tA-wbA.y.t n nA-n rmT nty m pA-pr Then the maidservant said to the people who were in the house P10/L21 in irr.t st nA/// iw msi.n=s n.y.w-sw.t xmt how could one do it, this, to me ? she has given birth to 3 kings P10/L22 iw=i r Smi.t Dd st n Hm n.y n.y-sw.t bi.t xwi=f-wi mAa xrw I will go and tell it to the majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt (KHUFU), justified P10/L23-25 SAs pw iri.n=s gmi.n=s sn=s n.y mw.t=s smsw Hr mr mHy.w nw.t Hr xt.y.w it was a travelling she made ( she went ) and she found her eldest brother of her mothers (half-brother ???) tying flax cord upon the threshing-floor P10/L 26 aHa.n Dd.n=f n=s iri.t r Tnw iAd.y.t Sri.t Then he said to her Where are (you) going, little girl ? P10/L27-28 wn.in=s Hr wHm n=f mdw.t tn aHa.n Dd.n n=s pAy=s sn She repeated to him this matter Then her brother said to her Please be kind with your comments Remember it is Christmas Good luck with the IRC chat, sorry I will not be able to join in this time,maybe next ! Mark V ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 20:02:09 +0000 Subject: Re: AEL Naos GIF for the AEL Online Disucssion 12/21/97 On 17 Dec 97 at 13:53, Christina Paul wrote: > AEL Members: > > Please see attached GIF for the discussion group for Sunday, December 21, 1997 For anyone interested in taking part in the IRC discussion, there is also a copy of the hieroglyphs on the web at http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/naos/naos1.gif Is this the enigmatic text about Shu and Geb that Geoff was telling us about recently? Regards, Mark Wilson. > A repeat of the pertient information for this proposed IRC session: > > > > Date: Sunday, December 21, 1997 > Time: 2:00 PM EST, 1:00 PM CST, 12:00 PM MST, > 11:00 AM Pacific; 7:00 PM UK > IRC Server: IRCnet > Channel - #AEL > Duration: As needed > -- Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/index.html ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 08:37:54 +1100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Mike Dyall-Smith Subject: Re: AEL Translation Westcar P10/L13-28 Dear Mark, thanks for pushing us forward. I will be away until early January. I have little time at the moment so I can only discuss the first sentence: >P10/L13 >wn.in rd-Dd.t Hr wHm n=f mdw.t tn >Reddjedet repeated to him this matter Gets a little repetitive, but wn.in (sDm.in=f)is a contingent narrative verb form, so "Then Reddjedet...". The next part of the sentence is a preposition + infinitive, lit. "upon repeating" although the infinitive itself is tenseless. This generally describes' action in progress', and in this case could be translated, "was repeating" or "while repeating". After the infinitive (a nominal form of the verb) we have a) n=f, "for/to him", the logical indirect object. This is a suffix pronoun attached to the dative 'n'. b) mdw.t tn, the the logical direct object ("this matter") Now it seems to me that the n=f has snuck in before the logical object, similar to the word order of the circumstantial sDm=f. This is not supposed to happen here. The logical object should be a direct genitive to the infinitive eg. lit. "the repeating of this matter". Can anyone comment on this please. Regards, Mike Dyall-Smith Melbourne . ************************************* 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: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 00:10:45 +0000 Subject: Re: AEL Answers to Exercise II On 18 Dec 97 at 1:40, Tomas Sobota wrote: > > 10.- wr jt.w nb=sn nfr sw > "Great fathers, their lord is good." > > (I don't like n.10 at all, but it's the best I could make!) Hi, Tomas, I've got "Great are the fathers of our lord, and he (our lord) is good". I'm not 100% sure about it either. Who can give us a definitive answer? -- Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/index.html ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 00:19:08 +0000 Subject: Re: AEL Answers to Exercise II On 19 Dec 97 at 0:10, Mark Wilson wrote: > > "Great are the fathers of our lord, and he (our lord) is good". Oops, that should have been *their* lord (not our lord). -- Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/index.html ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 16:58:02 -0800 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Answers to Exercise II Mark Wilson wrote: > > On 18 Dec 97 at 1:40, Tomas Sobota wrote: > > > > > 10.