It’s always fun when something intersects with both my passions for the ancient Mediterranean and writing. Over on WriterUnboxed, Kristin South wrote this nice little piece on episodic passions that gives a great background to the decipherment of hieroglyphs and the roles therein of Champollion (who was monofocused in his passions) and Thomas Young (who was more wide-ranging in his passions) and brings it back around to writing. I enjoyed it greatly (and learned somethings new).
Tag: hieroglyphs
NaNoWriMo Day 28
1432 words today – so close! But I ran out of steam. And now I have some Egyptian sections to write, which will take a little research. It’s been awhile since I looked at ancient Egypt in great detail (and was never my specialty). I studied hieroglyphs one summer. Such a weird writing system. It really is geared for decoration and thus very flexible for fitting space/aesthetics, but just felt like a beta script to me (i.e. not fully functional yet, even while realizing they just had different functional criteria). It did, however, make me appreciate more the struggles of my students working with Greek and Latin. On the other hand, it made a bit snooty watching Moon Knight when the character referred to bilaterals (or trilaterals, I can’t remember) instead of biliterals and triliterals (i.e. characters that represent 2 or 3 letters respectively, as opposed to uniliterals which only represent one)
My fun take away from my student of hieroglyphs: 𓋹𓍑𓋴 is essentially ancient Egyptian for “Live long and prosper” to the delight of my Star Trek Geeky soul.
Ramblings 