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+ | ====== Scripturam Ægyptium - The Rosetta Stone ====== | ||
+ | [[pyramid_texts]] \\ | ||
+ | [[palermo_stone]] | ||
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+ | The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, | ||
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+ | Originally displayed within a temple, the stone was probably moved during the early Christian or medieval period and eventually used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta. It was rediscovered there in 1799 by a soldier, Pierre-François Bouchard, of the French expedition to Egypt. As the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern times, the Rosetta Stone aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this hitherto untranslated ancient language. Lithographic copies and plaster casts began circulating among European museums and scholars. Meanwhile, British troops defeated the French in Egypt in 1801, and the original stone came into British possession under the Capitulation of Alexandria. Transported to London, it has been on public display at the British Museum since 1802. It is the most-visited object in the British Museum. | ||
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+ | Study of the decree was already under way as the first full translation of the Greek text appeared in 1803. It was 20 years, however, before the transliteration of the Egyptian scripts was announced by Jean-François Champollion in Paris in 1822; it took longer still before scholars were able to read Ancient Egyptian inscriptions and literature confidently. Major advances in the decoding were: recognition that the stone offered three versions of the same text (1799); that the demotic text used phonetic characters to spell foreign names (1802); that the hieroglyphic text did so as well, and had pervasive similarities to the demotic (Thomas Young, 1814); and that, in addition to being used for foreign names, phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words (Champollion, | ||
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+ | Two other fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered later, and several similar Egyptian bilingual or trilingual inscriptions are now known, including two slightly earlier Ptolemaic decrees (the Decree of Canopus in 238 BC, and the Memphis decree of Ptolemy IV, ca. 218 BC). The Rosetta Stone is therefore no longer unique, but it was the essential key to modern understanding of Ancient Egyptian literature and civilization. The term Rosetta Stone is now used in other contexts as the name for the essential clue to a new field of knowledge. | ||
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+ | ===== The Rosetta Stone: translation of the demotic text (British Museum) ===== | ||
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+ | [[https:// | ||
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+ | {{anteanus: | ||
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+ | [Year 9, Xandikos day 4], which is equivalent to the Egyptian month, second month of Peret, day 18, of the King 'The Youth who has appeared as King in the place of his Father', | ||
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+ | Whereas King Ptolemy, living forever, the Manifest God whose excellence is fine, son of King Ptolemy [and Queen] Arsinoe, the Father-loving Gods, is wont to do many favours for the temples of Egypt and for all those who are subject to his kingship, he being a god, the son of a god and a goddess, and being like Horus son of Isis and Osiris, who protects his father Osiris, and his heart being beneficent concerning the gods, since he has given much money and much grain to the temples of Egypt, [he having undertaken great expenses] in order to create peace in Egypt and to establish the temples, and having rewarded all the forces that are subject to his rulership; and of the revenues and taxes that were in force in Egypt he had reduced some or(?) had renounced them completely, in order to cause the army and all the other people to be prosperous in his time as [king; the arrear]s which were due to the King from the people who are in Egypt and all those who are subject to his kingship, and (which) amounted to a large total, he renounced; the people who were in prison and those against whom there had been charges for a long time, he released; he ordered concerning the endowments of the gods, and the money and the grain that are given as allowances to their [temples] each year, and the shares that belong to the gods from the vineyards, the orchards, and all the rest of the property which they possessed under his father, that they should remain in their possession; moreover, he ordered concerning the priests that they should not pay their tax on becoming priests above what they used to pay up to Year 1 under his father; he released the people [who hold] the offices of the temples from the voyage they used to make to the Residence of Alexander each year; he ordered that no rower should be impressed into service; he renounced the two-thirds share of the fine linen that used to be made in the temples for the Treasury, he bringing into its [correct] state everything that had abandoned its (proper) condition for a long time, and taking all care to have done in a correct manner what is customarily done for the gods, likewise causing justice to be done for the people in accordance with what Thoth the Twice-great did; moreover, he ordered concerning those who will return from the fighting men and the rest of the people who had gone astray (lit. been on other ways) in the disturbance that had occurred in Egypt that [they] should [be returned] to their homes, and their possessions should be restored to them; and he took all care to send (foot)soldiers, | ||
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+ | {{ anteanus: | ||
