Can we really read Hieroglyphic Script?

[jonnye]

Egyptology seems to have been at its peak in 1875 David Grant Stewart
As a social science, Egyptology is controlled by exceptionally few people. They must read and decipher Egyptian symbolic writing known as Hieroglyphic Script. Nobody in the field may deny that Hieroglyphic Script is understood. This would mean automatic ostracism for any Egyptologist who doubted the reality: no more textbook sales at $124.99 each; no more publications; and no more free eats at plush conferences in Paris. The final obstacle towards open inquiry is the Egyptian government itself. If the script is completely misunderstood, it means that Egyptology is a fabrication.

The Rosetta Stone​

The tablet was discovered by French troops in Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Most people assume the hieroglyphics are translated into Greek. It's the other way around. It is a proclamation in Greek language about an upcoming royal festival. Next to it were translations into both Egyptian written characters and symbolic (hieroglyphic) script. This was and is very exciting. Up until then Ancient Egypt was a complete mystery. Nothing was known about it. The pyramids are not dated. Said to be royal tombs, no mummy has ever been found in one. Was the lion-like Sphinx constructed in the Age of Leo, 13,000 years ago? Nobody had the slightest clue. The Rosetta Stone seemingly changed all that. Because Greek was known, the indecipherable hieroglyph symbols could be translated. However it is not clear that an accurate translation was made. It should be discomforting that each hieroglyph may be any one of four things: a sound, a letter in an alphabet, an actual representation of the symbol itself or a conceptual ideogram: all of it dependent upon where each pictogram or symbol is placed in relation to the others. They can be read in any which way; left to right, right to left, up or down. As a result, every assembly can mean almost anything the translator wishes. Naturally a coherent scheme was worked out. It had to be. But is it authentic? Here is a brief but completely representative passages from the Rosetta Stone into English from the original Greek:

Whereas king Ptolemy, the ever-living, the beloved of Ptah…has been a benefactor both to the temples and to those who dwell in them, as well as all those who are his subjects, being a god sprung from a god and goddess… and whereas he directed also, with regard to the priests, that they should pay no more as the tax for admission to the priesthood than what was appointed them throughout his father's reign and until the first year of his own reign; and has relieved the members of the priestly orders from the yearly journey to Alexandria…

The entire proclamation is written this way. There are no nuances of language; no similes, no allusions, no metaphors; how could there be? If you were visitor from another planet arrived on earth, and passages like this were your only lexicon in the English language (as the Rosetta Stone is for hieroglyphics) would you, along with any army of linguists, ever be able to translate and read this passage?

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

If your dictionary was the landscape of the Rosetta Stone you could never accurately comprehend this. Another problem is that the hieroglyphs on the stone are a late translation, written, at least, 2000 years after the high culture of Dynastic Egypt flourished. Consider our own language only 1000 years ago; Old English from the Epic Poem Beowulf:

Beowulf wæs breme (blæd wide sprang), Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.
Swasceal geong guma go de gewyrcean, fromum feohgiftum on fæder bearme þæt hine on ylde

This is English but who can read it but a specialist? Translation is only possible because the alphabet is the same and Old Norse and Old Frisian helps figure it out. With the Rosetta Stone there is nothing like that; only vague supposition about people who, incomprehensibly, were technically, scientifically and spiritually far more advanced than we are.

 

[Breizh]

As a social science, Egyptology is controlled by exceptionally few people.
...
If the script is completely misunderstood, it means that Egyptology is a fabrication.

I entirely agree - the ability to officially decipher "Egyptian" hieroglyphic script would allow for all translations to fit a desired narrative whatever that may be. I used quotes around the word "Egyptian" because it is known under different names depending on the era/perspective - Aegypt, Misr, Kemet (Km.t), Khem, Ta-meri.
I did a bit of research and found some things which might give useful insights which contrast the mainstream narrative. I'm not an expert on "Egyptian" history but the idea is to look for discrepancies and things which allude to earlier periods that mainstream "Egyptologists" would dismiss or explain away. I am aware that many people have done extensive research into ancient "Egyptian" culture contextualising it amongst other ancient cultures from across the realm. As an aside, it's perhaps worth mentioning that the land currently known as "Egypt" has seen multiple different peoples and cultures due to invasions, re-invasions and so on.

