Post by Eugene GriesselPost by Katherine GriffisPost by Eugene GriesselHieroglyphs can be written down (top to bottom) but not up (bottom to
top).
This depends: there are "acrostic" examples of glyphs which can, in
effect, be read from bottom to top and even diagonally. Glyphs are
also able to be read in a circular fashion as well (Redford 1973;
Stewart 1971). I am aware of glyphs even being rendered upside down
in some afterlife texts (Piankoff 1964), but there are also examples
of alternation between horizontal and vertical lines, and between left-
oriented and right-oriented lines, acrostics, and even crossword
puzzles (Vernus 1982; Brunsch 1979; Zandee 1966).
Thanks for that Katherine - but are these special cases or is it
common? Maybe Gardiner never got around to those!
The point I was trying to make by noting these circumstances of other
than left-->right/right--> left/top-->bottom reading of glyphs is that
one can never be sure and generalise that "always" glyphs are read a
certain way. Sometimes the acrostic and crossword styles of writing
can even be read _both_ ways, which means that cryptography is not
merely a modern method of rendering "secret" writings. Jan Assmann
discussed some of these features of Egyptian glyphs in
Assmann, J. 1997. Zur Ästhetik de Gehemnis. Kryptographie als
Kalligraphie im alten Ägypten. In A. Assmann, J. Assmann, A. Hahn and
H.-J. Lüsebrink, Eds., _Schleier und Schwelle. Geheimnis und
Offentlichkeit_: 313-327. Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation
V/I. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
<snip>
Post by Eugene GriesselGetting back to the original question - the current pronunciation of
ancient Egyptian - how sure are we that we are even close to how the
ancients pronounced it? Can you throw some light on this? I can
vaguely recall, and I may be horribly wrong here, Zahi Hawass at a
lecture saying something to the effect that the modern vowel sounds
used actually related to fairly modern Egyptian? Long time ago and I
may have heard/remembered wrong.
He may have stated that vowels were added in writing as feature from
Coptic were used to compare with ancient Egyptian. This goes back as
far as Champollion, who felt that Coptic was the key to Egyptian
language. To an extent, he was correct, but there's more involved in
ancient Egyptian than merely Coptic alone.
Loprieno (1995: 5) has noted that ancient Egyptian is more closely
related to Beja (a Cushitic dialect), Berber, and Semitic in terms of
how it likely sounded rather than Coptic alone. All of these languages
contain glottal stopped consonants which are semi-vocalic vowel
equivalents. But ancient Egyptian itself does not contain vowels, so
when one sees vowels in rendered Egyptian (eg. Egyptian /'imn/ = Amun/
English), these are linguistic accomodations, usually based upon
Coptic, but may not reflect how ancient Egyptian actually sounded for
the term /'imn/ over the millennia of Egyptian linguistic history.
Loprieno has done the most on trying to develop a theory of how
ancient Egyptian sounded during the paharonic period, but in all, it's
still theoretical (and likely will remain so, as we have no living
speakers of the language today). Egyptologists, when speaking amongst
themselves will slide "neutral" vowel sounds between the consonants so
they are univerally understood amongst other Egyptologists, such that
Tutankhamun's name comes out roughly as this:
Egyptian: /twt anx 'imn/ (written /'imn twt anx/, due to theophoric
transposition)
would be said by most Egyptologists as 'toot ahnk uh-min'
as w= long u
as ah = short a
as 'i = short i, but actually a glottal stop
as i in 'min' = merely a language convention, as most people tend to
unconsciously insert a short 'i' or 'e' when faced with two consonants
such as 'm' and 'n' together.
I have heard some people (including Egyptologists) insert as "long u"
sound in /'imn/ but there's actually nothing in Egyptian itself which
says this must be the case. Aayko Eyma, moderator of the
Egyptologists Electronic Forum, has pointed out the way we pronounce
the god's name today comes mainly from the Coptic, and wrote, in
dispelling the notion that the god's name and the end of prayers
('Amen') are in any way related:
"...the Egyptian god's name never sounded like Amen (that's again a
modernism!), but was written /imn/, which in the New Kingdom was
pronounced /3Ama:ne/ (as testified by the cuneiform texts that render
the name with vowels) and which after ca 1000 BC developed into /
3Amu:n(e)/ (hence the Coptic form 'Amoun' and the Greek form 'Amoun').
The Egyptians themselves connected the name with the verb /imn/, "to
conceal", so the god's name would mean "the Hidden One" (cp. Plutarch,
Isis and Osiris, ch. 9 = Manetho, Fr. 77)."
Source: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/4482/AEloans.html#fn17
Reference:
Loprieno, A. 1995. _Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction_.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
HTH.
Regards --
---
Katherine Griffis-Greenberg, MA (Lon)
Member, International Association of Egyptologists
American Research Center in Egypt, SSEA, ASOR
Oriental Institute
Oriental Studies Doctoral Program [Egyptology]
University of Oxford
Oxford, United Kingdom
http://www.griffis-consulting.com