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Perhaps this is the right thread to ask the question as to how people figured out what ancient Egyptian words sound. From what I understand Rosetta Stone simpl

by yumraj 5y ago

Perhaps this is the right thread to ask the question as to how people figured out what ancient Egyptian words sound. From what I understand Rosetta Stone simply provided a dictionary of sorts, so I can understand how they know which words mean what. But how do they know that a certain combination of hieroglyphs translates into words pronounced as say “Ramses” or “Tutankhamen “ and so on.

kaesar14 5y ago
https://youtu.be/5NeccdDpO5I https://youtu.be/5NeccdDpO5I I found this to be a great source on the topic. Your question is a great one, and hints as to why Jean-Francois Champollion is hailed as the genius he was. The key insight was essentially the theory that the Coptic language spoken still as the liturgical language of Coptic Christians in Egypt was a modern form of the ancient Egyptian language encoded by Hieroglyphics. Champollion made a key insight attempting to decipher a cartouche (the hieroglyphic form used to write a name) that a symbol at the beginning of a name looked extremely similar to a sun. The Coptic word for sun was Ra. At the time, they’d already identified the symbol used to writes a ‘ss’ sound, and so Champollion was able to guess at the middle symbols spelling Mes, leading to the deciphering of Rameses. Note that the European world at large obviously already knew the name Rameses, which was key here. I believe in general names were key to deciphering many of the sounds used in the language, coupled with pronunciations hinted at by Coptic. I typed this all by memory so I may be off in some details but I believe I have the gist right.
- yumraj 5y ago
  The video looks great, appreciate the recommendation.
pcstl 5y ago
We know these names because the Rosetta Stone (and other dual-language inscriptions) allowed researchers to figure out which Greek letter the egyptian hieroglyphics mapped to. There is also the Coptic language, which is a modern descendent of Ancient Egyptian. However, these pronunciations are full of issues and uncertainties - in part because, as the OP states, even figuring out how exactly Greek was pronounced is sort of a challenge, and because Ancient Egyptian did not denote most vowels, so some uncertainty is unavoidable. For example, Egyptologists will usually transcribe the name we usually pronounce as Tutankhamen as "twt-ꜥnḫ-jmn". We can tell which phonemes are distinct and have some idea of how they must have been pronounced, but we can never truly know for sure. So the answer is: The word probably wasn't pronounced as "Ramses", the name "Ramses" is an approximation of a Greek approximation of the actual name of the pharaoh, optimized to be easy to pronounce by English-speakers.
- yumraj 5y ago
  Makes sense, BTW I appreciate all the sibling replies as well. So basically it seems they used the proper nouns to start and then built up on that. And also used Coptic to fill gaps.. I do get the point about Greek approximation since just as an example in modern India, Alexander is referred to as Sikander. Similar, yet very different.
  - yorwba 5y ago
    The Al- most likely got lost in Arabic due to being reanalyzed as a determiner instead of as part of the name.
    - schoen 5y ago
      For the Greeks, it even had an intelligible meaning https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%BB%CE%AD%CE%BE%CF%89#Ancient_Greek https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%BB%CE%AD%CE%BE%C... I think the a- in the al- in Alexander is supposed to be the alpha privative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_privative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_privative like our "ward off" or something.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
        I don't know if that's right. It could be but it sounds wrong in that I've never heard of "έξω", on its own, without the possible privative, at least not as a verb (there is a modern noun "έξω" meaning "out"). Also, wikipedia says this about alpha privative: >> It is derived from a Proto-Indo-European syllabic nasal n̥-, the zero ablaut grade of the negation ne, i.e. /n/ used as a vowel. But the wiktionary article says this about αλέξω: From Proto-Hellenic aléksō (“to protect”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂lek- (“to defend”) (...) Note the difference between "n̥" and "h₂". I don't even know what those are, but they seem different enough that they may be ... different?
  - csunbird 5y ago
    Alexander is pronounced as “İskender” in modern Turkish as well.
wl 5y ago
Royal names in cartouches provided a clue. The Rosetta Stone provided the spelling of the name Ptolemy in Greek, Hieratic, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Other cartouches with known values filled in a lot. One major problem is that Egyptian hieroglyphs don't really encode vowels. Another set of clues about pronunciation comes from the Amarna letters written in the 18th dynasty. They are written in Akkadian cuneiform (then the language of international diplomacy), a script that does include vowels. These letters contain Egyptian names and sometimes loan words.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > They are written in Akkadian cuneiform (then the language of international diplomacy), a script that does include vowels. These letters contain Egyptian names and sometimes loan words. I was interested to learn that the name of Ra is attested in these letters! From that, we know the vowel -- it was /i/. (The "a" in Ra is a consonant which is traditionally rendered as "a" by convention.)
retrac 5y ago
Another angle I didn't see in the other comments was comparative linguistics. This came later and wasn't used in the initial deciphering, but it's a major part of the modern understanding. Ancient Egyptian was related to other languages, and was part of the rather large still-existing Afroasiatic language family, which includes Semitic (Hebrew and Arabic and others), Berber (of north Africa), and many others. (Importantly, Akkadian is one of the first written languages aside from Ancient Egyptian itself, and it was a very early Semitic language, and not so dissimilar from Ancient Egyptian in some ways.) While only reconstructions, this gives us, in a sense, a model of the ancestral language of Ancient Egyptian. This insight provides more data on possible phonetic values and the nature of that language. There is always a great deal of uncertainty though. By comparison, Sumerian, of similar antiquity, was an isolate and we do not know any language related to it. We have many texts in Sumerian, and many parallel texts between Sumerian and Akkadian, as well as old Indo-European languages like early Persian. We kind of have the sketch of its sounds. But even then, we have less idea what Sumerian sounded like, or how its grammar works, or what its words mean, than we do Ancient Egyptian. And that is despite the fact that Ancient Egyptians didn't write their vowels while the Sumerians did! Having related languages you can compare to is valuable here.

