Who reads Egyptian hieroglyphs?

Tarot Orat

Bernice said:
Hi TO,

Sesheta existed before Thoth rose to recognition/fame. Thoth 'assimilated' her attributes, along with her Temple. Yes, she was a scribe with other special duties as well.

Also, Thoth was not the orginal Moon God, he 'assimilated' that office too. In fact 90% of his attributes were assimilated (pinched) from other older gods.

Our modern take on the egyptian deities arn't truly 'historical'. This is why Dua & Hike are also in my deck along with a few other ancient/valid 'gods'. They were recognised on a daily basis for ages by the Kemet (egyptian) people.


Bee :)

I don't really know much about the history and religion of ancient Egypt, at least I did figure out the "scribe" part :) I mostly studied the language itself, and other than tomb inscriptions, the vast amount of Middle Egyptian hieroglyphic texts we have today are medical, magical, and OMG so much record-keeping! (That's why the numbers were instantly familiar...I did plenty of grammar exercises with those! "In the 4th year of the reign of Whoever, the forty fields of farmer X yielded this many bushels of grain, the 65 fields of farmer Y yielded this many head of cattle...")

Your work is really interesting, I can't wait to get out of work and go home to my textbooks and cards now...oh, hey, 5:19 PM? Outta here!
 

Bernice

Correction!

I said (Bee): Our modern take on the egyptian deities arn't truly 'historical'...
I must apologise 'cos this is not correct, I should have said that our modern idea of the Egyptian Pantheon (not the deities!) is just that = of later times in Egypt, after the Greeks had been there and when Osiris & Isis & Thoth were Established, along with a 'history' that was politically expedient.

I wish I'd studied the hiroglyphs beyond the small research for my cards.

Bee :)
 

Tarot Orat

Nefertari's Tarot/Tarots of the Sphinx

The artwork is the same on both decks, but Nefertari is gilded (and how!), while Tarots of the Sphinx is plain. The hieroglyphs are considerably easier to see on the Sphinx version. I just spent a few hours looking over the deck with my Egyptian textbook in one hand and a well-illustrated book about Egyptian mythology in the other - it was a lot of fun :)

Yes, they're real hieroglyphs; no, they don't all make up a single sustained inscription on any given card. Usually the same style is used on one card, but they're different styles throughout the deck - from carefully drawn and colored tomb paintings, where the letter W looks just like a quail chick with all its feathers and toes, to Late Kingdom near-hieratic where the W looks like a pear on two stick-legs. Sometimes the text switches from right-to-left to left-to-right in the middle of a column or line (you can tell by the direction the figures are facing: they always face the start of the sentence). I think the artist must have copied them piecemeal from various real tomb paintings, historical inscriptions, Books of the Dead, etc. but didn't know what they meant or how they related to each other. Which is why I recognized the symbols but couldn't make any sense out of them, except a few words here and there!

Some of the images are straight out of real Egyptian artwork - the Hanged Man is the victory stele of Narmer (the falcon standing on six lotus flowers represents the king's subjugation of 6 rivals), 9 of Cups and Queen of Pentacles are Akhenaten and Nefertiti, most of the weeping women in the suit of Swords are from Ani's Book of the Dead, and the Lovers is a heterosexualized human-only version of a pharaoh being embraced by the deity Ptah.

I think I need to get some more Egyptian decks so I can do this again! :)
 

Bernice

Hi again Tarot Orat,

Just using the knowledge of hiroglyphs that you have now, how would you use them on the tarot trumps?

I realised early on that there could be no real match-up between the two, because the trumps were created in a Europe culture, long after the egyptian culture was gone. That's why I made an oracle instead. But I expect with a fair knowledge of hiroglyphs it might be possible... providing the LWB were to explain how they relate to each cards' meaning.

I'm afraid it really irks me when I see rider-waite clones using ancient languages/alphabets where the authors or artists clearly have no idea about the subject they're incorporating. And the fact that they use a rider-waite deck as the base model for tarot is even more incongruous! The only 'plus' in my book, is the art-work which is sometimes really good.