- wr jt.w nb=sn nfr sw > > "Great fathers, their lord is good." > > > > (I don't like n.10 at all, but it's the best I could make!) > > Hi, Tomas, > > I've got "Great are the fathers of our lord, and he (our lord) is > good". I'm not 100% sure about it either. Who can give us a > definitive answer? I don't have the exercise in front of me, but if your transliteration is OK, then it is: "The fathers (ancestors) of their lord are great (and) he is good." -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 21:37:24 -0800 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Naos GIF for the AEL Online Disucssion 12/21/97 Christina Paul wrote: > > AEL Members: > Date: Sunday, December 21, 1997 > Time: 2:00 PM EST, 1:00 PM CST, 12:00 PM MST, > 11:00 AM Pacific; 7:00 PM UK > IRC Server: IRCnet > Channel - #AEL > Duration: As needed I'm not going to be able to take part in this - I can't find any IRCnet server that will let me connect. This comes as rather a surprise to me - what little IRC experience I've had has been with UnderNet, and their servers are much more open and friendly. -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 02:19:38 -0500 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: blochprint@zelacom.com (Julie Purple) Subject: Re: AEL pWestcar vocab. Hi, Mike Even though we've had our computer for over a year now, I am still most comfortable with ye olde paper and pen, so when I want to work (which in my case means stare at and admire the pretty 'glyphs, and read the comments that you Big Kids make, and say "oh..." a lot...) with the text, I print it out so I can hold it in my hot little hands... Anyhow, the problem with this, is that often the lines are too long to fit onto the page, even when I make it "landscape" rather than "portrait" format. And I have *never* had any success trying to convince the information to go from netscape to *any* other program wherein I might reduce the whole shebang to a size to fit. I also get those black rectangles that Neil referred to. I had no idea why... thanks for the explanation, Neil. As far as computer literacy, I m abowt es gud as thiss, u no wat I meen? Oy. Julie > I may as well get a few questions in concerning the teaching aspects of >the pWestcar discussion. I have been endeavouring to keep the commentary >and vocabulary pages up-to-date in the hope that those without the money to >buy Faulkner (or Hannig) could participate just as well. What I would like >to know is; > > a) Has this been at all useful to anyone? > b) Are there problems with the web pages? > c) What improvements could be made? > >Thanks, Mike Dyall-Smith >Melbourne > >************************************* >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/ >************************************* > > > Julie Bloch blochprint@zelacom.com * * * (@v@) * * * ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 02:19:42 -0500 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: blochprint@zelacom.com (Julie Purple) Subject: Re: AEL Transliteration, etc. I think I read somewhere that the Egyptians often wrote the way that looked the prettiest. This is immensely appealing to me... but tell me, am I remembering correctly? *Did* they write for aesthetics as much as I would like to believe? Julie > >NO. For similar reasons. I wish the Egyptians had been more consistent with >their spelling! > >> > 3.- Are there any rules (or custom) concerning written redundancy? > >SORT OF. About the only thing you can really do is to read lots of Egyptian and >gradually get used to it. The Egyptians obviously thought that "Consistencey is >the hobgoblin of little minds." Julie Bloch blochprint@zelacom.com * * * (@v@) * * * ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 02:20:05 -0500 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: blochprint@zelacom.com (Julie Purple) Subject: Re: AEL Online "Class" via IRC - Sunday, December 21, 1997 This sounds lovely. I don't know if I will be able to make my computer understand what I would like it to do, but I will sure try! Thanks! Julie >Geoff and I thought we would try to see how the list membership would >respond to meeting or discussion of the Egyptian language online. It is >just another option - another tool to help those fo us interested in the >Egyptian language. The meeting would take place on IRCnet. (Not DAL, or >Undernet etc.)If you do not have an IRC client, mIRC and others are >available for free at the following site: > > >The time is as follows: > > Date: Sunday, December 21, 1997 > Time: 2:00 PM EST, 1:00 PM CST, 12:00 PM MST, > 11:00 AM Pacific; 7:00 PM GMT, & 5:00 AM Monday for ;) Julie Bloch blochprint@zelacom.com * * * (@v@) * * * ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 08:32:52 +0100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Hans van Haarst Subject: Re: AEL Translation Westcar P10/L13-28 At 00:51 18-12-97 -0000, Mark Vygus wrote: >P10/L21 >in irr.t st nA/// >iw msi.n=s n.y.w-sw.t xmt >how could one do it, this, to me ? >she has given birth to 3 kings Hello Mark, A merry Christmas to you too. In my Blackman-edition of the Westcarpapyrus the empty space /// is filled in with 'r=i' : in irr.t=s nA r=i. The