Monday, February 24, 2014

beautiful

Nefer.

If you wanted to write the word "Denver" in hieroglyphics -- and who doesn't? -- you can use the triliteral n-f-r, nefer, their word for "beautiful."


It is a popular word. A design element. It is used in jewelry. Made from various materials.

A necklace can be made of seeds and woven with other materials in such a way as to spell out 100 times the word "beautiful" and the museum placard will read:

Necklace, material cornflower seed.

Or the like. And the object is sitting there veritably screaming

Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful

Like this.


All I did was type "nefer" and this came up first page. See what I mean?

Beauty, happiness, good fortune, and youth.

Imagine having a favorite young wife, wait! Imagine first being a pharaoh, then imagine having a favorite young wife, perhaps a royal daughter by such a wife, a real doll, a fortunate and happy girl, look at her, look at that face of hers, and bestowing her a gold and jewel necklace fashioned to perfection by your state craftsmen that reads "beautiful" hundreds of times, just to see her wear it. Is that hot or what?

I understand, I read in places, a lot of times actually, the symbol portrays a trachea rising up from the heart. And the whole time, years, I thought it a banjo. Type instrument. But come on, trachea is attached to lungs, not heart, and that does not explain the tuning pegs on top, but it does explain why Gardiner classified the sign under Parts of Mammals F35.

For Denver we still need a "D" and that is a hand. Human hand. Parts of Human Body D46.

Denefer.

Close enough. It is how they would do it. Take as many shortcuts as possible with biliterals and this snags a triliteral, and a great one at that. Beautiful. The sign is irresistible.

Sometimes you just have to take control and write it as you think it should be.


I drew that. Can you tell? This is not a legal thing, obviously, they were not so foresightful as to contrive a ligature in anticipation of American cities, (except for Memphis) but if they did, it could look like this. The "R" is redundant as they do to fill space, to balance things, to make sure, out of habit, union rules, what have you, we see inconsistency in these things all the time. R, human mouth D21. The wagon wheel depicts a crossroads, a spot where caravan routes meet become towns develop to cities. Crossroads O49 is a determinative sign that says, "this is the name of a place." All of these are very common perfectly acceptable signs.

4 comments:

ricpic said...

The ubiquity of the "beautiful" shape - it is everywhere, or the-cross-on-a-wheel shape like it is everywhere in Greek and Russian Orthodox symbology - must mean that it corresponds to or answers a need in the human heart.

MamaM said...

Expression.

The throat is an instrument of expression.

Inspiration also takes place through the trachea.

And out of it the heart releases and expels that which was taken in and processed in a journey that involves the entire body.

The tuning pegs up top? The larynx, from whence expressions of the heart are given voice.

Before science replaced the pharaohs as king, the ancients knew. Beautiful indeed.

deborah said...

Neat, Chip. How would you write Chicago :)

MamaM said...

How would you write Chicago :)

Sandburg gave it a mighty stab back in the hog butchering days of 1914.

How the Egyptians went about depicting allium/wild onions is another matter.

The name Chicago is derived from the local Miami/Illinois/Algonquin word chicagoua for the native garlic plant (not onion) Allium tricoccum. This garlic (in French: ail sauvage) grew in abundance on the south end of Lake Michigan on the wooded banks of the extensive river system which bore the same name, chicagoua.