Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Ptahhotep Maxim 20 -- Treatment of a wife

This is the most difficult maxim so far.

The thing is, each grouping of consonant sounds can be spelled different ways using different signs that represent the same sound. Sometimes slight variations mean the same group of things and other times they mean wildly different things, and often contradictory things. Sometimes three or four different ways, other times a dozen different ways and other times up to a hundred or so different ways. I enter the consonant signs in the dictionary find feature and it takes over a hundred clicks to get through the whole dictionary and none of them match the group that I'm looking for. This maxim has that all the way through from beginning to end. Hardly anything matches what's in the dictionary I'm using.

S is interchangeable with Z
T is  interchangeable with Th
The four different H sounds are sometimes interchangeable.
So are the two D sounds.
D is interchangeable withe Dj and J.
Q is interchangeable with K

The Egyptologists that Allen relies on, global resources, all give up on the last line of this maxim. There are too many interpretations available for each group, and each one apposite to the subject, and finally no combination of groups can make any sense. No known metaphor or adage is available. No one can make sense of this. Especially the last line.

It's the worst so far.

So much misogyny taken as natural that's unacceptable today built right into maxim, the way of life, as proper treatment.

The last two weeks I am dreaming in hieroglyphs. They are frustrating dreams that go through multiple meanings of groupings then trying and failing to string through them for something sensible and with no context to help, no theme to the puzzle. And even those frustration-dreams make more sense than this maxim.

2 comments:

edutcher said...

So much misogyny taken as natural that's unacceptable today built right into maxim, the way of life, as proper treatment.

Have we ever stopped to think 5000 years of ancients may have had a better idea than us?

/ducks

The last two weeks I am dreaming in hieroglyphs.

Not sure, but you either want a threesome with Liz Taylor and Joan Collins or you need a long walk across the Rockies.

MamaM said...

I stayed with it til the end, but the reward was weak. No Cinnamon buns for me.