Ancient Egyptian 2

Here we go with our second instalment on Middle Egyptian. As before, I am forced to say that I have nothing but a passing interest in this language. Therefore, mistakes are possible. Please make sure that you notify me of them, if you notice them.

In our previous discussion I gave some answers to some of the questions that are most often asked regarding this language. In this post we are going to get a little bit more dirty and discuss some of the technical details. While I am unable in a single post to describe every intricate detail, without making it more boring than it actually is, I will point some useful resources on the web.

First on our list is writing. We will only discuss hieroglyphic writing (no demotic or hieratic here). You already know the proper direction of reading hieroglyphics. When writing them, if you have no artistical talent you could use this wonderful resource by Jenny Carrington and I assure you that in no time you will get accustomed to the way hieroglyphs should be drawn. One thing to be noted here is that you should train both writing left to right and right to left. If you happen to get over some inscriptions and you would like to copy them, this will prove very useful. Most inscriptions are actually left to right written, or from top to bottom.

The resource above by Jenny Carrington, while it does show the proper way to draw hieroglyphs, it doesn't say what they actually represent. Never fear, we have this resource by Omniglot. Try to learn a few signs each day until you know all of the uniliteral, biliteral, triliteral and determinatives. Don't overdo it. While there are quite a few signs, nobody is actually hurrying you to do it, so just do it a little bit each day and in no time you will be able to understand a lot when looking at the inscriptions.

Also, it is very important when learning these hieroglyphs to also learn their transcriptions. There are quite a few dictionaries out there that only give the meaning by transcription only. It is also easier, when using the internet, to refer by transcription only, instead of using a lot of img tags.

At this point in time you are probably asking for an egyptian dictionary. I was amazed to see that there is actually such a resource, free of charge, online. You can find it here. Thank you Jim Loy.

So you know how to write/read and you have a source from where to get your words. What next? The grammar... I will give some first tastes of it. If you want more, you should probably buy Alain Gardiner's book called "Middle Egyptian Grammar". You can find it on Amazon.

1) In Egyptian there are two genders for nouns: masculine and feminine. The masculine nouns do not have a particular termination. The feminine nouns always finish in -t. Of course, we are speaking about the singular forms of this verbs.

2) To form the plural of a noun, you simply add -w for masculine nouns or change the ending -t in -wt for feminine nouns.

3) In Egyptian there is a third case, rarely used called the dual. It is used for things that are in pair. For example: "the eyes" == irty and not irwt if you are reffering to only two eyes (and not some monster with 1000 eyes). This dual is formed by attaching -wy at masculine and changing -t in -ty for feminine nouns.

4) The adjectives agree in gender and number to the noun that they qualify. They are placed AFTER the noun

5) Let us say you want to form a proposition:

NOUN is ADJ.

In egyptian this is done by omitting the is part and simply saying: ADJ. NOUN

6) There are two ways to say propositions of these type (i.e. the genitive):

"Noun1 belongs to Noun2."
"Noun2's Noun1 ..."

The first way is by simply writing:
noun1 noun2.

The second way is by inserting the adjective "n" between the two nouns.

7) The demonstrative adjectives are:
pn - this (for masculine nouns)
tn - this (for feminine nouns)
nn - these

As before the adjectives are placed AFTER the nouns (unlike English, but similar to Romanian).

For the moment, I will stop here. When I will have some more time, I will discuss a few more rules. The next article will probably be the last in this series. There is only so much you can write about a language in a blog.

See you next time!

Reviews

Today's post is a little bit late. Sorry for that folks, but procrastination is a bitch. We all have been there... not doing something not because you don't have time and not because you don't like, but just because.

There have been a few months since my previous posts. A lot of things have happened in that time, most of which have no real consequences whatsoever. I have had however quite a good time (which was a change from the last year or so).

There are however some interesting pieces of, let us call it, art which I recommend to people who are too bored.

First on our list is this movie called "Click!". I am not a big fan of Adam Sandler, but I must say he is ok as an actor. However, this particular movie was outstanding. While it is advertised as a comedy, I cannot say it was amazing from the comical standpoint. The message it delivered was however amazing. Most of us drain our life to the toilet just like that. We fast-forward through it, without doing anything meaningful... I simply was able to relate to that guy in the movie. Hell is paved with good intentions, you know?