"We find when we discover Egypt in what we call the First Dynasty, under Menes, that it is at its absolute zenith of culture in painting, sculpture, architecture. From this peak period, the Egyptian culture steadily declines. It is very much as if the Egyptians found themeselves the inheritors of a great ready-made culture of which they could take advantage, which they could utilize and even to some degree emulate, but which they themselves did not create . . . . This very strongly suggests that it drew its greatness from a source higher than itself . . . ."

--Jalandris, The Hall of Records: The Hidden secrets of the Pyramid and Sphinx, 1980

"This civilization called Egyptian in our period developed for a long time in its early cradle . . . This cycle of civilization, the longest in history, presumably lasted 10,000 years. This is a reasonable compromise between the long chronology (based on data provided by Manetho -the last student of the Ancient Egyptian Mystery School of Anu at Alexandria before it was invaded by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE-- which places the beginning at 17,000 BCE) and the short chronology [3100 BCE] of the moderns - for the latter are obliged to admit that by 4245 BCE the Egyptians had already invented the calendar (which necessarily requires the passages of thousands of years)."

--Cheik Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality (originally published Nations Negres et Culture) 1955 (Published in English in 1974)

"The history of Black will remain suspended in air and cannot be written correctly until African historians dare connect it with the history of Egypt. In reviewing Egypt's beginnings, we find an advanced civilization already intact from the earliest Dynasty. This fact has perplexed historians down through the ages. Common sense dictates that if Egypt began fully mature, then its civilization must have originated elsewhere . . . . [Herodotus] The `Father of History' was told that the first man to rule Egypt was Min, who lived so long ago that Egypt was still under water: `in (Min's) time the whole country, except the district around Thebes, was marsh, none of the land below Lake Moeris, was then showing above water. To this place from the sea [Nowe] is seven days passage up the river . . . . "

--Wayne Chandler, Of Gods and Men: Egypt's Old Kingdom, 1989

"The Ethiopians say that the Egyptians are one of their colonies which was brought into Egypt by Osiris. They claim that at the beginning of the world Egypt was simply a sea but that the Nile, carrying down vast quantities of loam from Ethiopia in its flood waters, finally filled it in and made it part of the continent . . . I not only believe the people who gave me this account of Egypt, but my own conclusions strongly support what they said . . . Now it is my belief that Egypt was originally an arm of the sea. I have observed for myself that Egypt at the Nile Delta projects into the sea beyond the coast on either side; I have seen sea shells on the hills and noticed how salt exudes from the soil to such an extent that it effects even the pyramids; I have noticed too, that the only hill where there is sand is the hill above Memphis, and that the soil of Egypt does not resemble that of the neighboring country of Arabia, or Libya, or even Syria . . . but is black as one would expect of an alluvial soil . . .'

--Diodorus of Sicily

 

[jonnye]

Recent evidence for massive floods in Egypt:
Global and Planetary Change; v.70 pp, 64-75 (2010): “Reconstructing an extreme flood from boulder transport and rainfall-runoff modeling…South Sinai Egypt.” Kehew et.al.

 

[Breizh]

Recent evidence for massive floods in Egypt:

"[Herodotus] The `Father of History' was told that the first man to rule Egypt was Min, who lived so long ago that Egypt was still under water: `in (Min's) time the whole country, except the district around Thebes, was marsh, none of the land below Lake Moeris, was then showing above water. To this place from the sea [Nowe] is seven days passage up the river . . . . "

--Wayne Chandler, Of Gods and Men: Egypt's Old Kingdom, 1989

 

[_harris]

Recent evidence for massive floods in Egypt:
Global and Planetary Change; v.70 pp, 64-75 (2010): “Reconstructing an extreme flood from boulder transport and rainfall-runoff modeling…South Sinai Egypt.” Kehew et.al.

