L Cooper Wrote:
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> The word "shu" can have a wide variety of meanings
> - sometimes based upon its spelling, and sometimes
> based more upon the context in which it appears.
> For instance, it can mean: "to be empty, to be
> lacking, devoid, sun, sunlight, dry, dried, to be
> needy, the air-god Shu, ascend, raise, bag,
> umbrella, protection". And it takes many of these
> meanings in the PT's, maybe even more.

A few things. I know I sometimes fall into the usage of the word "means" to apply to a definition of a word like "shu" to mean "upward" but I believe that no ancient word was defined because they had a single meaning. Words were "named" rather than defined and they represented that concept in a sentence. It makes no sense because we automatically parse sentences to understand them. "Shu" represented the concept of "upward" in a sentence when "upward" was the subject of that sentence. If I'm right it's very hard to follow ancient writing because it's alien to the way we speak and think. Everything had three words and the one chosen in a sentence determined whether it was the subject, object, or meaning of the sentence. This is very unnatural for a modern language speaker but the upshot of it is that the author intent of most sentences is very very close to the literal meaning. This occurs because of the nature of Ancient Language to mirror reality itself. It can't really be "translated" at all because modern language can not be forced to obey natural law.

I seriously doubt that any language can exist where words have dozens of meanings. This applies a million times over to the language of the Pyramid Texts which has so very very few words in it. It would simply be impossible to communicate when the few words used had so many meanings. We have hundreds of thousands of words to create context and make our sentences parseable. They lacked vocabulary and if i'm right you must divide it by three. This is why Ancient Language breaks Zipf's Law. They had to use the same words over and over like computer code (which is the only language today that breaks the law).

"Shu" is always associated with rising not because he is air, a void, or whatever but because this word represents "upward". If you believe you find a sentence where the literal meaning of "shu" isn't "upward" then I believe you are parsing it wrong. It can't be parsed at all without destroying the meaning. You must reinterpret the sentence until "shu" represents 'upward:" to see author intent. Of course many many other words are misinterpreted as well so these must be solved in context as well. But some things are very apparent;

2052b. The mother of N. is Nut;
2053a. the father of N. is Shu; the mother of N. is Tefnut.
2053b. They take N. to heaven, to heaven-on the smoke of incense.

The feminine concept of the origin of the pyramid is the "sky" and the masculine concept is "upward". It is Downward who makes the earth high under the sky using nothing but her arms.

1405a. To say: The earth is high under the sky by (means of) thine arms, Tefnut.

Tefnut plus shu equals N who is in the sky.

"He is the pyramid, he protects".

Shu and tefnut (with her arms) take N to heaven and he ascends on the smoke of incense.

Of course this literal meaning is difficult to believe but it is consistent and answers questions like why they had no words for "thought" or "belief" and there are no true taxonomic words in Ancient Language.



I read all the modern sources though frankly I haven't bought Allen's book yet because I can't cross reference it. Even where I can it just doesn't seem to agree with any earlier translators. If I'm right that the language can't be translated then any individual "translator" is irrelevant anyway.

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Man fears the pyramid, time fears man.