funerary stela of Sarenenutet

There sure are a lot of people studying this stela. Once I switched to Google from other engines then all kinds of things came up including the entire Collier and Manley textbook where this exercise comes, but in German. Also a video game called Gladius. The name Sarenenutet is one of the side quests of the video game. I usually don't get to see anyone else's hieroglyphic handwriting, they're communicating in keyboard code for the phonetic transliteration, and both of those are greatly reduced. I don't like them. You really must have the pictures right there because too much is forfeited in the codes. So many glyphs are not spoken and others share the same phonetic value. So when I do see their handwriting it always looks so cute. Like this Korean student. His or her handwriting is adorable. Look, please. So you can share this joy. This person studies better than I do. Korean is rather pictographic too.

The textbook has a sketch of the stela, but not a photograph of the actual stone. I guess that was to make it easier to make out. It's a tiny book of only 176 pages. You cannot get into much grammar this way. Maybe that's better because when linguists do delve into grammar they create a gigantic unmanageable mess and most of the grammar discussion becomes talking about talking about grammar, just as they cannot resist making codes for their codes. It's a compulsion.

At any rate this Sarenenutet is a scribe who made good. Counter of the two granaries. Usually the aristocrats that achieve office do not list scribe in their titles, even when that's what they basically were. They're proving they achieved more in life than reading writing even though reading automatically elevated them over nearly everyone else. Aristocrats could all read. We know he made good by his stela, and by the offering he cites of a thousand items. He leaves out portions of the standard offering formula while careful to site the large number. The scepter he holds that looks like a flyswatter means "power." He is asserting that in life he held power.

Each element in the artwork of the man seated in front of an offering table are themselves all hieroglyphs. The chair is a hieroglyph, the man on a chair is another hieroglyph, the table piled with offerings is a hieroglyph, each individual item of offering is its own separate hieroglyph. The ox head under the table is a hieroglyph, the vase is a hieroglyph, the stomach container is a hieroglyph, the duck is a hieroglyph. The table apart from all else, the fronds, the cow's leg are hieroglyphs,  The artwork is a pile of hieroglyphs. Just as each item has word for it, when the words are pictures then the artwork of pictures is all words. The picture is a literal written message.  I think that's why Japanese have so many signs slathered all over everywhere and everything without feeling overly cluttered with words even as their design sense is notably Spartan. All those signs stuffed with words are actually art. They're pictures. In Japanese the characters are art to them, mere words to us. Conversely Egyptian pictures are art to us and words to them.