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+ | With good fortune! It has seemed fitting to the priests of all the temples of Egypt, as to the honours which are due to King Ptolemy, living forever, the Manifest God whose excellence is fine, in the temples, and those which are due to the Father-loving Gods, who brought him into being, and those which are due to the Beneficent Gods, who brought into being those who brought him into being, and those which are due to the Brother-and-Sister Gods, who brought into being those who brought them into being, and those which are due to the Saviour Gods, the ancestors of his ancestors, to increase them; and that a statue should be set up for King Ptolemy, living forever, the Manifest God whose excellence is fine - which should be called ' | ||
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+ | Translation by R.S. Simpson | ||
+ | Revised version from R.S. Simpson, Demotic Grammar in the Ptolemaic Sacerdotal Decrees (Oxford, Griffith Institute, 1996), pp. 258-71 | ||
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+ | Copyright of R.S. Simpson and the Griffith Institute | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===== The Rosetta Stone: translation of the Greek text (Ancient History Sourcebook Fordham University) ===== | ||
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+ | {{anteanus: | ||
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+ | 1. In the reign of the young one who has succeeded his father in the kingship, lord of diadems, most glorious, who has established Egypt and is pious | ||
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+ | 2. Towards the gods, triumphant over his enemies, who has restored the civilised life of men, lord of the Thirty Years Festivals1, even as Hephaistos2 the Great, a king like the Sun3, | ||
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+ | 3. Great king of the Upper and Lower countries4, offspring of the Gods Philopatores, | ||
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+ | 4. Living for ever, beloved of Ptah, in the ninth year, when Aetos son of Aetos was priest of Alexander, and the Gods Soteres, and the Gods Adelphoi, and the Gods Euergetai, and the Gods Philopatores6 and | ||
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+ | 5. The God Epiphanes Eucharistos; | ||
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+ | 6. Daughter of Ptolemy being Priestess of Arsinoe Philopator7; | ||
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+ | 7. Gods, and the Fan-bearers and the Sacred Scribes and all the other priests from the temples throughout the land who have come to meet the king at Memphis, for the feast of the assumption | ||
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+ | 8. By Ptolemy, the ever-living, | ||
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+ | 9. Whereas king Ptolemy, the ever-living, | ||
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+ | 10. To those who dwell in them, as well as all those who are his subjects, being a god sprung from a god and goddess (like Horus the son of Isis and Osiris, who avenged his father Osiris)8 (and) being benevolently disposed towards | ||
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+ | 11. The gods, has dedicated to the temples revenues in money and corn and has undertaken much outlay to bring Egypt into prosperity, and to establish the temples, | ||
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+ | 12. And has been generous with all his own means; and of the revenues and taxes levied in Egypt some he has wholly remitted and others he has lightened, in order that the people and all the others might be | ||
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+ | 13. In prosperity during his reign; and whereas he has remitted the debts to the crown being many in number which they in Egypt and in the rest of the kingdom owed; and whereas those who were | ||
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+ | 14. In prison and those who were under accusation for a long time, he has freed of the charges against them; and whereas he has directed that the gods shall continue to enjoy the revenues of the temples and the yearly allowances given to them, both of | ||
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+ | 15. Corn and money, likewise also the revenue assigned to the gods from vine land and from gardens and the other properties which belonged to the gods in his father’s time; | ||
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+ | 16. And whereas he directed also, with regard to the priests, that they should pay no more as the tax for admission to the priesthood than what was appointed them throughout his father’s reign and until the first year of his own reign; and has relieved the members of the | ||
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+ | 17. Priestly orders from the yearly journey to Alexandria; and whereas he has directed that impressment for the navy shall no longer be employed; and of the tax in byssus9 cloth paid by the temples to the crown he | ||
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+ | 18. Has remitted two-thirds; and whatever things were neglected in former times he has restored to their proper condition, having a care how the traditional duties shall be fittingly paid to the gods; | ||
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+ | 19. And likewise has apportioned justice to all, like Hermes10 the great and great; and has ordained that those who return of the warrior class, and of others who were unfavourably | ||
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+ | 20. Disposed in the days of the disturbances11, | ||
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+ | 21. Egypt by sea and by land, laying out great sums in money and corn in order that the temples and all those who are in the land might be in safety; and having | ||
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+ | 22. Gone to Lycopolis12 in the Busirite nome, which had been occupied and fortified against a siege with an abundant store of weapons, and all other supplies (seeing that disaffection was now of long | ||
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+ | 23. Standing among the impious men gathered into it, who had perpetrated much damage to the temples and to all the inhabitants of Egypt), and having | ||
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+ | 24. Encamped against it, he surrounded it with mounds and trenches and elaborate fortifications; | ||
