La alegria egipcia y la Lista de reyes y escrituras(página de un colega)

King List: 19th Dynasty, around 1250 BC, chronology of the rulers of Egypt so far, from a temple of Ramesses II…. but it is a selective list.

What Successful Decipherment Usually Requires…

Successful decipherment usually requires:

- accurate copies

- a familiar language

- proper names of figures known in neighbouring cultures

- bilingual or multilingual inscriptions

(Daniels and Bright 1996:142-3)

www.yorku.ca/…/2140-21Feb2006.htm

Classic examples of multilingual inscriptions: The Rosetta Stone (hieroglyphic, demotic, Greek), and the Behistun Inscription, Iran (Persian, Elamite, Babylonian).

Rosetta Stone image from British Museum Compass collections online

Behistun cuneiform: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Persia/cunifo_e.gif

Closer view of the Rosetta stone: http://www.bgst.edu.sg/realia/rosetta.htm

Counter-example: Hieroglyphic and Demotic… but not saying the same thing!

Stela fragment of Horiraa, From Memphis, Egypt, 30th Dynasty to early Ptolemaic Period (380-200 BC) Image from British Museum Compass collections online.

Decipherment requires moving past preconceptions:

Example: Mayan glyphs

“The Fenton Vase”: Polychrome, Late Classic (AD 600-800), Nebaj, Guatemala

image from British Museum Compass collections online.

Diego de Landa’s Mayan “alphabet”… which turned out to be only part of the system.

Image from: Harris, Roy. 1986. The Origin of Writing. London: Duckworth.

The Rebus Principle - “whereby a word that cannot easily be written is represented by a word or words that have the same sound and can easily be written” (Marcus 1992:65)

Image from Marcus, Joyce. 1992. Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p 65

More shedding of alphabetic preconceptions: Egyptian hieroglyphs combine pictograms, logograms, ideograms, phonograms, and determinatives.

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Reading Hieroglyphs

(n.b. also hieratic and demotic)

- hieroglyphs - 3100 BC to 300 AD

- originally thought to be symbolic

- although most are pictures of plants, animals, equpment, they mean sounds

- when a sign actually means the image, a determinative stroke is used

- no vowels so our pronunciation is a tad fictitious

- determinatives are silent (e.g. for names… male - seated man… female - seated woman)

- include

- phonograms (sound signs) - alphabetic, biliteral, triliteral

- ideograms (sense signs) - logograms and determinatives (to distinguish words otherwise identical n.b. no vowels, also as word dividers)

- n.b. a single hieroglyph can vary in function

- direction

- organization - aesthetics and symmetry - Egyptians liked rectangles, avoided blanks and gaps, would adjust size, direction, and orientation to make it pretty

Image from Marcus, Joyce. 1992. Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p 25

“I can never remember how to spell….”

But that would be okay… since there were often many ways of visually representing the same spoken word.

Illustration by Ronald Searle.

Image source: Parkinson, Richard. 1999. Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment. London: British Museum p 151

A Mayan hieroglyph may include several “affix” signs around the main sign. This is the emblem glyph for Palenque.

Image from Marcus, Joyce. 1992. Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p 86

Six ways of writing the same Mayan name — Lord Shield, aka Pacal — using combinations of logograms and phonograms.

Image from Marcus, Joyce. 1992. Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Undeciphered Scripts

Left: Tartaria amulet - Romania c 4500 BC - example of Vinča script, undeciphered.

Above: The Rongorongo script of Easter Island, undeciphered.

Images borrowed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tartaria_amulet.png and http://www.rongorongo.org/repro/kr.html

Examples of the undeciphered Indus Valley script.

The “Unicorn Seal” of fired steatite, from Mohenjo-daro, c. 2000 BCE and another seal impression.

Images borrowed from http://www.harappa.com/seal/seal1.html and http://www.harappa.com/seal/seal3.html

And for something completely different… the Quipu or Khipu… potentially a method of binary coding.

Images borrowed from Gary Urton’s 2003 book, Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Denaturalizing writing some more… (skipped this section in class)

A writing system changes diachronically and varies synchronically

e.g. Evolution of Kanji - one of three different scripts used in Japanese - origins in China, introduced via Korea.

e.g. Evolution of cuneiform

Same words, same script, merely different styles…….

tHE cHALLENGE of layers: Representation upon representation, meaning over meaning

Assyrian relief with cuneiform: “A winged deity pollinating stylized trees, symbolizing fertility. This is an alabaster relief from the Northwest Palace of King Assur-nasir-pal II at Nimrud.” Brooklyn Museum.

Images from Gordon, Cyrus. 1968. Forgotten Scripts: How they were deciphered and their impact on contemporary culture. New York: Basic Books.

Mayan relief from Yaxchilan

Yaxchilán lintel 24: Shield Jaguar II, and his wife, Lady K’ab’al Xook. AD 709

image from British Museum Compass collections online.

Aztec Conventions of Representation in the Codex Mendoza

Image from: Ross, Kurt. 1978. Codex Mendoza: Aztec Manuscript, with commentary. Miller Graphics. p 41

Image from: Ross, Kurt. 1978. Codex Mendoza: Aztec Manuscript, with commentary. Miller Graphics. p 38

Image from: Ross, Kurt. 1978. Codex Mendoza: Aztec Manuscript, with commentary. Miller Graphics. p 28

Image from: Ross, Kurt. 1978. Codex Mendoza: Aztec Manuscript, with commentary. Miller Graphics. p 117

Writing is held to be sacred in origin, in many traditions.

Among the ancient Egyptians, the inventor/donor of writing was held to be the god Thoth (depicted either as ibis-headed man or as a baboon, often associated with the moon).

Quartzite Baboon figure, possibly representing Thoth, Egypt, 18th Dynasty, circa 1350 BCE.

Image from British Museum Compass collections online.

In China, the (mythical?) sage-emperor Fu Hsi is often given credit for inventing writing and animal husbandry. Sometimes credit goes to his contemporary, the historian Ts’ang Chieh instead.

In Hinduism, the elephant-headed Ganesh is the god of writing (and wisdom and luck and doorways).

Ganesha - Ivory, 14th-15th century, India.

Image borrowed from: http://www3.la.psu.edu/courses/worldreligions/arts-hinduism.htm

In Judaeo-Christian tradition, “The Ten Commandments” were the first writing - also from a divine source.

Tablets image borrowed from: www.catholicsupply.com/christmas/walldecor.html

Charlton Heston image from http://charltonhestonworld.homestead.com/files/CH-Moses7.JPG

Writing was long held to be tremendously powerful in itself.

In some cases, even a written word was believed to heal or curse… hence the high value of books once upon a time.

” He who takes this book away/ On a Paris gallows will sway

If he’s not hanged, he’ll be drowned/ If he’s not drowned, he’ll be burned,

And if he’s not burned/ He’ll a worse end have earned”

Quotation and Image from Drogin, Marc. 1989. Biblioclasm: The Mythical Origins, Magic Powers,

and Perishability of the Written Word. Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, pp 124

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Links:

British Museum: http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/menu.html

Saqqara: http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/saqqara/fr/intro_flash.htm

Egyptian art: http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/new_pyramid/PYRAMIDS/HTML/el_pyramid_Intro.htm

Eternal Egypt: http://www.eternalegypt.org
http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/Welcome.html especially
http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/religion/index.html

http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/ebod/index.htm
http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/index.htm