lobo-hotei Wrote:
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> No you can't read them. You admitted to such
> already.
This is a simple concept and I know you can follow it since there are much more complicated ideas that give you little trouble.
Every single of the PT translators have written these words in the very language you're reading right now! Doesn't it stand to reason that if these words are shared by you, me and Mercer, Faulkner, etc that we can all read them?
If you can't understand any of these words or the meaning it might have more to do with you than me.
> You have simply took an educated
> interpretaion of the PTS and twisted it to your
> own personal interpretation of what you think the
> AE should have been like and meant to say.
The translators aren't supposed to interpret the words. To some degree this is impossible not to do. Even the very first translator would have seen them as incantations and spells because he was familiar with the later works into which these evolved. Imagine how much different these words would look if he thought he were translating a construction manual or a prayer book instead of mere incantation and spells to get the dead king into heaven.
I have been reading a TRANSLATION of the Pyramid Texts not an INTERPRETATION (I hope).
I have not been interpreting it, merely reading it and am surprised to find what it actually says. To my knowledge no one has ever previously considered that the intended meaning could be the literal one. To make this literal meaning work untranslated words have to be assumed to be referents that are unknown. I'm sure this is getting over your head but let me just say that communication is based on shared referents. You can't understand someone if you don't know what he's talking about. If too many of the words aren't understood then communication fails. You might think they are speaking metaphorically when they are speaking literally.
You might think I am "interpreting" the builders words when all I'm actually doing is reading them and trying to find referents for untranslated words by context.
No interpretation!
> IOW, you brutalized the culture in order to be
> it's savior!
This is irony.
If I'm wrong then it will look to many as though I've been rather nasty to them by calling the PT "mere incantation" and such things. Pointing out all the inconsistencies between their behavior and what all other humans have always done just sort of sounds like I'm picking on them.
If you can show I'm wrong then I'll just have to pry my foot out of my mouth, make my apologies, marvel anew at their accomplishments and go back to trying to figure out how they built the great pyramids.
If you're wrong then it's one of the greatest wrongs ever done a people. Of course it wasn't intentional and the Egyptians will surely stop spinning in their graves almost immediately.
(No, they aren't literally spinning in their graves)
(probably)
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Man fears the pyramid, time fears man.
