Thursday 2 April 2015

That Textbook



When researching the origin on the Kariong Hieroglyphs I have come across several quotes from experts saying that the glyphs seem to been have copied from a modern publication of the Egyptian language , years ago it was discussed on the QI forum in the UK and an expert on ancient languages weighed in .....

My conclusion was these Australian glyphs were perpetrated by person(s) with more enthusiasm than knowledge sometime in the late 70s, early 80, using the cheap Dover edition of Sir Wallis Budge's Hieroglyphic Dictionary - which one should note contains no Egyptian grammar or orthography.
Years ago on the Fortean list I was asked to look at the Australian
Hieroglyphs for the group. I was given transcriptions based on tracings.
I concluded it was done by an English speaker with a shallow acquaintance of Hieroglyphics and here's the 5 reasons why.
1: There are numerous canonical errors (the serekh is a real mess and the image of Anubis is not in Egyptian proportions) and numerous orthographic errors, and the whole thing is crudely done. None of these things excludes an Ancient Egyptian author (Lord knows they left some right messes behind them on occasion) but the plethora of errors suggests otherwise.
2: All Egyptian sentences begin with a verb followed by suffixes to indicate subject. No such constructions were present, rather they followed English syntax with verbs placed midsentence.
3: Whomever wrote this assumed a class of hieroglyph called determinatives (a semantic clarifiers of the preceding phonetic section) were a ideographs that stood for the thing without a phonetic element. They then used these determinatives as logographs: a common error with modern beginners but not one a literate native Egyptian could have made.
Then I was shown photographs - and that changed everything: inarguable proof beyond doubt this was a modern hoax.
4: There were glyphs present that were not in use until the Middle and New Kingdoms.
AND
5: Palaeographically, glyphs were drawn in different ways in different eras, so at a glance one can tell which era the text was written it.
And this ladies and gentlemen is the nail in the sarcophagus.
The Australian glyphs were in a style known as "Budgite" which is to say they were drawn in the style of the Hieroglyphic Font simplified and designed by Sir Wallis Budge for his Hieroglyphic dictionary in the early part of the 20th Century - style that never existed in Egypt.
My conclusion was these Australian glyphs were perpetrated by person(s) with more enthusiasm than knowledge sometime in the late 70s, early 80, using the cheap Dover edition of Sir Wallis Budge's Hieroglyphic Dictionary - which one should note contains no Egyptian grammar or orthography.
1920. An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary, With an Index of English Words, King List and Geographical List with Index, List of Hieroglyphic Characters, Coptic and Semitic Alphabets, etc.. (London: John Murry. Reprinted New York: Dover Publications., 1978)
As you can see the Dover edition was printed in 1978 which is in the right era to fit into the timeline of events , even the original copy printed in 1920 could be valid but the cheaper,smaller Dover edition was used by local schools as a reference book.

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