Posted on 04/19/2005 1:21:38 AM PDT by nickcarraway
'Offering which the King gives to Osiris [God of the Dead]. He may give an offering of bread and beer, ox and fowl, for the soul of the estate manager Khnumhotep, son of Nebut."
Dr Bill Manley reads out the mass of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics on the front of one of the ornate coffins on display at the Royal Museum as if he were reading words written in English.
Peering at the jumble of symbols, it is possible to spot a bird for the fowl or buns for the bread and fool yourself that you too could translate hieroglyphics.
But all is not quite what it seems, as Bill explains.
He says: "You can see lots of birds, but there is no real reference to birds in the text. There is also a plant but no mention of plants.
"In English the letter ‘m’ means the sound ‘m’. In Ancient Egyptian the sound for ‘m’ is represented by a picture of an owl . Just as we are taught in school that the symbol ‘m’ means the sound ‘m’, Ancient Egyptians were taught that a picture owl represents the sound ‘m’."
Because they were designed to decorate temples and tombs, hieroglyphics can also be written in any direction - vertical as well as horizontal and right to left as well as left to right - to give craftsmen greater flexibility. Or possibly just to confuse historians in generations to come.
Anyone keen to learn the basics of translating hieroglyphics should not despair, however. For while Bill, 40 - Egyptologist at the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh and a lecturer in Ancient Egypt at Glasgow University - has spent years studying the ancient language, he says it is possible to teach people how to read the symbols in as little as two days.
He has even co-written a book entitled How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs which covers all the basics.
He says: "It’s easier to read hieroglyphics than it is to read most people’s handwriting. Hieroglyphics are not as mysterious as people think. They are really straightforward. You just have to learn a new set of symbols.
"I ended up studying Ancient Egypt at university because I liked history and language so I decided to combine the two interests and study the oldest language in the world, Ancient Egyptian, doing a degree and a PhD.
"But I have run courses in London teaching people how to read them in a week and I will be running courses in the summer in Glasgow teaching people in two days."
He adds: "I can speak Ancient Egyptian too but there’s not much point - everyone who could speak it is dead."
As the only Egyptologist at the NMS in Chambers Street, Bill is at the forefront of work unravelling the mystery of one of the most exciting exhibits there - the only royal Egyptian burial outside Egypt.
The skeletal remains of a woman and child found by eminent archeologist Sir Flinders Petrie during a dig at Qurneh on the banks of the Nile almost a century ago have long been suspected to be those of royalty because of the splendour of the gilded coffin and the luxurious gifts, including gold jewellery, left in the tomb.
However, the symbols on the unidentified coffin stop at the point where the person’s name would be given, due to erosion of the plaster dating from thousands of years ago.
But now Bill believes that, thanks to work with a range of other experts, he has discovered the likely identity of the woman.
BY looking at the shape of the coffin and studying the grave gifts academics have been able to date the burial to around 1550BC.
Bill, who has been working on the project for around seven years, used that information to focus his research, reading numerous texts from that period in the British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris.
He has narrowed the options down to two long-lost queens who have never been found - Nubemhat and Haankhes.
A visit to Egypt in 2003 allowed Bill to use Petrie’s notes and maps to help pinpoint the location of the burial site further but failed to find the actual spot.
Bill says: "Qurneh is a huge area. It’s like saying the body is buried in Edinburgh. But we were able to identify an area in Qurneh called El-Khor. There’s no doubt in my mind that that is where she was buried. Ancient Egyptians tended to bury families together so we can look at the people buried around her and use their identities to help us work out who she was.
"But it’s desert, not sand but stone, and there are dozens of graves there."
Further analysis of the pottery gifts in her tomb has shown that it was from Nubia, a country which once existed roughly where Sudan is now, bordering Ancient Egypt.
That final discovery has led Bill to the belief that the woman is Nubemhat. He explains: "It is pure speculation on my part but my most romantic solution is that she is Nubemhat because of the connection with Nubia [in the name Nubemhat and the pottery found in the tomb].
"She could also be Haankhes, who has also never been found."
Little is known about these two queens’ lives but if Bill is right, the find does have great significance. He says: "She has turned out to be far more important than we could have ever imagined.
"Not just because she is royal, but because it seems that she is also from Nubia. At that time there was conflict between Nubia and Egypt so it seems very unusual that she should have gifts from the Nubian royal family in her tomb.
"That suggests that although the nations were fighting there were times when they were on good terms too."
There is still no proof, however, leaving Bill and his fellow experts to continue their work.
However, a cast of the head of the child, buried in a separate coffin next to the queen, has been created and has gone on display at the museum alongside an existing cast of the woman’s head.
The child, who would have been about two, is likely to have been the son or daughter of the queen - but experts can’t be sure.
Meanwhile, Bill remains hopeful that one day the mystery will be solved. He says: "At the moment it is not possible to get good enough quality samples of DNA to do reliable comparisons with bodies from other burials in Egypt because the bones have deteriorated so much. But hopefully it will be possible in the future."
And so perhaps one day, experts will be able to say not just definitely who this woman was, but what her daily life ruling a desert nation was like.
Until then, she will lie silently in her ornate coffin thousands of miles from her home.
SHOWING THE SIGNS
HIEROGLYPHICS are the Ancient Egyptian equivalent of the modern-day English alphabet.
Most hieroglyphs are pictures representing sounds.
A picture of a mat represents the sound "p", but most symbols in Ancient Egyptian represent combinations of sounds, for example a picture of an eye represents the sound "ir".
The Ancient Egyptian for wine is irp, so an eye symbol together with a picture of a square mat means "wine", not "I have a mat".
However some symbols do represent the object they depict. For example, a mouth represents the word "mouth".
There are around 700 hieroglyphs in Ancient Egyptian.
I would have thought a picture of an owl would mean "who" or "wise". Maybe "night". But M? It would take him more than 2 days to teach me, that's for sure!
Shorthand was an option when I went to school. It is now becoming a relic. On the other hand, nobody will have a shorthand tombstone.
LOL
That one interpretation.....it's all 'symbolic'.....and 'open' to confuse the grave robbers....and other 'friends'...
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
the owl later was reduced to an outline of the top and side which deteriorates into hieratic and demotic, and later into modern arabic.
the remnants of this letter m are still visible in the arabic language.
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