aph-closetedwords

"In the days when the diplodocus lived in Wyoming a great body of water extended into the land and the diplodocus, like other animals of the reptile family, spent a large part of his time in these waters."

Pictured knowledge. v.1. 1916.

“I’m fighting alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.”

So here's the translation I hate:

The first line (from both my image and this one in transliteration reads as follows: ir iri=k Hm.t m Spn.t

'ir' (the first two signs, one reed leaf, one mouth sign) is a conditional clause marker, giving the sentence the meaning of 'if'.

'iri' (the eye) is the verb 'to do/to make/to possess'. This is followed by pronoun =k 'you' (the basket beneath the eye).

Hm.t (the well with water, the semi circle of bread, and the seated woman) is 'woman'.

m (the owl) is a preposition meaning 'in' but...there's grammar stuff here I'm not gonna explain. It's unnecessary for the context.

Spn.t (the oblong pool of water, the seat sign beneath, the water sign beneath that, the semi circle of bread, and a pustule) is a relative form of the verb Spn and means 'one who is voluptuous woman'.

I'm not kidding, this is the dictionary entry for it on the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptia.

We know it means that a) because it's used in other contexts to describe voluptuous woman (fatness is a sign of health and wealth in Ancient Egypt) and b) the pustule determinative marks it out as word that has something to do with the body or bodily functions. It's a word that describes the body, not a personality.

Here's a different translation, but for the same passge of the same text:

So, with that said, a translation of 'party girl' is so far removed from the context and meaning of the original text that the translator has simply written what they liked as a meaning. There's really no justification for it. It is quite literally nothing at all like the original text and it infuriates me to see a wisdom text from a civilisation whose culture modern discussion on barely gets out of 'they're obsessed with death and cats, and oh did we mention aliens and curses' reduced to 'party girl'.

If you wanted a better, idiomised translation, I'd go with:

'Find a wife from a wealthy family, one who is liked by all those in the town. Never divorce her! Treat her well! Life will be good for both of you.'

You speak of not being able to find joy in the study of Ancient history or Ancient Egypt in particular. That's a personal thing, I get it. But it also speaks to a mindset wherein the Ancient Egyptians are not considered beyond what you already know about them. It's a bias towards recency and existing knowledge. It's one of the first things we're trained explicitly not to do. In doing so, you're placing an expectation on the text and the ancient author to provide you, the modern reader, with something that's familiar that you can connect to easily. That's not always the case with ancient works of literature or art.

They say the past is a foriegn land, where we may be of the same blood and the same species, but culturally we're so very different and those differences evolve as the centuries tumble on. The past is not a mirror to our present. It is an echo, a ripple, distorting as time passes, just as it has been since it was made. So of course there was joy, of course there was singing and dancing. Every culture on Earth has it. They're human after all. But how we see it, depends on how well it's framed by those who understand the echoes of the time that has passed.

So, I understand the need for a visceral reminder that the Egyptians were human, but it can be achieved in so many other ways than a poor translation of a text that, contextually, shouldn't have that connotation. We don't need translations that only pander to the individualistic need of the modern reader and ignore the Egyptians who wrote it. It's also concerning, for an Egyptological standpoint, that despite the many things the Ancient Egyptians are known for, even if it's their funerary culture, that it has to take a poor translation for their humanity to be seen. Caring for the dead and performing rites is as old as time itself; sure it's not an obsession as it has so often been painted, but it's a fundamental aspect of humanity. Not seeing their humanity before this is a bias, and I would ask everyone who feels like this to examine that bias closely. It doesn't come from a good place, and while I know it's unintentional, you will need to unpack it at some point.

That being said, it's natural to look for oneself in the past, but as I said before, the past is an echo rather than a full representation. We have to stop trying to find ourselves and instead find those who did live in the past in the way that they present themselves. They're not always as we expect them to be. But Party girls? I can do that!

© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

This is a painting from the tomb of Nebamun depicting a party in full swing. It's one of the most well known and reproduced scenes aside from another scene from this tomb that depicts Nebamun fishing in the marshes. In this scene you can see many images of women at the party, some are musicians, some are dancing, some are talking, and some are taking recreational drugs (sniffing lotus flowers, that specific type can get someone high, and the Egyptians knew this). If anything was 'girls night' it's this.

So that brings me back to the Maxims of Ptahhotep. What you're wanting the text to do - a rebuke of modern reception of Ancient Egyptian culture - just isn't possible. It's basically asking the Ancient Egyptians to pass commentary on themselves for a modern audience thousands of years before it was needed, and that doesn't make any sense. So does it make it much less remarkable? Yes! They are! They're just people! People are remarkable, but they're also just as unremarkable. History is often touted as the brave, terrible, or awe inspiring deeds of humanity, but that's not all it is. Most of it is the mundanity of people's lives that are lived and mourned over and over, and it's truely wonderful to explore once you stop needing it to be explosive and look at the people that made it instead.