suffixpronomen .s is here written as st, this can be an influence of Late Egyptian. If you look at the original hieratic (also in Blackman) the 't' in irr.t=s seems to me written differently from the 't' in st, it looks very much like another 'r'. (A pity that I don't have a scanner so that I could attach it). But is is difficult to see. So maybe the scribe wrote : in irr.s nA r=i. This is an interrogatory sentence : it starts with 'in' . Then follows an emphatic sDm=f , nA is object and r=i is the adverbial adjunct, the vedette. The translation : "Is it to me that she did this ?" Anyway all this is pure speculation, only 'in irr=s nA r=i' is correct M.E. and 'in irr.t=s nA r=i' ( irr.t=s being a imperfective relative form, and nA being what ?) is hard for me to fathom. Maybe another attempt to represent the imperfect knowledge of correct M.E. by the maid ? But I have to be careful here because my own knowledge of M.E. is far from perfect :-) Your translation is surely what it must mean. >P10/L23-25 >SAs pw iri.n=s >gmi.n=s sn=s n.y mw.t=s smsw Hr mr mHy.w nw.t Hr xt.y.w >it was a travelling she made ( she went ) >and she found her eldest brother of her mothers (half-brother ???) >tying flax cord upon the threshing-floor This is an interesting parallel to P10 L1, there we had a discussion on the verbform wn.n=s. Here we have also a sDm.n=f form (gmi.n=s) but now this is followed by two adverbial phrases. 1. sn=s ... Hr mr (infinitive) mHy.w nw.t 2. Hr xtyw According to the theory of Polotsky the last adverbial phrase is the vedette ( english : pivot ?) The translation would then be : " It was on the threshing-floor that she found her eldest brother of her mothers tying flax cord". But your translation I like much better, these cleft sentences seem pretty unnatural to me. They are just there because we can not reproduce intonation and rhythm of speech in writing. When we want to emphasize something while speaking we raise our voice : " She found him ON THE THRESHING-FLOOR ! " The Egyptian Language did not have capital letters, so they changed the morphology of the verbforms to indicate emphasis ( the emphatic/nominal sDm.(n)=f ) Another phenomenon occurs in this sentence. sn=s is object of gmi.n=s and at the same time subject of the adverbial phrase sn=s Hr mr mHy.w nw.t. This is called 'raising'. B.T.W. > >P10/L 26 >aHa.n Dd.n=f n=s >iri.t r Tnw iAd.y.t Sri.t >Then he said to her >Where are (you) going, little girl ? > > >P10/L27-28 >wn.in=s Hr wHm n=f mdw.t tn >aHa.n Dd.n n=s pAy=s sn >She repeated to him this matter >Then her brother said to her > > >Please be kind with your comments Remember it is Christmas >Good luck with the IRC chat, sorry I will not be able to join in this >time,maybe next ! > >Mark V > > > > > > > > > Best wishes, Hans van Haarst email-adres: hans@knor.demon.nl ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 23:57:28 -0500 (EST) From: Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Naos GIF for the AEL Online Disucssion 12/21/97 Hi, All, Let me first apologize for having been too busy to get back to your messages very much this week. It is the final exam week, and I have been working very hard to fulfill my responsibilities in grading papers and exams. The bad news is that I am leaving on a trip tomorrow, well... it is also good news because I really need the break... but, I will be able to telnet from the locations I will be visiting. This means, hold tight, I will get to these messages and answer them this weekend when I am situated again, but I have not the time to do it right now. Yes, I will be there for the IRC appointment, though, so never fear. > Is this the enigmatic text about Shu and Geb that Geoff was telling > us about recently? Yes it is. The provenance of the naos is Ismailiya, though it is thought to have originated in Saft el-Hinna (ancient Per-Sopdu). It is from the reign of Nectanebo II, the last native ruler of Egypt. That figure for whose return subsequent generations of Egyptians awaited, as a kind of messianic savior who would come back to liberate Egypt from the rule of barbaric foreigners. It was not until Gamal Abdul Nasser that another native Egyptian (now, of course, speaking Arabic) would finally rule his own country again! Just think of the intervening CENTURIES of foreign domination that Egypt endured! In fact, what had happened was that when the Persians invaded, Nectanebo escaped to Nubia. It is not known really what became of him afterwards. Some say that he was the founder of the Meroitic Dynasty, but this is rather unlikely. However, legend had it that one day he would return! The Ptolemaic Dynasty seems to have taken advantage of this legend by drafting up a story by which Nectanebo actually ends up in Macedon where by some tricky ruse he sires a son on King