Post by M***@aol.comPost by Johann 'Myrkraverk' OskarssonHi,
Somewhere, a long time ago (in my life span, that is) I came across a
mention of a name; of someone who aledgedly had put together the
language of the ancient egyptians by combining hierglyphic texts and
some dialect found (presumably) in egypt.
Since I think that might be useful for historical fiction, even though
it's of questionable value to historians, I'd like to know if any of
you are familiar with that work or know where to look for it.
Johann, if you have to ask this question, perhaps you are not the
best person to write historical fiction set in ancient Egypt. The
ones most likely to want to read that are the same people who are
going to spot errors that might undermine the value of your writing.
You have to be well-versed in your subject or such mistakes are
bound to crop up without you even realizing it. Even in a work of
fiction, you have got to know what is "possible", even if it never
actually happened. One can only take literary license so far. My
guess is you have a lot of research ahead of you before you should
even consider taking on such a project. And probably the Egyptian
language should be left out of it entirely because difficulties and
pitfalls there are very great.
Of course I'm not the right person to write about anything in ancient
egypt; but I'm working on that ;)
However, leaving the language out entirely is the easy way out and may
not be the best thing to do when creating an atmosphere. For exaple,
when Gandalf reads from the ring in Lord of the Rings:
The change in the wizard's voice was astounding. Suddenly it be-
came menacing, powerful, harsh as stone. A shadow seemed to pass
over the high sun, and the porch for a moment grew dark. All
trembled, and the Elves stopped their ears.
Such passages are hard to write without a clue as to how the language
might have sounded - even if I leave the actual language out of the
text.
There is also the question of names. One of my picture books mentions
a slave girl named Gemini Herimentet which means "I found you in the
West" and if I am going to create such names[1] I'm going to need to
know something of the language, or how it could have been.
[1] I don't know if I need to create any such names yet, I have only a
very broad plot outline so far.
I am working (or will be) on avoiding the painfully impossible. I do
come across it every time (or way too often) when someone writes about
computers (or even worse, the Internet) so I do know what you're
talking about.
Johann
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johann myrkraverk com (you know the drill with the @ and .)
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