Tuesday, September 19, 2017

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.






4 comments:

deborah said...

Well aren't you sweet. I spy with my little eye three fox tails representing birth. And notice that Bameket has the glyphs for m-k-t, owl-basket-loaf.

deborah said...

So, my partial understanding is that Egyptian is like sign language...most words/concepts have signs, but some names must be spelt out.

Chip Ahoy said...

Yes, very observant.

The Korean student, (or students, there seem to be three separate ones all on one page) shows explicitly better than I do.

"Ba" is at the front. There are other ways to write "Ba," a bird for example, it's an important aspect of soul just as "ka" is. So this is somehow a specific type of "Ba" being mentioned. The goat with horns that go sideways.

Confusingly, it also has "di" (give) the forearm with the triangle in its hand. Why the sound is not spoken, I don't know. Why the concept is included, I don't know. How they even know it's a person's name that is pronounced this way is beyond me, except for it ends with a determinative of a seated person. A woman.

And it has pluralizing three marks vocalized as "w" or "y" just as our pluralization is vocalized as "s"

Born of his mother, Bameket . That's how they read it.

The extra "give" and the extra pluralization confuse me. It makes me think that there are a lot of things Egyptologist do not yet fully understand. They did chisel it in stone, after all. Fore some reason "give" or "offer" and pluralization are important concepts in this name. Even as Egyptologists insist their sounds are not vocalized, and Bameket really is the name that they see. It's not the name that I see.

They see Bameket
I see literally Bamdikety

And that's how I'd turn in my homework.

And then they'd mark me down for including the extra sounds.

And I'd go, you're all just so full of shit.

But this is your class. This is your show. This is your shitshow.

And that would establish a dynamic between us that is not at all nice.

And that's why I don't take anyone's class.

deborah said...

lol

Is there any possibility that the j snake is related to the j in our alphabet?