bnri

Scribes of scribes of scribes of scribes. That's me.

I'm pouring through James Allen's Middle Egyptian Literature with a magnifying glass. Literally. And I'm using expand view of Kindle version. He discusses the mistakes that early scribes make while copying stories from previous scribes. Places where ancients were using damaged copies and had to make guesses. Spots where modern linguists encounter the same problems. And word for word the subject is dissected, syllable by syllable, phoneme by phoneme, all picked apart with linguistic grammatical tweezers.

While doing that, and getting their results to printing avoiding their own errata is impossible. Apparently.

Allen tells his readers the blank spot in the text being used is "bnri," the solution was provided by later texts.

It's the part where the character in the story is saying all the good things that his adopted patron provided, "and many sweets would be made for me." The text reads "me would be made for [blank] many." The sign for "many" is a little gecko. It's the cutest little thing but a bitch to draw on account of all its tiny fingers.You don't want this word to come up very often when you're drawing these by hand.

Here's Allen explaining what goes in the blank space in the text.

I made it show large so you can see the little pictures. This is the problem I'm having with both copies of his book. Everything is too small to appreciate without serious help.

He wrote it backwards. It's printed backwards. It reads "determinative for plural, determinative for sweet root, i, r, b over n."

This is how it should look.

 

Gawl. Do I have to do everything myself if I want it done right?  

That reminds me of another thing where someone laughed in the wrong place. While George and Paul were learning how to make pizza dough, I turned my back briefly to get the camera. I had only turned around for two seconds and Paul slathered the pizza with 4X the amount of sauce, dumping the whole thing onto the pizza, soaking the whole thing ridiculously with no sense of proportions whatsoever. 

I said what my father would have said, "I turned my back for two seconds. Must I do everything if I want it done right?" That wasn't intended to be funny but both guys giggled hopelessly. They both backed away from the work surface to give space for their shaking. 

"Should I put it back?"

"YES!"