(December 9, 2011 at 3:40 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Unfortunately the translation of ancient documents does rest heavily upon the outlook of the translator..
You are quite right! There are no difficulties with the script itself because modern translators are better acquainted with its grammar than ancient scribes were.
Alan Gardiner, the author of the “Egyptian Grammar,” wrote the following:
The only basis we have for preferring one rendering to another, when once the exigencies of grammar and dictionary have been satisfied – and these leave a large margin for divergencies – is an intuitive appreciation of the trend of the ancient writer’s mind.
The problem with the translation of the hieroglyphic script presents itself only in the rendering of the funerary texts because they are not the writings of one or various authors but recordings of immensely ancient popular oral traditions. No translator has difficulty in translating, for example, “The story of Sinuhe,” a narrative of the adventures of a common man. When, however, it comes to translating “The Dispute of a man with his Ba,” there are more than 60 or 70 or 80 official translations of the text but we still do not know what the text is about.
The translators suffer from preconceptions. The main one is that the gods were supposed at all times to having judged dead people, or their souls, something which, according to the texts, is not true.
Today’s atheists have their preconceptions too, of which the main one is (as per your signature) that man created God in his own image. That, according to the texts is also not true. It was indeed the gods who tried very hard to create men in their own image (and because of that had to judge them and kill those not made in their image).
(December 9, 2011 at 4:21 pm)Chuck Wrote: Hmmm, I might suggest hieroglyphics is less susceptible to change than English. For one thing, it is not a every-day language, so it need not change with the evolving vocabulary needs of its society..
Correct! And on top of that there is the passion of the Egyptians for “the words of the ancestors.” They were constantly copying ancient documents. Lots of texts were found ending with a colophon that reads: It is finished from beginning to end, as it was found in writing.”
The problem rests with certain key words, as noted in the original post, and it is a problem common not only in the hieroglyphic and cuneiform script but in Greek too and most probably in Latin and up to modern languages.
The best example to illustrate this problem is the term “cow” (usually Wild Cow) which in all archaic texts means “Mother.” Some translators cannot bring themselves to render “cow” as “Mother” end so they end up mixing in their translations humans and animals.
Gilgamesh’ mother is also called a Wild Cow. According to the text she was “A Wild Cow of the enclosures” because the Wild Cows, aka Mother-wombs, were kept in enclosures where the gods (Bulls) were visiting them and raping them in order to produce humans in their image. Yet, one translator informs his readers that Gilgamesh’ mother is a Wild Cow of the steer-folds (my English is not so good but I think that no humans [gods by two thirds as Gilgamesh was] were thought to having been born into steer-folds).
