Tuesday, March 27, 2018

The Herdsman's Tale part 2

This is second scrap of The Herdsman's Tale, the herdsman's advice. He's telling them to get the cattle onto boats and get them to another pasture.

In the modern book this is from, Middle Egyptian Literature, James Allen is interested in sorting the grammar. The ancient Egyptian author is speaking like Yoda except worse. He explains the herdsman is addressing his fellow herders as "bulls."

Allan teaches, the "m3c" middle of 10th column [sickle above Egyptian eagle and twisted rope] the word is unattested and may be related to 3ḥt field.

smḥ. n 3 k3w "Our skiff for sailing back, Bulls!" is an adverbial sentence used as a command. An imperative.

The grouping, m ‘ qbw rdi.(w) the signs before the stative may represent either a noun miqbw or the compound preposition m ‘ followed by a noun qbw, neither of the nouns is known elsewhere. "With the cattle put at its stern and the knowledgeable of the herdsmen"  Here, m ‘ governs an unmarked noun clause with subject-stative. (bottom of 3rd to last and top of 2nd to last column) m is the owl, b is the foot. In grammar, stative means verbs that express a state of being.

Finally, at the end the three lines of water is determinative for water meaning it's a water-song sung in the boat. Like Row, Row, Row Your Boat, while rowing a boat. In all other instances a single water zig-zag means "n" or any of a range of prepositions.


All that for just that.

1 comment:

deborah said...

Thanks for this. It sounds manly and nautical, kind of like sea shanties. I can't remember if it was you who said or a lecture I listened to, but I understand the ancient Egyptians were afraid to go to far out into the ocean.