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+ | 25. Plains, he prevented it, by damming at many points the outlets of the channels (spending upon this no small amount of money), and setting cavalry and infantry to guard | ||
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+ | 26. Them, in a short time he took the town by storm and destroyed all the impious men in it, even as Hermes and Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, formerly subdued the rebels in the same | ||
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+ | 27. District13; and as to those who had led the rebels in the time of his father and who had disturbed the land and done wrong to the temples, he came to Memphis to avenge | ||
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+ | 28. His father and his own kingship, and punished them all as they deserved, at the time that he came there to perform the proper ceremonies for the assumption of the crown; and whereas he remitted what | ||
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+ | 29. Was due to the crown in the temples up to his eighth year, being no small amount of corn and money; so also the fines for the byssus | ||
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+ | 30. Cloth not delivered to the crown, and of those delivered, the several fees for their verification, | ||
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+ | 31. The jar of wine for each aroura of vine land; and whereas he bestowed many gifts upon Apis and Mnevis and upon the other sacred animals in Egypt, because he was much more considerate than the kings before him of all that belonged to | ||
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+ | 32. The gods; and for their burials he gave what was suitable lavishly and splendidly, and what was regularly paid to their special shrines, with sacrifices and festivals and other customary observances; | ||
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+ | 33. And he maintained the honours of the temples and of Egypt according to the laws; and he adorned the temple of Apis with rich work, spending upon it gold and silver | ||
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+ | 34. And precious stones, no small amount; and whereas he has founded temples and shrines and altars, and has repaired those requiring it, having the spirit of a beneficent god in matters pertaining to | ||
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+ | 35. Religion; and whereas after enquiry he has been renewing the most honourable of the temples during his reign, as is becoming,; in requital of which things the gods have given him health, victory and power, and all other good things, | ||
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+ | {{ anteanus: | ||
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+ | 36. And he and his children shall retain the kingship for all time. WITH PROPITIOUS FORTUNE: It was resolved by the priests of all the temples in the land to increase greatly the existing honours of | ||
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+ | 37. King PTOLEMY, THE EVER-LIVING, | ||
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+ | 38. The Gods Adelphoi and the Gods Soteres and to set up in the most prominent place of every temple an image of the EVER-LIVING King PTOLEMY, THE BELOVED OF PTAH, THE GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS, | ||
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+ | 39. An image which shall be called that of ‘PTOLEMY, the defender of Egypt’, beside which shall stand the principal god of the temple, handing him the weapon of victory16, all of which shall be manufactured (in the Egyptian) | ||
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+ | 40. fashion; and that the priests shall pay homage to the images three times a day, and put upon them the sacred garments, and perform the other usual honours such as given to the other gods in the Egyptian | ||
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+ | 41. festivals; and to establish for King PTOLEMY, THE GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS, | ||
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+ | 42. Temples, and to set it up in the inner chamber with the other shrines; and in the great festivals in which the shrines are carried in procession the shrine of the GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS shall be carried in procession with them. | ||
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+ | 43. And in order that it may be easily distinguishable now and for all time, there shall be set upon the shrine the ten gold diadems of the king, to which shall be added a uraeus17 but instead of | ||
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+ | 44. The uraeus-shaped diadems which are upon the other shrines, in the centre of them shall be the crown called Pschent18 which he put on when he went into the temple at Memphis | ||
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+ | 45. To perform therein the ceremonies for assuming the kingship; and there shall be placed on the square surface round about the diadems, beside the aforementioned crown, golden symbols (eight in number signifying) | ||
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+ | 46. That it is (the shrine) of the king who makes manifest the Upper and Lower countries. And since it is the 30th of Mesore on which the birthday of the king is celebrated, and likewise (the 17th of Paophi) | ||
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+ | 47. On which he succeeded his father in the kingship, they have held these days in honour as name-days in the temples, since they are sources of great blessings for all; it was further decreed that a festival shall be kept in the temples throughout Egypt | ||
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+ | 48. On these days in every month, on which there shall be sacrifices and libations and all the ceremonies customary at the other festivals (and the offerings shall be given to the priests who) | ||
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+ | 49. Serve in the temples. And a festival shall be kept for King PTOLEMY, THE EVER-LIVING, | ||
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+ | 50. Land from the 1st of Thoth for five days, in which they shall wear garlands and perform sacrifices and libations and the other usual honours, and the priests (in each temple) shall be called | ||