by yumraj 5y ago

kaesar14 5y ago

https://youtu.be/5NeccdDpO5I https://youtu.be/5NeccdDpO5I I found this to be a great source on the topic. Your question is a great one, and hints as to why Jean-Francois Champollion is hailed as the genius he was. The key insight was essentially the theory that the Coptic language spoken still as the liturgical language of Coptic Christians in Egypt was a modern form of the ancient Egyptian language encoded by Hieroglyphics. Champollion made a key insight attempting to decipher a cartouche (the hieroglyphic form used to write a name) that a symbol at the beginning of a name looked extremely similar to a sun. The Coptic word for sun was Ra. At the time, they’d already identified the symbol used to writes a ‘ss’ sound, and so Champollion was able to guess at the middle symbols spelling Mes, leading to the deciphering of Rameses. Note that the European world at large obviously already knew the name Rameses, which was key here. I believe in general names were key to deciphering many of the sounds used in the language, coupled with pronunciations hinted at by Coptic. I typed this all by memory so I may be off in some details but I believe I have the gist right.

yumraj 5y ago
The video looks great, appreciate the recommendation.

pcstl 5y ago

We know these names because the Rosetta Stone (and other dual-language inscriptions) allowed researchers to figure out which Greek letter the egyptian hieroglyphics mapped to. There is also the Coptic language, which is a modern descendent of Ancient Egyptian. However, these pronunciations are full of issues and uncertainties - in part because, as the OP states, even figuring out how exactly Greek was pronounced is sort of a challenge, and because Ancient Egyptian did not denote most vowels, so some uncertainty is unavoidable. For example, Egyptologists will usually transcribe the name we usually pronounce as Tutankhamen as "twt-ꜥnḫ-jmn". We can tell which phonemes are distinct and have some idea of how they must have been pronounced, but we can never truly know for sure. So the answer is: The word probably wasn't pronounced as "Ramses", the name "Ramses" is an approximation of a Greek approximation of the actual name of the pharaoh, optimized to be easy to pronounce by English-speakers.

yumraj 5y ago
Makes sense, BTW I appreciate all the sibling replies as well. So basically it seems they used the proper nouns to start and then built up on that. And also used Coptic to fill gaps.. I do get the point about Greek approximation since just as an example in modern India, Alexander is referred to as Sikander. Similar, yet very different.
- yorwba 5y ago
  The Al- most likely got lost in Arabic due to being reanalyzed as a determiner instead of as part of the name.
  - schoen 5y ago
    For the Greeks, it even had an intelligible meaning https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%BB%CE%AD%CE%BE%CF%89#Ancient_Greek https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%BB%CE%AD%CE%BE%C... I think the a- in the al- in Alexander is supposed to be the alpha privative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_privative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_privative like our "ward off" or something.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
      I don't know if that's right. It could be but it sounds wrong in that I've never heard of "έξω", on its own, without the possible privative, at least not as a verb (there is a modern noun "έξω" meaning "out"). Also, wikipedia says this about alpha privative: >> It is derived from a Proto-Indo-European syllabic nasal n̥-, the zero ablaut grade of the negation ne, i.e. /n/ used as a vowel. But the wiktionary article says this about αλέξω: From Proto-Hellenic aléksō (“to protect”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂lek- (“to defend”) (...) Note the difference between "n̥" and "h₂". I don't even know what those are, but they seem different enough that they may be ... different?
- csunbird 5y ago
  Alexander is pronounced as “İskender” in modern Turkish as well.

wl 5y ago

Royal names in cartouches provided a clue. The Rosetta Stone provided the spelling of the name Ptolemy in Greek, Hieratic, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Other cartouches with known values filled in a lot. One major problem is that Egyptian hieroglyphs don't really encode vowels. Another set of clues about pronunciation comes from the Amarna letters written in the 18th dynasty. They are written in Akkadian cuneiform (then the language of international diplomacy), a script that does include vowels. These letters contain Egyptian names and sometimes loan words.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> They are written in Akkadian cuneiform (then the language of international diplomacy), a script that does include vowels. These letters contain Egyptian names and sometimes loan words. I was interested to learn that the name of Ra is attested in these letters! From that, we know the vowel -- it was /i/. (The "a" in Ra is a consonant which is traditionally rendered as "a" by convention.)

retrac 5y ago

Another angle I didn't see in the other comments was comparative linguistics. This came later and wasn't used in the initial deciphering, but it's a major part of the modern understanding. Ancient Egyptian was related to other languages, and was part of the rather large still-existing Afroasiatic language family, which includes Semitic (Hebrew and Arabic and others), Berber (of north Africa), and many others. (Importantly, Akkadian is one of the first written languages aside from Ancient Egyptian itself, and it was a very early Semitic language, and not so dissimilar from Ancient Egyptian in some ways.) While only reconstructions, this gives us, in a sense, a model of the ancestral language of Ancient Egyptian. This insight provides more data on possible phonetic values and the nature of that language. There is always a great deal of uncertainty though. By comparison, Sumerian, of similar antiquity, was an isolate and we do not know any language related to it. We have many texts in Sumerian, and many parallel texts between Sumerian and Akkadian, as well as old Indo-European languages like early Persian. We kind of have the sketch of its sounds. But even then, we have less idea what Sumerian sounded like, or how its grammar works, or what its words mean, than we do Ancient Egyptian. And that is despite the fact that Ancient Egyptians didn't write their vowels while the Sumerians did! Having related languages you can compare to is valuable here.