Re: Jaynes and Hoagland findings related??
whittet (whittet@shore.net)
22 Jan 1995 18:06:39 GMT
In article <medved.790438641@access1>, medved@access1.digex.net (Ted Holden) says:
>
>scharle@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu (scharle) writes:
>
>
>> Egyptian Hieroglyphics partially reflected the sound of the spoken
>>language. They weren't just pictures of things, but a full way of
>>representing the spoken speech. For example, for a word which wasn't
>>easily pictured, a homonym or group of homonyms could be used (sort of
>>like rebus writing).
>
>A couple of questions... Does anybody believe they know what ancient
>Egyptian sounded like;
Because the Copts used the Egyptian language but the Greek alphabet, a
fairly close idea of what Egyptian sounded like by it's XXXth Dynasty
is possible. Where the phonetic glyphs are continuous over a period of
some three thousand years, it may be a stretch to say the pronunciation
was as well, but that is the present assumption.
is there no other explaination for the symbol
>grouping in heiroglyphics;
No other explanation than what? You can read them like you would a tarot
card if you want to. By simply looking at the picture and thinking about
the things associated with it...
If you then go and look up the meaning in the grammars and dictionaries as
assigned it by Gardiner or Faulkner or Budge and their meaning disagrees,
it is up to you to show why your reading is generally more consistent and
fits the sense of the passage better than the accepted reading does. This
is not necessarily impossible, but would take some effort on your part.
can any such case as you make here be made
>for Chinese writing... i.e. I'd always heard that Chinese writing
>involved literal pictures which had been simplified to symbols over
>time.
Yes, The Egyptian Hieroglyphic does contain both literal pictures,
determinatives, and literal pictures simplified to symbols, the phonetic
glyphs. Some of these are even syllabic bilaterals and trilaterals, while
others can have associated vowels. Eventually the Hieroglyphic was both
copied by peoples like the Akkadians, Luwians [Hittites] and Peleset and
further simplified into a Hieratic and finally a Demotic form from whence
came the alphabets of the Semites, Phoenicians, and Greeks.
>
>
Steve
|