the whole Nile delta is clearly an alluvial fill. if you look at the bathymetry, you'll see it's spilled into the Mediterranean from inland.

then we're left with all of the ancient constructions lining the mouth of the Nile Estuary and the canals and construction of the pyramids begins to make a lot more sense

 

[crystallize]

Egyptian hieroglyphics is supposed for iliterate folk. One just has to name things he sees in a string in egyptian language to get a meaningful text. Something like this: n, i, lego brick, d -> nile god

 

[jonnye]

Egyptian hieroglyphics is supposed for iliterate folk. One just has to name things he sees in a string in egyptian language to get a meaningful text. Something like this: n, i, lego brick, d -> nile god

John Anthony West; The Serpent and the Sky (1979): p.155
The Gospels are initiatic texts; they are handbooks to a higher state ofconsciousness. But they are seldom regarded as such: the Ayers and the Russells misread them as instruments of oppression and monuments to superstition; while the Billy Grahams and assorted do-gooders read into them an authorisation to mind other people's business. If this kind of egregious misinterpretation is universally applied to the Gospels, the most familiar text in the West, it is hardly surprising that the inner meaning of the alien sacred writings of Egypt should remain concealed. The inevitable consequence of this is that, to Egyptologists, an accurate translation of sacred texts is almost impossible. But if this lack of understanding is both inevitable and in a sense excusable, there is one aspect of the matter that does not seem inevitable or excusable. This is that, as translated and accepted by Egyptologists, the sacred texts of Egypt are meaningless. Problems of grammar, syntax and meaning aside, there is and can be no justiɹcationfor the gibberish that is fobbed oʃ as a translation of the intellectual product of Egypt. There is no such thing as natural gibberish. Even pidgin is grammatically structured. The most primitive tribes possess languages that are grammatically and syntactically complete — restricted, perhaps, to the expression of relatively simple concepts, but complete nonetheless. Therefore to render language, any language, into gobbledygook and oʃfer it as a ‘translation’ is indefensible:
O King, your cool water is the great flood which issues from you. Be silent that you may hear it, this word which the King speaks. His power is at the head of the spirits, his might is at the head of the living, he sits beside the Foremost of the Westerners. Your pzn bread is from the Broad Hall. Your rib-pieces are from the slaughter-block of the God. O King, raise yourself, receive this warm beer of yours which went forth from your house, which are given to you.
R. O. Faulkner, Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Clarendon Press, 1969 Utterance 460

 

[Breizh]

It seems that hieroglyphics is originally Ethiopian writing -

Quote:

"Mdw Ntchr" (Medu Neter) known today as hieroglyphs was the writing system of ancient Kemet (Egypt). The translation of the two words means: sacred script or divine word. According to Historian Dr. Theophile Obenga:

"Egyptian Hieroglyphic Writing is the oldest writing system in the world dating to the age of African antiquity as far back as 3400 BC when the Pre-Dynastic Nubians of ancient Egypt developed the Medu Neter writing system in the Nile Valley during the era of Kemetic Civilization."

Diodorus Siculus made the claim that the Hieroglyphs were actually an Ethiopian script, which was held sacred by the Egyptians and was learned and transmitted only within the priestly families of Egypt. Among the Ethiopians the script was so common that most Ethiopians knew how to read and write in hieroglyphs:

We must now speak about the Ethiopian writing which is called hieroglyphic among the Egyptians, in order that we may omit nothing in our discussion of their antiquities. Now it is found that the forms of their letters take the shape of animals of every kind, and of the members of the human body, and of implements and especially carpenters' tools; for their writing does not express the intended concept by means of syllables joined one to another, but by means of the significance of the objects which have been copied and by its figurative meaning which has been impressed upon the memory by practice.

