answering some questions about the egyptian language(s)
so, you guys loved the anubis "translation", which is GREAT and warms my little egyptologist heart!
i wanted to add some background on what egyptian actually *is* and also answer some questions i saw in the tags, bc of course i've been looking at them.
the egyptian language has five major stages: old egyptian, middle egyptian, late egyptian, demotic, and coptic. old, middle, and late egyptian are written in hieroglyphs and also their cursive variant, hieratic. demotic has its own script, and coptic is written in a modified greek alphabet. but they all represent "generations" of the same language, with some differences (the difference between middle egyptian and demotic is kind of like the difference between middle english and modern english--technically the same language, but definitely different).
hieroglyphs isn't quite an alphabetic script. but, you can still "write" your name in hieroglyphs. how? well, egyptian hieroglyphs have certain signs that can represent a single sound, much like an alphabet would. most signs, though, can represent a word or a group of 2-3 sounds. the alphabetic signs were used for a lot of things, but they were also rather frequently used for foreign words (like, let's say, your modern name).
hieroglyphs aren't emojis. all stages of the egyptian language are very much a language, with grammar. so if you have a romantic idea of learning egyptian as reading hieroglyphs by candlelight---well, sometimes we do that. but mostly, learning hieroglyphs is actually quite a lot of grammar, like learning any other language. prepositions, demonstratives, subject/verb/object, tenses, etc. it's better to think of hieroglyphs more like any other pictographic script.
how do we know what egyptian sounds like, and how does the rosetta stone figure into that?
first, the rosetta stone. you might know that it was the key to deciphering hieroglyphs, but you might not know how. so, the stone is a ptolemaic period inscription (196 BC) which means that greek was the spoken language of the royal court. so, the inscription was in three languages: greek, demotic, and....middle egyptian hieroglyphs. the last was because, even though no one spoke it anymore, it was considered a holy language, like latin in the vatican.
the decipherer of the stone, champollion, read the greek bits. what he realised was that there were certain hieroglyphs within little boxes (cartouches). he theorised (correctly) that those were names. he was able to read "kleopatra" with the alphabetic signs, and this paved the way for further decipherment.
remember that bit about coptic, above? so, coptic is the liturgical language of the coptic church, but it was also spoken well into the 18th century. when hieroglyphs were deciphered and people began to truly read egyptian for the first time, it was clear that 1. egyptian had some things in common with semitic languages, and 2. that its closest relative was coptic.
here's where it gets a little complicated.
egyptian, though it's not a semitic language, has a feature that is shared with semitic languages: no true vowels. so egyptologists created a pseudo-pronunciation that replaces almost all of the vowels with an "eh" sound. so n-m-r would be read as "nemer".
coptic does have vowels. what it also has are dialects--and guess where all those dialects differ. yep. the vowels. so while we have a fairly good grasp of how the consonants sounded in different stages of the language, the vowels are still tricky. cutting-edge research in egyptology works on getting closer to the "true" pronunciation.
can i get an IPA/grammar breakdown of what anubis is saying?
first of all, bless the people who asked for this, lol.
to the first: yes! with the caveat from above that we don't know *exactly* what the vowels would've been like, and there's a lot of chronological change for the consonants. SO, this IPA instead represents how someone would read it out loud in, say, a classroom. also, fair warning that i haven't messed with IPA in like ten years so it might be clumsy, sorry.
to the second: yes, but know that i made anubis speak late egyptian (not middle egyptian) because i uh...like it more. late egyptian has articles ("the") and middle egyptian doesn't, so i picked it.
"i am anubis": /ˈjnk/ /ˈjnpw/ (first person independent pronoun + proper noun) "do not eat": /əm/ /wənəm/ (negative imperative) "this is for smelling smoke": /pʔj/ /pw/ /əm/ /χənəm/ /ħətj/ (demonstrative masculine, A pw B construction, m preposition + infinitive, noun). for anyone who knows late egyptian, an r + infinitive here would've probably been better. oh well. "call your father and your mother": /äʃ/ /pʔj/ /t̠ʃən/ /ˈjt/ /ħənä/ /tʔj/ /t̠ʃən/ /mwt/ (imperative, possessive singular masculine pronoun with a plural dependent pronoun, noun, conjunction, possessive singular feminine pronoun with a plural dependent pronoun, noun) "live, prosper, and be healthy": /ʔnχ/ /wəd̠ʒʔ/ /sənəb/ (optative, i.e. "may you live...")
what about that one translation where anubis tells the kids to eat poison?
the original comic has actual egyptian signs, but they amount to a keysmash, basically. it's gibberish, and that, uh, "translator" made it up.
how do i become an egyptologist?
"egyptologist" is a funny job because it sounds really fake. but essentially we're professional linguists and/or historians who just happen to focus on egypt (and some people who start in egyptology end up as archaeologists of egypt, which is actually a different thing).
so before you decide you want to be "an egyptologist", ask yourself if you want to be a historian/linguist.
and if you still want it, then it depends what stage you are in your academic career (high school? first year BA? out of school for a while?) but for the sake of simplicity, let's say you're starting out at university. your trajectory could look something like this:
learn an ancient language or two. obviously you should try to learn egyptian. but, very few universities offer egyptian, and even if they do it'll likely only be middle egyptian and not any of the other stages. (side note: i do not recommend trying to teach yourself middle egyptian from a textbook. middle egyptian is hard, and all of the textbooks are...not great). the good news is that a background in greek or latin will help you when you do want to learn egyptian in a formal setting.
learn some history, not just of egypt. the ancient world was interconnected, and you should build a solid foundation in the history of greece, rome, and persia at the least.
yes, you'll eventually need a phd. it depends on what part of the world you're in/where you're willing to go, but there are programmes all over the world in egyptology or more general programmes ("ancient near eastern studies") that will allow you to focus on egyptology. start planning for the application process as soon as possible!