Saying 'marry a rich girl feel sterile' is your opinion, and that's fine, but let's try putting this back in context. The Maxims of Ptahhotep is a sbAy.t text or wisdom text (sabayt means wisdom in Middle Egyptian, they're telling us the genre of the text and I feel we should respect that) and wisdom texts are not designed to be controversial or break any moulds. The Egyptians wrote them to pass their culture down in written form. They're the purest form of 'this is who we are and what we believe' and it's your bias towards needing 'radical and controversial' that causes your disappointment. The Egyptians cannot be any more than what they already are. This is a father passing down knowledge to his son on how to conduct himself in society. He's caring for his son, he's being a father, and showing us the concerns a father has for his child in order to live a good life. Of course, this only works if indeed Ptahhotep is the real author. You find this a lot with ancient texts; there's no author. It's an amalgamation of many different voices and you're not going to find a 'personality' beneath because there isn't one unless you're reading someone's personal letters. But the nature of the text means it's mundane! It's sterile! Yet if you read the whole text, read it in context, it tells us so, so much about Ancient Egyptian society, and that's so important. Mundanity is far more important than big flashy events, because it reminds us not to forget the average person; the people who won't be remembered with names, dates, and carvings on walls.

Having the Egyptians tell us who they are in their own words, understanding their morals and values outside of all the mysticism that surrounds them in modern pop culture is radical. Recognising their humanity is just as mundane as ours is radical. Allowing the Ancient Egyptians to be people, boring, regular people, is radical, especially after all the racist mysticism that has to be combated. They are not there to inspire us, their lives are not for us to twist and turn to make our own seem more impactful or important. They are there simpply because they lived, and it is my job as an Egyptologist and Historian to make sure that their voices are heard in the most authentic way possible.

musings on november

musings on november

“I remember an incident from my own childhood, when a very close friend of mine and I, we were walking down the street. We were discussing whether God existed. And she said he did not. And I said he did. But then she said she had proof. She said, ‘I had been praying for two years for blue eyes, and he never gave me any.’ So, I just remember turning around and looking at her. She was very, very Black. And she was very, very, very, very beautiful. How painful. Can you imagine that kind of pain? About that, about color? So, I wanted to say you know, this kind of racism hurts. This is not lynchings, and murders, and drownings. This is interior pain. So deep. For an 11 year-old girl to believe that if she only had some characteristic of the white world, she would be okay. [Black girls] surrendered completely to the master narrative. I mean the whole notion of what is ugliness, what is worthlessness. She got it from her family, she got it from school, she got it from the movies — she got it everywhere; it’s white male life. The master narrative is whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else. The master fiction, history, it has a certain point of view. So, when these little girls see that the most prized gift that they can get at Christmastime is this little white doll, that’s the master narrative speaking: “This is beautiful. This is lovely, and you’re not it.”

i was going to put this on a spam account but then decided to put it on a public one. who knows, maybe someone will benefit from it! if i’ve made any mistakes, do let me know

à moi. l’histoire d’une de mes folies (to me. the history of one of my follies or my turn. the tale of my madness)

quod erat demonstrandum (it can be shown)

cubitum eamus? (will you sleep with me?)

consummatum est (it is done)

hoi polloi. barbaroi [the many/majority. barbarian (person who doesn’t speak greek)]

bei nacht und nebel (at night and in fog)

deprendi miserum est (it is wretched to be found out)

khairei (hello)

bakchoi (initiates)

cuniculus molestus (annoying rabbit)

arrectis auribus (attentively/ears peeled)

dormir plutôt que vivre (sleep rather than live)

dans un sommeil aussi doux que la mort (in a sleep as sweet as death)

requiescat in pace (rest in peace)

n’est-ce pas (isn’t that so)

amor vincit omnia (love conquers all)

raison d’être (reason for existence)

nihil sub sole novum (there is nothing new under the sun)

quel plaisir de vous revoir (what a great pleasure to see you again)

genis gratus, corpore glabellus, arte multiscius, et fortuna opulentus (smooth-cheeked, soft-skinned, well-educated and rich)

dénouement (outcome)

salve, amice (hello, friend)

valesne? (are you well?)

quid est rei? (what is the matter?)

benigne dicis (i thank you)

bureau de tabac (tobacco store)

Χαλεπά τά καλά (beauty is harsh)

mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré! (oh, truly, i have wept too much!)

les aubes sont navrantes (the dawns are heartbreaking)

hinc illae lacrimae (hence those tears)