Scholar: Muslims Had Insight Into Hieroglyphs

CNN ^ | 2-23-2004

[blam]

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) -- An Egyptian scholar based in London, England, has been delighting Arab audiences with his inquiries into the recondite world of medieval Muslims who wrote about ancient Egypt and had some insights into hieroglyphic writing.

Among Western scholars, who have led the field of Egyptology since Napoleon's 1798 campaign and Jean-Francois Champollion's groundbreaking work on hieroglyphics in the 1820s, the conventional wisdom has been that Arabs and Muslims dismissed ancient Egypt as an irrelevant pagan civilization.

[blam]

Ping.

[End Times Sentinel]

If they think this "insight" into hieroglyphics is going to be enough to separate them from lower primates in my mind, they're sadly mistaken.

 

Owl_Eagle

"Guns Before Butter."

If they think this "insight" into hieroglyphics is going to be enough to separate them from lower primates in my mind, they're sadly mistaken.

 

[antiRepublicrat]

So Islam, a thousand years ago you were at the height of your civilization and were in many ways superior to the Europeans, nurturing the advancement of knowledge and scientific discovery.

But what positive work have you done lately, say in the last 500 years? I can't think of anything.

[aruanan]

That breakthrough was the work of Ahmad bin Abu Bakr ibn Wahshiyah, a ninth and 10th century polymath who lived in what is now Iraq and wrote about everything from chemistry to the environment to agriculture and pre-Islamic cultures.

Whoopie effing ess. How does the fact that some genius born in a country conquered by the Muslim hordes have anything to do with the Muslims of his day or the Muslims of today? We may as well generalize from Leonardo da Vinci or Galileo or Michaelangelo to Italian Catholic society.

[sheik yerbouty]

They run 'The Magical Misery Tour" on a worldwide basis!

[FreedomSurge]

For quite a long time, Islam was a religion of learning and academic inquiry. Basis for this iquiry can be found in the Coran. The CIA needs to find the supporteres of the old traditions (say the Sufis) and fund them to counter the Wahabbis.

[Gefreiter]

Yeah, I'm not sure of this person's point. When I finished reading, I was left asking, "So what?"

The Muslim society in Egypt cared not at all for the history of the region. Monuments s were destroyed, used as quarries to build other structures; tombs were looted once discovered; mummies used for kindling.

The idea that one Arab man from a thousand years ago devoted alot of time and energy to Pharaonic study accounts for nearly nothing. The Arab world, and the rest of the world either for that matter, had no idea of the larger implications and history associated with pre-Arab civilization in Egypt until scholars in Napoleon's van started their work.

[dennisw]

And here I thought the heights of Islamic scholarship was to become a Koran reciting baboon.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

But Okasha El Daly, who lectures at University College London and holds an outreach post at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, says that a thousand years earlier, when Arab civilization was close to its height, Muslim scholars not only took an interest in ancient Egypt but also could interpret at least a few characters in the hieroglyphic script.

I guess this explains why they published their translations so voluminously. /sarcasm

[yankeedame]

Jean-Francois Champollion's groundbreaking work on hieroglyphics in the 1820s,...

An utterly useless piece of trivia: Having finially deciphered the Rossetta Stone, thus unravelling the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics, Champollion
raced out into the street crying, "Je taint l'affaire!! Je taint l'affaire!!" ("I've done it!! I've done it!!")

[farmfriend]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
List for articles regarding early civilizations , life of all forms, - dinosaurs - etc.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this ping list.

[LibWhacker]

Oh, a muslim "scholar" has been making these claims, huh? The russians claimed they invented the telephone. Claims are a dime a dozen. As most real scholars see it, islam has contributed nothing to mankind since its inception.

[Larry Lucido]

University College London

I wonder if University College has a Redundancy Department?

[Natural Law]

I can picture a grainy black and white film of a bloated, balding Arab banging a shoe on a table shouting "we invented it first".

[Thinkin' Gal]

I can picture a grainy black and white film of a bloated, balding Arab banging a shoe on a table shouting "we invented it first".

This thread is a good one.

(And that shoe is surely pummeling a photo of AlGore.)

[antiRepublicrat]

As most real scholars see it, islam has contributed nothing to mankind since its inception.

Muslim countries were a relative center of culture, learning and science for a few centuries after Islam was fairly well established. Their mathematical and medical contributions alone were pretty impressive (look where we get the words "algebra" and "cipher"). Translations of many Muslim works were used as university textbooks in Europe well into the middle of the last millennium, hundreds of years after they were first written. In contrast, at the time Europe/Christianity was just getting into its dark ages, producing practically nothing.

On the other hand, Muslim contributions seem to have tapered off to pretty much nothing after the 13th century.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Muslim countries were a relative center of culture, learning and science for a few centuries after Islam was fairly well established. Their mathematical and medical contributions alone were pretty impressive (look where we get the words "algebra" and "cipher").

These "contributions" were taken from conquered people. They were not original to Islam.

[CobaltBlue]

Dig a little deeper and you'll discover the real sources of zero, chemistry, astronomy, and most of the other wonders that are now attributed variously to Arabs or Muslims.

Distillation? Known at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro; also by the ancient Egyptians.

Astronomy? Egyptians and Greeks.

Chemistry? Ditto.

Mathematics, including what we call "algebra"? Chinese, Greeks and Indians.

Real scientists are almost always willing to tell you that they are "standing on the shoulders" of those who came before them.

[CathyRyan]

Where would Egypt be today if Islam had not reared it's ugly head?