tattoos

What I got up to when you weren't looking. This is about hieroglyphics, skip if you like, I will not be offended. Not one bit.
A visitor from Japan dropped into one of my other little sites where I tack up various nonsense, a visit from photobucket hieroglyphic set and that is unusual so I looked to see which hieroglyphic chicken scratch would interest a viewer in Japan and it turns out to be the word for "old". 

From there the visitor went to a page with beginner phrases. And there are some really cool phrases too that I think would make decent tattoos. If they were drawn better than mine. 

I remembered a guy with a large ankh drawn on his torso. You rarely see that glyph on its own in real glyphics. And here are all these nice phrases available, nothing at all tricky with grammar.  

I looked in images to see if other hieroglyphic tattoos would be that single ankh. If so, I am ready to ridicule them completely. But it turns out I'm wrong. They are all rather nice, sophisticated in fact, and better than I draw them myself. 

Let's read them.

Focus, Dude. 

Oh, that means disease. It's an oval tipped over, there are two types of this symbol and he picked the squishy one, this one has tendril and looks like a big fat sperm with ears, but they mean disease. And with the tail, the person is saying it's bad. That's what sticks out among all of that. It's odd and sticks right out. It is the last character of four characters printed on somebody's back. They are excellent unadorned stark glyphs as if typewritten. The b/w photograph stark too in its low quality. 

The first character is a standing eagle, "ah," when you sound it out in your head, and the second character looks like a feather is a sedge frond, "ei" when you sound it out in your head, and the third is a tall incomplete inverted u representing folded linen meaning the sound for "es" when you sound it out in your head, and I suddenly felt sad.

He has AIDS and is saying so with his tattoo, and sad too because he left out the "d" which would be a flat hand.  

Wait. I'm wrong again.  "ahies" means brain. Really now. When you have that determinative symbol for "disease" sticking right out like that. Meaning "body organ" for this and not necessarily a diseased body organ, I did hear Egyptians regarded the brain as junk but I did not hear it regarded as disease, and he did select the symbol with stuff squirting out, the other non-squirting symbol less interesting, I suppose. For some reason he says "brain" quite clearly on his back. That's the problem with sounding things out phonetically, a portion of your thinking goes to assembling as you go and it's zipping around drawing conclusions for you based on everything there and gets it wrong. It's why I come off as such a dunce all the time.

This one has a wadjet eye and a stylized cartouche containing a lion, "leh", standing eagle, "ah", baby chicken  "weh" or "eu", stylized human mouth "ar", standing eagle, "ah."  leh -ah-ew-ar-ah, l. The name is the modern name "Laura." I double-dog betchya.

One more. 

Tattooed leg or arm, I do not know, one or the other. Like a typewriter inside a cartouche. Royal names go in cartouches so expect the name of royalty. Owl, "em",  string with a knot, alternate "oh", half circle "tee", simple maze, "heh", forearm "eh", stylized human mouth, "ar" so then, em-oh-tee-heh-er-ar, the English word "mother"

Isn't this fun?  I'm impressed with these thoughtful tattoos. They completely surprise me and there is real art too. I do appreciate these.

I was thinking the way to go is put a protective symbol across your whole back possibly embellished with a simple spell, something along the lines of, "whosoever messes with this human being while he is here on Earth I shall break their neck like a bird." And, this is important so that it works, the subject must forego idle conversation with the artist and slip into a meditative trance while enduring the prolonged torture of being tattooed and that will serve as required ritual for both artist and subject that imbues the symbol energizing it with protective magic.