Philip's wife, and this, of course, is Alexander the Great, and then some other part of the saga makes General Ptolemy into Alexander's natural brother, separated at birth, and hence the Ptolemaic Dynasty was legitimized as the successors of the Thirtieth Dynasty. However, it is unlikely that many people ever seriously believed these tales. But that is not the subject of this naos' text. This text is about as interesting as any Egyptian mythological text can get. I tells the story of the reigns of Shu and Geb after the retirement of Re into the next life. There are some surprising features, and this story is rarely quoted in general books, because few people ever read this text, since it is so late in date, though it is actually in a Middle Egyptian of sorts, the late variety known as "egyptien de tradition". We will discuss some of the features of this type of inscription on Sunday as we encounter them together LIVE in real time, alsmost as good as talking on the phone. > > Date: Sunday, December 21, 1997 > > Time: 2:00 PM EST, 1:00 PM CST, 12:00 PM MST, > > 11:00 AM Pacific; 7:00 PM UK > > IRC Server: IRCnet > > Channel - #AEL > > Duration: As needed Yours, Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 02:19:45 -0500 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: blochprint@zelacom.com (Julie Purple) Subject: Re: AEL (Fwd) Exercise I second this opinion! While the Westcar is fascinating, it is way beyond me. But these exercises are something I can actually work with and figure out, pretty well, anyhow. They give me hope! Thanks! Julie >I have finally had a chance to get to the web site for Exercise1, and I >want to thank Mark and Geoff, and all the others who are taking time to >help those of us who wish to learn. > >Your assistance is Greatly Appreciated!! > >Osacar H. Blayton. > > Julie Bloch blochprint@zelacom.com * * * (@v@) * * * ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 10:08:36 -0800 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL (Fwd) Nouns, Gender, & Adjectives > m-fk3.t "turquoise" > m-D3j.t "book" This is a little aside from the main thrust of this lesson, and has to do with transliteration. The two words above are usually transliterated as mfk3.t and mD3.t. In the above transliteration they seem to be interpreted as "nouns of agent" which are formed in Egyptian (and Hebrew and Arabic) from verbs: m-[VERB]-.t The usually quoted example in Egyptian is m-sdm.t "eyeshadow", from the verb sdm "paint the eye", and so literally "what is used for painting the eye." In the examples above, while it is possible that we could have such a derivation: 1) I don't know of a verb fk3. What does it mean? 2) There are two verbs D3(i). The meaning of neither of them would make sense to me as an origin of a word for book. I mean, for the verb "to cross (as in a boat)" the agentive noun should refer to a boat, or something. If anyone has any information on this, it would be appreciated, or we can wait till Geoff has time to deal with it. -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 11:19:15 -0800 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL (Fwd) Nouns, Gender, & Adjectives I would like to add a few comments and a little expansion on to the topic of > ADJECTIVES: > An adjective is a word that characterizes a noun. It "modifies" it. I > can tell you that I have a house. But I can modify your concept of my > house by specifying more about it with adjectives. "I have a big house." > Now, you know that my house is big. It is not just a house, but now it is > a "big house". Most languages have adjectives, and those that do not > still have ways of making adjectival expressions in other ways. In > Egyptian the category of adjective was not as static as it is in a > language like English. In Egyptian certain words could move from the > category of verb to noun to adjective rather easily. > Suffice it to say that every Middle Egyptian adjective was also an > adjectival verb. > > VII. Examples: > nfr "good/become good" > bjn "bad/become bad" > wr "great/become great" > nDs "small/become small" > dSr "red/redden" > qnj "yellow/become yellow" > w3D "green/flourish/become green" > jrtyw "blue/become blue" > Tms "purple/become purple" > km "black/become black" > HD "white/brighten" > hrw "happy/become content" > Dwj "sad/become sad" > wsx "wide/become wide" > Sm` "narrow/become narrow" > jz "light/become light" > dns "heavy/become heavy" While this is true for the origins of these adjectives, and they did carry traces of their verbal force with them, I would like to propose that for practical purposes you can think of them as simply adjectives in these cases. I think there is evidence that the people who wrote in Middle Egyptian thought of them that way (more on that later). > VIII. Examples: > nfr wj "I am good" > nfr Tw "you (m.) are good" > nfr Tn "you (f.) are good" > nfr sw "he is good" > nfr sy "she is good" > nfr st "it is good" > nfr n "we are good" > nfr Tn "you (pl.) are good" > nfr sn "they are good" > nfr st "they (inanimate) are good" > > The same can be done with nouns: > > IX. Examples: > nfr zj "the man is good" > nfr zj.t "the woman is good" > nfr zj.wy "the two men are good" > nfr zj.ty "the two women are good" > nfr zj.w "the men are good" > nfr zj.w.t "the women are good" > > Notice that the adjective remains the same throughout the paradigm. It is > only the subjects which vary. > > On the other hand, when an adjective modifies a noun, and "being/becoming" > that adjective is not the main event in a sentence, then the adjective has > to agree in gender and number with the noun it modifies. This is > accomplished by the addition of similar affixes to the ones we just > learned about for nouns: feminine .t, masculine dual .wy, masculine plural > w, feminine dual .ty, and feminine plural .w.t. > > X. Examples: > z3.w nfr.w "good sons" > jH wr "great ox" > mw.t nfr.t "good mother" > z3.ty nfr.ty "two good daughters" > etc... One, possibly rather silly, way I remember the syntax (how things are put together to make sentences) of adjectives in Egyptian, is to realize that in this regard (and many others) we do things exactly backwards from the Egyptians. ENGLISH EGYPTIAN [ADJ]-[NOUN] nice house [NOUN]-[ADJ] pr nfr [NOUN]-(is)-[ADJ] house (is) nice [ADJ]-[NOUN] nfr pr In the first case (called an "attributive" adjective) the reversal is quite easy to see. In the second case (this is a "predicate" adjective, forming an "adjectival" sentence), English insists on inserting a "copula" (a linking verb of little use or meaning: "is") between the noun and adjective, which Egyptian (and MANY other languages) felt no need for, which makes the correspondence less clear. In fact, in all Egyptian grammar, it helps to remember that while English uses the word order [SUBJECT]-[PREDICATE] as its basic sentence structure, Egyptian uses [PREDICATE]-[SUBJECT]. Let me add an extra bit of grammar here (and since Geoff has asked me to keep the lessons moving forward while he is busy/travelling), which I think indicates that the Egyptians thought of the predicate adjective as just that - and adjective. The Egyptians did sometimes add endings to their predicate adjectives, a common phrasing is nfr.wy pr=k how nice your house is! Literally of course this is "your house is twice nice!" using the dual number ending on the adjective. There is no agreement between the gender or number of the predicate adjective and the subject: nfr.wy s3.t=k how beautiful your daughter is! nfr.wy s3.wt=k how beautiful your daughters are! Of course you can think these translations to yourself literally if you feel they give more of a flavour of the Egyptian thinking: "Your daughters are twice beautiful!" In these sort of cases, the dual number of an advective could also be seen as equivalent to our "very": nfr.wy = very good. "COMPARISON" OF ADJECTIVES Humans seem compelled to compare things, unfortunately often with the underlying implication "I'm better than you!" The Egyptians were no exception. In English we have two "degrees" of comparison: "comparative" and "superlative" for which we have specially inflected forms of many adjectives: COMPARATIVE SUPERLATIVE good better best hot hotter hottest cold colder coldest cheap cheaper cheapest In the case of some other adjectives we use auxiliaries rather than inflection: beautiful more beautiful most beautiful sensible more sensible most sensible Egyptian did things differently than either of these. For comparison, they used the prepostion r "to" implying "compared to." So we can have these sort of sentences: nfr pr=i r pr=k My house is better than yours! nfr s.t r s3.t=s The woman is more beautiful than her daughter. nxt s3=f r i3H His son is stronger than an ox. This leads us to a phrasing very popular in self-laudatory tomb inscriptions: nfr r x.(w)t nb(.t) better than anything ink=i sS iqr r sS nb I am a better scribe than all (other) scribes! Which leads us to the "superlative" degree of comparison - "the best" The Egyptians (and Hebrew too - just check out the phrasing in the King James Bible, which tends to translate such things literally) usually used this kind of phrasing: nfr n nfr.w the most beautiful ("the beautiful of the beautifuls") mry n mry.w the most beloved Hsy n Hsy.w the most praised At this point we are getting rather close to having to discuss the point where the categories of adjective, noun and verb overlap, so I'd better stop there. I hope this was of some use to you! -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 07:52:17 +1100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Mike Dyall-Smith Subject: Re: AEL Translation Westcar P10/L14 OK, here is the next sentence of Mark's >P10/L14 >wn.in ib=f nfr r ix.t nb.t >his heart was happy, more than anything Again a sDm.in=f form. The subject is ib=f, "his heart", so a bit more literally "Then his heart..", or even more literally, "Then his heart WAS..", since the verb 'wnn' means 'to be/exist'. Now the interesting thing here is the next word is the thing predicated about his heart, ie. 