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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4629 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 865 of 1317 08 January 2014 at 1:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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Statistics... yikes.
On another note, how do you post images on the forum? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4315 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 866 of 1317 08 January 2014 at 10:39am | IP Logged | |||||
It reminds me of the script I saw in one of the oldest tombs in the Valley of Kings. This particular tomb of Thutmes III is deep underground and this beautiful almost manga-like calligraphy on the walls, quite unlike the other tombs I saw. To give you an idea how poorly the tombs are looked after, the breast of Isis in this image no longer exists as tourists and guides have repeatedly poked it over the years, so now only a hole remains where the breast once was: 
[EDIT: I switched this image to one served off of postimage, instead of Wikipedia and shrunk it to a bit more convenient size. -emk] It makes me very sad sometimes how stupid people are. Edited by emk on 08 January 2014 at 12:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5314 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 867 of 1317 08 January 2014 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Here's my attempt to puzzle out those signs:
<-ra-M8-xpr->-z-N17-q-D27-f-t*U13-f-Q1-t ...though frankly, I'm not too sure about that U13 𓍁. I'll have to do some dictionary work to figure this one out. Last night, I had fun flipping through the Book of the Dead. Apparently, these things were a major industry: Everybody who could afford one, wanted one. But not everybody who bought one could necessarily read it: Scribes often cut text off when they ran out of space, or put the wrong text with a given image. Some of the chapters/"spells" are quite odd. My favorite title so far is "Spell for preventing a man from going upside down and eating feces." When I read this, a little scenario plays out in my mind's eye:
Anyway, there's probably a serious religious explanation for this. But given the way the Book of the Dead just kept getting longer and longer, I'm suspicious of scribal motivations here. :-) Edited by emk on 08 January 2014 at 5:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4315 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 868 of 1317 08 January 2014 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for shrinking the image; I didn't know about Postimage.
Some quick Google searching (I know it's cheating) confirms that the cartouche is the throne name for Thutmose III: Menkheperre ("Lasting is the Manifestation of Re"). And the bottom three symbols are for Isis: 
So: Thutmose III blah blah Isis OR Isis blah blah Thutmose! Or more speculatively: Thutmose III - doorbolt squiggle squiggle Suckled horned-viper major-squiggle Isis. That's about as far as I can extensively read in Egyptian though! --------- Here is another example of the script in the tomb: 
It was unlike anything else I saw and the effect from inside the tomb is really quite wonderful. Edited by patrickwilken on 08 January 2014 at 7:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5314 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 869 of 1317 08 January 2014 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hah! OK, this post will make a lot more sense if you install the Gardiner.tff font. I had a couple of minutes to glance at the dictionary, and I was able to update my transliteration a bit. I'm pretty sure the U13 is still wrong, though. 
<-ra-mn-xpr->-z-n-q-D27-f-t*U13-f-Q1-t Moving the sun disk 𓇳 to the correct location in the name, I have so far: 𓏠-𓆣-𓇳 / 𓊃𓈖𓈎𓂑=𓆑 / 𓏏𓍁𓆑 / 𓊨𓏏 mn-xpr-ra / snq=f / ??? / Ast durable-existence-ra / nurse=3MSG / ??? / Isis Menkheperre / nurses / ??? / Isis Until I figure out that thing which looks vaguely like U13 𓍁, I'm not going to be able to get the missing bit, but the second horned viper might be another verb ending. I'll keep an eye open for the U13 lookalike elsewhere. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4315 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 870 of 1317 08 January 2014 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
Is it certain that you read it top-to-bottom (showing my zero knowledge of Ancient Egyptian). I thought it was more likely to be "Isis nurses Menkheperre". Presumably the picture and the text are related. Like Manga!! Perhaps there is some standard phrasing here that would help with U13-lookalike. I tried to search for "Isis suckled/nurtured King". I think this shows that to really understand a language you to understand the culture too. Edited by patrickwilken on 08 January 2014 at 9:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5314 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 871 of 1317 09 January 2014 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
Top to bottom, reading "into the faces" of the symbols. But even in English, "to nurse" can take either the mother or the child as the subject of the verb: - "The infant nurses." - "The infant nurses at the breast." (Egyptian snq m, apparently.) - "The mother nurses the infant." (Egyptian snq.) Unfortunately, without getting that last symbol, I don't stand much chance of deciphering this.
I had a huge amount of trouble reading French handwriting until I was comfortably above B2. Sometimes, there's just no way to decipher squiggles unless your brain has a pretty sophisticated top-down model of what might plausibly be said. Unfortunately, we're out of luck here. According to French Wikipedia, "La représentation du roi nourri par une divinité sous la forme d’un arbre et nommée Isis, comme sa mère, est également unique," the representation of the king nourished by Isis in the form of a tree is unique. I've searched the Karnak inscription database and the web without finding anything similar. And the Theban Mapping Project bibliography for KV34 is unhelpful—there's one volume which claims to contain the text from this tomb, but WorldCat only knows of four library copies, all in Europe. And even if I could track down the volume, there's no indication that it contains transliterations. Basically, there's no way I'm going to be able to translate this right now. All I can do is remember it and get more input, and hope I find the missing clue some day. :-) This is, in fact, pretty much how I read French. I notice the occasional weird bit, and I vaguely hope that I'll see it again in a more helpful context. And I accept that some stuff won't make sense. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 872 of 1317 09 January 2014 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A totally different question, but maybe you happen to know: do you know of any online
courses in French for things like chemistry, biochemistry or chemical engineering? It would be interesting to follow these, but in French. Or maybe you know a textbook? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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