For instance, they draw the picture of a hawk, a crocodile, a snake, and of the members of the human body — an eye, a hand, a face, and the like. Now the hawk signifies to them everything which happens swiftly, since this animal is practically the swiftest of winged creatures. And the concept portrayed is then transferred, by the appropriate metaphorical transfer, to all swift things and to everything to which swiftness is appropriate, very much as if they had been named. 3 And the crocodile is a symbol of all that is evil, and the eye is the warder of justice and the guardian of the entire body. And as for the members of the body, the right hand with fingers extended signifies a procuring of livelihood, and the left with the fingers closed, a keeping and guarding of property.

The same way of reasoning applies also to the remaining characters, which represent parts of the body and implements and all other things; for by paying close attention to the significance which is inherent in each object and by training their minds through drill and exercise of the memory over a long period, they read from habit everything which has been written.
- LacusCurtius • Diodorus Siculus — Book III Chapters 1‑14

Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar argued that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols derived from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African" and in "regards to writing, we have seen that a purely Nilotic, hence African origin not only is not excluded, but probably reflects the reality".
- Ancient Civilizations of Africa Vol 2 (Unesco General History of Africa (abridged)) (Abridged ed.). London [England]: J. Currey. 1990. pp. 11–12.

Some scholars in the past suggested the Medu Neter was developed in the Levant by Semitic people. Although these theories have long been put to rest in academic communities some still repeat these long outdated notions. EW Budge, like Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar agreed in a Nilotic origin, denoting or belonging to a subgroup of Nilo-Saharan languages spoken in Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, and Kenya.

It is impossible for me to believe that Egyptian is a Semitic language fundamentally. There are a very large number of words that are not Semitic and were never invented by a Semitic people. These words were invented by one of the oldest African people of the Nile valley of whose written language we have any remains. Their home lay far to the south, and all that we know of Predynastic Egypt suggests that it was in the neighborhood of the Great Lakes.
- EW Budge, Hieroglyphic Dictionary, Dover, 1920

It is pretty safe to say that the Gyph for "face" in the Medu Neter language confirms the Nilotic origins put forth by Budge, Mokhtar and others.

The Kemite script was versatile in that it can be read from right to left, vice versa, or from top to bottom.
- mdw ntchr: The face sign | Kemet Expert

Here's an interview with the author who wrote the above quote:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyRxDHb0Ue8&t=402s

 

[iskander]

The final obstacle towards open inquiry is the Egyptian government itself. If the script is completely misunderstood, it means that Egyptology is a fabrication.

Which reminds me of Fomenko, again.
When he interpeted inscriptions on the Dendera temple as star constellations related to its construction, he arrived at a time point in the mid-15th century.

 

[jeenam]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTqMV1vkF7Q


It would seem the entire field of "Egyptology" is a scam. To understand this, one should watch the entire America is Egypt series on UBTV's Youtube channel. That specific video goes into the fact that "native americans" were already known to utilize pictographic script (aka hieroglyphics) for writing prior to the field of Egyptology being created and that it wasn't until after that fact was known that the Rosetta stone was "discovered". Remember that practically all of the well known "Egyptologists" are Europeans. Someone explain to me how the hell all the experts on ancient Egypt are foreigners. That makes zero sense to me.

If anyone out there has any doubts that "Egyptology" is a fraud and cannot comprehend how they could pull off something like that, I'll refer you to the The Bible. It is with zero doubt (for anyone that has done their research) that the stories underpinning the Old Testament are retellings of older writings from pre-Christian religions.

 

[jonnye]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTqMV1vkF7Q


It would seem the entire field of "Egyptology" is a scam. To understand this, one should watch the entire America is Egypt series on UBTV's Youtube channel. That specific video goes into the fact that "native americans" were already known to utilize pictographic script (aka hieroglyphics) for writing prior to the field of Egyptology being created and that it wasn't until after that fact was known that the Rosetta stone was "discovered". Remember that practically all of the well known "Egyptologists" are Europeans. Someone explain to me how the hell all the experts on ancient Egypt are foreigners. That makes zero sense to me.