Second on our list is a movie by Ingmar Bergman, "The 7th Seal". This is a pretty old movie (black and white) but very good nonetheless. The leading thread in this movie is as follows: A knight that just returned from a crusade, meets Death. He challenges Death to a game of chess. If Death wins, the knight dies. If the knight wins, he doesn't. This particular event leads to a pretty interesting description of the medieval society, but more importantly of the human psyche. I doubt some of my readers will like it very much, but if you want some dark humour together with some interesting existential questions,... this is the movie for you.

Our third review concerns a book. It is called Inferno and it is written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Here is an interesting question for all of you. Suppose Hell exists. And it exists in a very Dantesque way: demons with pitchforks, sinners suffering, boiling blood, etc. How would this change your life? The book afore mentioned has the following simple premise: A science fiction writer dies and goes to hell, the hell of Dante Alighieri. In a manner similar to the Italian poet he travels through all the nine circles of hell to reach the Purgatorium, witnessing lots of people along the way suffering. The writers invent new sins, while old sins get new meaning. And of course... there is the ultimate question: If God is that good, why does he own torture chamber? This question actually gets quite a good answer in that book. Feel free to read it.

The fourth review regards a game (an old game actually) by Benoit Sokal: Syberia (1&2). I cannot say much about this game except that it is a must for adventure fans. While the game is not state of the art programming, it has very good art and a very good story. You often get bored of the cliches in this industry: "kill the bad guys, save the world, get the girl, live happily ever after". So this game has a story that is quite better than usual stuff.

I hope you will find at least some of the aforementioned works of art interesting. See you next time!

Doru

Varii

The powers that be have decided that I should not sleep tonight. Aside from that, I also had to finish this post.

First, I would like you to observe the right side of this page. Specifically, notice that the Links section has been updated. There are two new links in it: Lumea lui Naspa Rau and Survival Guide to Homelessness.

The first of these pages contains ironical articles of some guy. While I do not agree with everything he says, I must say that I agree with many of the things there. Asides from these, he is very funny. The second page is here mainly for inspirational purposes. While I have never been homeless myself, I was able to understand from this guys posts, the way in which this experience might change you. Also, it makes you wonder about a lot of the wrong things in this society in which we are living.

I especially liked one of the comments in which one person there says that the current lifestyle is more of an "Active Laziness". People everywhere work, sleep, eat, and do nothing more beside these basic activities. The high-point of their day is probably when they get laid. They often identify themselves with their material possesions or with their jobs. However, aside of this jobs and aside these material possesions, they are often very shallow. Einstein once said that "Culture is what remains after you forgot everything". It is somehow the same here.

Here I get to the second point of this post. The ideal man. It is a common assumption these days that you should specialize in order to be successful. This can be contrasted to the Renaissance period where you should have been a generalist.

Nobody can deny that from an economical point of view, this seems to be the case. The better you know about something, the more you are likely to be paid. However, specialization is reducing your being. While it does make you more knowledgeable, it offers less and less ground for developing new ideas. I reckon that John Carmack once said, while working for Doom 3 that he has been reading books on psychology and genetics, and various other matters. He added that they cross-bred and this gave him some ideas with regard to the engine of his game.

It is said to say, but if you look at the society, some of its tendencies are contrary to the profit of the individual. For example, society needs specialized individuals who know one particular thing very well. The individual on the other hand is generally interested by many things. Mind, to be kept sane and fit, needs change. It is almost the same as with a muscle. If you only use it in one way, it will grow up to a point and then stop. If you use it in multiple ways, it will grow even more, and become more powerful (and thus more useful even to your day to day activity).

Thus, I consider it imperative for the modern person to learn and instruct himself even more than the Renaissance man. I do think that this should be done even at the risk of being shallow in some of your areas of knowledge. For example, you will probably see no use to the previous article about ancient Egyptian. For me however it was quite useful. Letting aside the cultural value, the exercise of memorizing stuff about hieroglyphs took my mind from some of my problems. Also, it was a mental exercise very different in nature from those that I generally do. And of course, I received quite a lot of visitors because of this new article :).

I will probably write another article about hieroglyphs if I feel like some of these days. However, I don't expect it to be ready sooner than Sunday.