'his heart WAS HAPPY'. To me, the word 'nfr' looks like it has to be a stative verb form (aka, old perfective) of what is usually an adjective. The subject of this stative (which normally precedes it) is also the subject of the first verb form 'wn.in'. So I would transliterate 'nfr' as 'nfr.w' giving it the 3rd person masc. sing. suffix, '.w'. The meaning would be that his heart was in the state of being happy. Now I assume that the alternative way of doing this: *nfr.in ib=f*, 'then his heart was happy', is not possible because 'adjective verbs' cannot be used in this fashion. Also, the initial 'wn.in' forces the subject to come immediately afterwards, so preventing the use of a 'nfr sw' construction, *wn.in ib=f nfr sw..."* Comments please. Mike Dyall-Smith Melbourne ******************************** Mike Dyall-Smith, Melbourne, Australia m.dyall-smith@microbiology.unimelb.edu.au ******************************** ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 20:43:53 -0800 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL (Fwd) Nouns, Gender, & Adjectives Stephen Fryer wrote: > ink=i sS iqr r sS nb I am a better scribe than all (other) scribes! OOps! Well that'll teach me to reread what I've written! The standard transliteration for the 1st person independent pronoun is "ink." Although it is questionable whether the person determinative (Gardiner A1 or B1) should be regarded as a personal suffix (=1) here as in other cases. So the proper version of that line should be: ink sS iqr r sS nb -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 16:25:55 +0100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: tsobota@osd.es (Tomas Sobota) Subject: Re: AEL Answers to Exercise II >Mark Wilson wrote: >> >> > 10.- wr jt.w nb=sn nfr sw >> >> I've got "Great are the fathers of our lord, and he (our lord) is >> good". I'm not 100% sure about it either. Who can give us a >> definitive answer? > >I don't have the exercise in front of me, but if your transliteration is OK, >then it is: > "The fathers (ancestors) of their lord are great (and) he is good." >-- >Stephen Fryer Thanks, Mark and Stephen. I knew my translation was bad, but couldn't make it any better. I have the following questions about lesson II: a.- The hieroglyphs for iAd-y-t (or jAd-y-t) "girl" lack the A symbol, which is however present in iAd-y "boy". Is this just an overlook or it can be written that way? b.- The symbol for a seated cow in "cow" doesn't seem to exist in Gardiner's list. The nearest is E9, but that is an antelope. E4 is a sacred cow... Can I use the standing bull symbol A1 instead, with a 't' over it? Thanks. Tom Tom Sobota tsobota@osd.es Madrid, Spain. ============================================================================== From: "YED" To: "AEgyptian-List" Subject: AEL jr.xr=k ir=k form Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 23:50:58 +0100 the form *jr.xr=3Dk ir=3Dk* is usual in Moscow papyrus and in other mathematical papyri ; nevertheless, I can find explanations in grammars. All grammars explain only *sDm.xr=3Df* form : 1) Gardiner : future time, common in statements of result (=A7 431) ; 2) Loprieno : contingent non-past in earlier Egyptian (4.6.3.1 b) ; 3) Grandet/Mathieu : *les formes verbales wnw(w).xr=3Df ..... sont des variantes du prospectif autonome* (23.1 rem.- nouvelle edition 1997). Bur nothing about the plain form *jr.xr=3Dk ir=3Dk*. May be, somebody in the list have a complete explanation. Thanks. amicalement, Yves Dupont - Lyon Croix-Rousse - France nouvelles coordonnees : y-dupont@formations.net http://www.formations.net/y-dupont/ ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 23:04:24 +0000 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Marc Line Subject: AEL Useful to anyone? Hello folks When I first purchased my copy of Faulkner's dictionary, I thought it would be useful to have a reference sheet printed up so that I could reduce the time it took to find a sequence of glyphs. It's easy enough to remember the sections to look at when you want to find a word beginning with the standard 'alphabet' signs but how many of us learners can remember that we need to look under (s) to find a hieroglyphic word which begins with the symbol U21, for example? So, I had a sheet made up and have used it ever since. It may