If anyone out there has any doubts that "Egyptology" is a fraud and cannot comprehend how they could pull off something like that, I'll refer you to the The Bible. It is with zero doubt (for anyone that has done their research) that the stories underpinning the Old Testament are retellings of older writings from pre-Christian religions.

Wann lebten die Pharaonen? Archäologische und technologische Grundlagen für eine Neuschreibung der Geschichte Ägyptens und der übrigen Welt; Gunnar Heinsohn (Eichborn, Frankfurt 1990). "The origin of AD dating is not verifiable before the 11th century AD (with the exception of some manuscripts that have never been analyzed scientifically). Thus, there is no place in the 1st millennium AD where historians or chronologists would have kept a complete record of the years AD 1-1000..." The Creation of the First Millennium (2013).

Gunnar Heinsohn’s RAVENNA AND CHRONOLOGY is a 100 page, abridged English version of his 550-page German manuscript WIE LANGE WÄHRTE DAS ERSTE JAHRTAUSEND? (How long did the First Millennium last?) The project was begun in February 2011. Q-MAG.org published then its first overview under the title THE CREATION OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM in November 2013. Q-MAG.org will present RAVENNA AND CHRONOLOGY in three parts, richly illustrated.

 

[crystallize]

John Anthony West; The Serpent and the Sky (1979): p.155
The Gospels are initiatic texts; they are handbooks to a higher state ofconsciousness. But they are seldom regarded as such: the Ayers and the Russells misread
<...>
syntactically complete — restricted, perhaps, to the expression of relatively simple concepts, but complete nonetheless. Therefore to render language, any language, into gobbledygook and oʃfer it as a ‘translation’ is indefensible:
O King, your cool water is the great flood which issues from you. Be silent that you may hear it, this word which the King speaks. His power is at the head of the spirits, his might is at the head of the living, he sits beside the Foremost of the Westerners. Your pzn bread is from the Broad Hall. Your rib-pieces are from the slaughter-block of the God. O King, raise yourself, receive this warm beer of yours which went forth from your house, which are given to you.
R. O. Faulkner, Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Clarendon Press, 1969 Utterance 460

Hieroglyphic and cuneiform alphabets will be presented in the same explanatory form in the relevant sections of the following volumes. Here, in view of the reproduction of the Abidos and Saqqara tables, I will note only one thing.

Hieroglyphic writing is not a primitive form of human writing. Quite the contrary: it is a complicated application of the phonetic alphabet. It is similar to a modern rebus and consists of all the usual letters, but is complicated by ideographic drawings.

Imagine that instead of the name, for example, “god of the Nile,” you would write “b-ogni-l-a,” depict it with two or three tongues of flame, and leave the rest in the usual per-letter representation. Similarly, in hieroglyphics, instead of the Hellenized expression “neph-archiereus,” i.e., “Nevo (or Mercury, satellite of the sun) the supreme king,” they would write “Nefer-h-Re,” with nefer depicted as a lute (in Egyptian: Nefer), and Re would be depicted as the Sun, the symbol of the royal title. Only the letter h (same as k) would remain from the phonetic alphabet. Only with such a rebus-like dismemberment do the nicknames of the Egyptian kings make sense, and at the same time, the strong influence of Greek culture is revealed in hieroglyphics.

Н.А.Морозов—«Христос». 1 книга. НЕБЕСНЫЕ ВЕХИ ЗЕМНОЙ ИСТОРИИ ЧЕЛОВЕЧЕСТВА

 

[crystallize]

When I see stuff like "sisi in Egyptian means god" I smell bs.

 

[jonnye]

Once some sort of general agreement is reached then it's possible to translate everything and even invent Egyptian poetry, comedy and drama out of hieroglyphis. But is any of it true? There is no way of knowing.

 

[crystallize]

Once some sort of general agreement is reached then it's possible to translate everything and even invent Egyptian poetry, comedy and drama out of hieroglyphis. But is any of it true? There is no way of knowing.

Actually hieroglyphics is supposed to be easy if you know how the words are pronounced.