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+ | 51. Priests of the GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS in addition to the names of the other gods whom they serve; and his priesthood shall be entered upon all formal documents (and engraved upon the rings which they wear); | ||
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+ | 52. And private individuals shall also be allowed to keep the festival and set up the aforementioned shrine and have it in their homes, performing the aforementioned celebrations | ||
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+ | 53. Yearly, in order that it may be known to all that the men of Egypt magnify and honour the GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS the king, according to the law. This decree shall be inscribed on a stela of | ||
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+ | 54. Hard stone in sacred [that is hieroglyphic] and native [that is demotic] and Greek characters and set up in each of the first, second, and third [rank] temples beside the image of the ever living king.16 | ||
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+ | ==== NOTES ==== | ||
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+ | 1 The Sed Festival, originally held at thirty-year intervals after a king’s coronation, in order to renew a king’s physical powers. | ||
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+ | 2 In the Egyptian version Ptah. | ||
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+ | 3 In the Egyptian version Ra. | ||
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+ | 4 The South and North of Egypt, the two great predynastic kingdoms, we always remembered in the royal title. | ||
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+ | 5 In the Egyptian version Amun. | ||
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+ | 6 Alexander the Great, Ptolemy I and Berenike I, Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II, Ptolemy III and Berenike II, and Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III respectively. | ||
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+ | 7 Eponymous priests; priests and priestesses, | ||
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+ | 8 Ie Horus-avenger-of-his-father, | ||
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+ | 9 Fine linen. | ||
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+ | 10 In the Egyptian version Thoth. | ||
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+ | 11 A reference to the years since 205 BC, during which Upper Egypt had been ruled by two rebel native | ||
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+ | pharaohs, first Hor-Wennefer (previously misread as Hor-em-akhet) and since 199 BC, Ankh-Wennefer | ||
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+ | (misread as Ankh-em-akhet). | ||
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+ | 12 A town in the ninth nome (administrative area) of the Delta, probably near Busiris but not identified with certainty. | ||
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+ | 13 According to one version of the Osiris legend, his followers under Horus and Thoth defeated the supporters of Seth nearby at Hermopolis Parva. | ||
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+ | 14 A measure of grain. | ||
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+ | 15 A measurement of land equal to about 2/3 of an acre (about 2,735 sq. m.). | ||
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+ | 16 The khepesh, or scimitar, the royal weapon often depicted being given by a god to the king. | ||
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+ | 17 The cobra, symbol of kingship. | ||
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+ | 18 From the Egyptian Pa-sekhemty, | ||
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+ | This text is part of the Internet Ancient History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts related to medieval and Byzantine history. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. No representation is made about texts which are linked off-site, although in most cases these are also public domain. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use. | ||
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+ | ===== Reading Hieroglyphs ===== | ||
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+ | [[anteanus: | ||
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+ | * Hieroglyphs are contextual and the context is usually given in accompanying glyphs. The same letters can refer to different matter depending on context. Determinative hieroglyphs. | ||
+ | * Most non-determinative hieroglyphic signs are phonetic. | ||
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+ | So sound and meaning are conveyed, for example RA is phonetic but when accompanied by a man glyph vs. a god glyph vs. a king glyph the context changes. | ||
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+ | * You can group several hieroglyphs and write it as one glyph, kind of like ancient shorthand. Phonograms formed with one consonant are called uniliteral signs; with two consonants, biliteral signs; with three triliteral signs. You will find multiliteral (bi & tri) glyphs accompanied by redundant uniliteral glyphs that spell out the grouped word as a guide to re-enforce the correct interpretation. | ||
+ | * Logograms are also used and when hieroglyph used as a logogram defines the object of which it is an image. You can tell a logogram from letters, groups of letter written as shothand, or a context glyph by a mute vertical stroke indicating their status as a logogram. | ||
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+ | {{anteanus: | ||
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+ | {{anteanus: | ||
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+ | {{anteanus: | ||
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+ | ===== Excercise: ===== | ||
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+ | Here is an exercise determine the meaning of these cartouches. [[anteanus: | ||
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+ | {{ anteanus: |