not be entirely complete but it references every word occurrence within Faulkner's dictionary. Last week it occurred to me that people with a memory as poor as mine might find it useful so I've put it on a web page. If you want to take a look at it and maybe print it out for your own use, please feel free to do so. If you print it out at 159mm x 178mm, it will fit inside the front cover of the dictionary when trimmed. Oh, and if there are any problems with downloading or printing, please let me know my email rather than through the list. The URL is http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/2814 I hope this helps Best regards Marc Line marc@bosagate.demon.co.uk ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 15:23:17 +0100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Hans van Haarst Subject: Re: AEL jr.xr=k ir=k form At 23:50 20-12-97 +0100, Yves Dupont wrote: >the form *jr.xr=3Dk ir=3Dk* is usual in Moscow papyrus and in >other mathematical papyri ; nevertheless, I can find >explanations in grammars. >All grammars explain only *sDm.xr=3Df* form : >1) Gardiner : future time, common in statements of result >(=A7 431) ; >2) Loprieno : contingent non-past in earlier Egyptian >(4.6.3.1 b) ; >3) Grandet/Mathieu : *les formes verbales wnw(w).xr=3Df ..... >sont des variantes du prospectif autonome* (23.1 rem.- >nouvelle edition 1997). > >Bur nothing about the plain form *jr.xr=3Dk ir=3Dk*. > >May be, somebody in the list have a complete explanation. >Thanks. > >amicalement, > >Yves Dupont - Lyon Croix-Rousse - France >nouvelles coordonnees : >y-dupont@formations.net >http://www.formations.net/y-dupont/ > Hello Yves, The form sDm.xr=3Df can also be written as xr=3Df sDm=3Df. The meaning is th= e same. The subject 'f' of sDm=3Df is also placed before the verbform, that is to put it in focus, to put an emphasis on it. Your verbform then becomes : jr xr=3Df ir=3Dk. jr is the particle 'as for','if'. Can you quote the place where you found this form ?=20 Best wishes, Hans van Haarst email-adres: hans@knor.demon.nl ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 22:41:54 +0000 Subject: AEL IRC session Dear all, I'd like to thank everyone who came on-line for Sunday's IRC session. Unfortunately, there were some server problems that prevented Geoff from seeing the rest of the group. Despite frantic exchanges of emails and phone calls, these problems could not be overcome at the time of the on-line meeting, but hopefully these problems can be resolved for a future meeting online. In Geoff's absence a few points were discussed, but the majority of the text still remains to be discussed, hopefully at a later date. Best wishes, -- Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/index.html ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 22:41:53 +0000 Subject: AEL Exercise 3: Transliteration and Translation Hello all, As Geoff is taking a well earned break over the holiday period, I want to use some typeset hieroglyphs that are already available on the web for this latest exercise. This is based around the typeset answers to exercise 2b of Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar, available from the Griffith Institute web site. The hieroglyphs have been inserted into the web version of this exercise at: http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/exercises/exercise3.html Notice that there is a transliteration already provided, so you're half way there already! What you have to do is the following: 1. Write out the transliteration in Manuel de Codage format, including as much information as possible. e.g. remember to mark off the suffix pronouns with an equals sign, and feminine endings with a point etc. To get you started, I've already done the first sentence as an example: hAj sS r k.t dp.t The scribe goes down to another boat. Notice also that the first word is transliterated as h3 just below the hieroglyphs, but I have transliterated it here as hAj. This is because I have used the fuller transliteration which reminds us that this is a weak verb. You can check the spelling of words such as this with a modern dictionary such as Faulkner's, or with the Beinlich word list which is available on line (http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/egypt/test/beinlich.html). See Geoff's post to the list of December 17th 1997 for more details about transliterations. The web version of this exercise contains a handy chart for converting from the transliteration font to ordinary ASCII characters (Manuel de Codage format), pulled from the CCER web site. 2. Translate the 9 sentences into English. Season's greetings to everyone! -- Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/index.html ==============================================================================