Rosetta Project- Part 2 Eqyptian to Arabic

So this is what we needed to translate: Eqyptian Hieroglyphics. At first I thought that this would be pretty easy. Check out some books from the library, locate the glyphs, find the English meaning, then translate that in Hebrew and Arabic. Boy, was I wrong.

So my group reserved a room at the library and we checked out a bunch of books about Egyptian Hieroglyphics with their English meanings. No big, right? Well, it turns out Egyptian Hieroglyphics are way more complicated than that. It turns out there are several way to read them. You basically read them left to right, but then it gets tricky if there are some glyphs that are stacked. Some stacked glyphs equal a word or they could be a phrase.

It gets even harder because of the dynasties. I have never thought about it but the hieroglyphics changed over time, especially when new families or dynasties took over.






We were hitting dead end after dead end so we decided to calls the group who had given us the tablet so that they could tell us what book they had used. We could not get a hold of them. It was so irritating, we knew the book they had used was somewhere in the library, we just couldn't find it.

We even asked a librarian and she couldn't help us.












Jon attempting to contact the group who had given us the tablet.

We finally decided to just use what we had and give our best. Some of the glyph's meaning all of the books agreed on so we had a little idea of what the tablet was saying.

With the other glyphs the books somewhat agreed
on what they meant so we had to guess a little. In the end, we got the whole thing translated to the best of our ability. It was all downhill from here. Translating the English into Hebrew and Arabic wasn't difficult, we just got an English/Hebrew and English/Arabic dictionaries online. After that we used the calligraphy pen (it actually decided to cooperate this time!) and wrote it on the scroll.

This project has given me greater appreciation for the translators and librarians of ancient times. When they got a new manuscript from another culture and language they didn't have much to go on. They either had to know the language themselves, or find someone who did know that language as well as the language it was going to be translated into. Then they had to painstakingly copy it. No google tranlate, or books checked out of the library. My day and age may have its faults, but I think I will keep it.