Egyptian funerary texts

[dtango]

I find it ironic that you're actually creating a myth with all of this.

My good friend, I’ll tell you what I find ironic.
You were brought up (not you personally, I am addressing the atheists who share your beliefs) in a culture where spiritual gods, immortal souls and afterlife are part of the every day life, you are used to them, you have philosophers devoting their thoughts to them and so at the end you come to think of them as thoughts that naturally occur to men (No university ever dared teach they are laughable).

As an atheist, however, you know they are laughable!
Yet, you ascribe them to cultures unknown to you.
You learn of the beliefs of those cultures, you realize that they are different from yours but you apply corrections in order to smooth out differences and be able to find excuses for the one you are unable to account for: their words, the myth!

Immemorial imagination, the source of myth for Cambell!
Magical incantations, the funerary texts according to teachings of Campbell!!

Their sand-made fortress is coming apart!
They stopped translating the texts! Surely you were not aware of this fact but you need have no doubts because no Egyptologist will deny it.

Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered almost 200 years ago. Thousands of documents and scriptures have been translated since then and suddenly we stop translating the funerary texts because we have eventually realized that we do not know what they are about. We can no longer use the excuse which the supposed magic offers.

I think we are not here to just pass our time or to entertain ourselves by arguing. I came across the texts because it is here that the study of the myth leads. I was used to the translations of Faulkner, full of spirits and souls, and suddenly I discover James Allen and gone are the spirits and the souls.

Well, this is a fact I am bringing to your attention. We all know the proper way to investigate something. Do you want to investigate and test the soundness of your beliefs? There is your chance: Why spirits and souls up to now, but now only “akhs” and “bas”? Hm?

Egyptian, as I recall ( and its been a while ) , is a combination of phonetic symbols, morphemes, and something else similar to punctuation which modifies the others.

You are referring to the determinative sign about which Allen writes the following:

In Middle Egyptian, words spelled with phonograms usually have an ideogram added at the end. This extra sign, called a determinative, has two functions: it shows that the signs preceding it are to be read as phonograms rather than ideograms, and it indicates the general idea of the word.
Thus, the word meaning “ascend” is usually written with the “walking legs” sign (a V turned upside down) which indicates that this is a word having to do with motion.

Thanks for the info about the ostracon. I did not know about it.

To be honest, I think this tango guy is either into hokey history or there is a language barrier here. No offense, new guy.

No offence taken, young lady.
With age you’ll get more careful and learn not to jump too quick to conclusions.

You see, it is you who is the new guy here.