Bee :)
 

AJ

Bee, I think the other difference between Nefertari and Tarots of the Sphinx is the Nefertari is a reversed image of the Sphinx set. Which may explain your finding "Sometimes the text switches from right-to-left to left-to-right in the middle of a column or line "

Please...tell us more about your oracle?
 

Tarot Orat

Bernice said:
Just using the knowledge of hiroglyphs that you have now, how would you use them on the tarot trumps?

You probably know a lot of this already, but I'm spelling it out to help my train of thought. I definitely do not want to sound "know it all"-ish or patronizing - I'm just starting at the beginning for my own benefit :)

One of the essential things about hieroglyphs is that they can be any or all of three things: letters, sounds, and ideas. Sometimes a wavy line, /\/\/\/\ means "water," which is pronounced "n," so sometimes /\/\/\/\ represents the sound "n" in words having nothing to do with water. Sometimes the symbol and meaning match very well, like a honeybee in the word "sweet." But sometimes it's incongruous: the symbol for "NFR," "beauty," is the throat and lungs of a cow! (It's also an example of a triliteral - one symbol to represent three sounds/letters. Much faster to write than three individual letters!)

So, let's see, I think what I'm saying is that hieroglyphs convey meaning without necessarily meaning anything in and of themselves, especially when you get into the biliterals and triliterals. You can definitely use a word where the glyph and meaning match up to emphasize an idea, and if you have that sort of match-up in mind, you may want to find another way to express appealing qualities than "NFR." Words like "bright," "shining," "sweet," etc. could work better. "Sweet" and the concept of the queen bee might be perfect on the Empress card. And it happens that the honeybee is a symbol for one half of Egypt, thus of the Empress's reign! (I forget if it's Upper or Lower Egypt off the top of my head.)

Yes, I think the honeybee hieroglyph would work really well on the Empress card...I'm glad my train of thought revealed it to me :)

I want to respond to the rest of your post too but my boss wants me to start working at work! I'll be back at lunchtime. This is so fascinating!
 

Tarot Orat

AJ said:
the other difference between Nefertari and Tarots of the Sphinx is the Nefertari is a reversed image of the Sphinx set. Which may explain your finding "Sometimes the text switches from right-to-left to left-to-right in the middle of a column or line "

You're right, I hadn't noticed that w/o having both decks next to each other. Thanks for pointing it out! Although, based on the Nefertari cards I can see online, it just means that the text switches direction the opposite way...a left-facing B (foot) next to a right-facing I (reed) is now a left-facing I next to a right-facing B!
 

Bernice

Tarot Orat: You can definitely use a word where the glyph and meaning match up to emphasize an idea, and if you have that sort of match-up in mind, you may want to find another way to express appealing qualities than "NFR." Words like "bright," "shining," "sweet," etc. could work better. "Sweet" and the concept of the queen bee might be perfect on the Empress card. And it happens that the honeybee is a symbol for one half of Egypt, thus of the Empress's reign! (I forget if it's Upper or Lower Egypt off the top of my head.)
This seems the most logical way to go, perhaps with a suitable image and of course a honey-bee :))!).

Following this line of expressing meaningful glyphs on a card image, I'm wondering how you'll handle the rest of the trumps.....



Bee :)
 

Abrac

I've been curious about those hieroglyphs for a long time and would also be very interested in knowing what they mean. It would be really awesome if they did have some special meaning pertaining to the card they're on but I have a feeling they're just there for artistic value. If the artist knew what they meant you would think there would be something in print about them. In the companion book to the Egyptian Tarot by Silvana Alasia they aren't even mentioned. Some of the cards don't have hieroglyphs which leads me to wonder if they were just used as filler when needed and to add to the Egyptian effect.
 

teomat

Tarot Orat said:
I looked at the Ancient Egyptian sample cards in the deck review here, and wow, they're gorgeous! I'll see if I can make out anything in the hieroglyphic borders when I get home to my Egyptian dictionary tonight...I'll be squinting though :)
The border hieroglyphics are a passage from the Book of the Dead (Barrett gives a translation in the companion book). I think (or hope) therefore that the hieroglyphs he paints in the cards themselves DO actually have a meaning related to the card.