Logistics And Examples Of Hebrew Being Written In Egyptian

[canard78]

Quick question, and hopefully a quick answer,

 

 

"Mormon 9:32

32 And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech."

 

 

1 Nephi 1:2 Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.

 

What are the practicalities of writing Hebrew with Egyptian characters/hyroglyphs? Is it as simple as the difference between short and long hand writing? Could any language have been written in Egyptian without losing any of the meaning or nuance of the original, spoken, language (in this case Hebrew).

 

Can anyone point me towards of examples of Hebrew being written in Egyptian elsewhere, I'm sure there are lots of them.

[canard78]

Examples found:

http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/19/1/S00006-5176a7ad373d86Hamblin.pdf

Now if anyone can explain the logistics of how this is possible (for a bear of small brain) I'd appreciate it.

[Hillel2]

Hello. Just a quick answer. Later egyptian, like hebrew and arabic, is an abjad or system which expresses consonants and leaves the vowels to be inferred by the reader. It would be easy to adapt. Arabic was adapted to write persian and hebrew to write yiddish...in both cases the languages are further remove from e. other than egypt. And hebrew. It would not, however, imo, be more economical.

Could one write hebrew in hieroglyphics easily? Well, japanese is written mainly with kanji or chinese based logograms. However, they have to devise separate characters to supply grammar markers, -ing, -ed, -es...etc. it's probably not as economical as purely phonetic writing.

Although, having looked at the anthon manuscript, it reminds me of the japanese system. Some characters are very busy, a la kanji-type characters, logograms...others seem simple and appear more frequently and suggest phones which may be grammatical markers.

[canard78]

So does that mean that a Hebrew speaker could express him/herself just as eloquently in Egyptian characters as in Hebrew script. Nothing is lost. Sentences are articulated as desired and the richness of the text and intention of the message is fully retained?

[Robert F. Smith]

Quick question, and hopefully a quick answer,

 

 

What are the practicalities of writing Hebrew with Egyptian characters/hyroglyphs? Is it as simple as the difference between short and long hand writing? Could any language have been written in Egyptian without losing any of the meaning or nuance of the original, spoken, language (in this case Hebrew).

 

Can anyone point me towards of examples of Hebrew being written in Egyptian elsewhere, I'm sure there are lots of them.

You might also want to note that King Benjamin=s three sons, Mosiah, Helorum, and Helaman, were Ataught in all the language of@ their forefathers, and were taught to read the Egyptian engravings of the Brass Plates just as Lehi had handed the knowledge down (Mosiah 1:2-4 Ain the language of the Egyptians@; cf. I Nephi 3:19, Enos 1).

 

"The language of Lehi=s forefathers was a foreign language; and when the Book of Mormon tells us it was the language of the Egyptians, it means what it says."  Hugh W. Nibley, ALehi in the Desert,@ part II, Improvement Era, 53/2 (Feb 1950):155 = Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, V:24.

 

“This was a book written in the language of the Egyptians on golden plates"” Gordon B. Hinckley, November 9, 1997, transcript online at http://www.abc.net.au/compass/intervs/hinckley.htm .

 

 

However, there are Semitic text written in Egyptian:

Shisha-Halevy, Ariel.  AAn Early North-West Semitic Text in the Egyptian Hieratic Script,@ Orientalia, 47 (1978):145-162.

Tvedtnes, John, and Stephen Ricks, AJewish and Other Semitic Texts Written in Egyptian Characters,@ Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 5/2 (1996):156-163 = ASemitic Texts Written in Egyptian Characters,@ in J. W. Welch & M. J. Thorne, eds., Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon (Provo: FARMS, 1999), 237-243.

Bowman, Raymond, AAn Aramaic Religious Text in Demotic Script,@ JNES, 3 (Oct 1944):219-231 (re pAmherst 63:VI-IX, XI, XV-XVII, XIX-XXI, and Psalm 20).

[bcuzbcuz]

Hello. Just a quick answer. Later egyptian, like hebrew and arabic, is an abjad or system which expresses consonants and leaves the vowels to be inferred by the reader. It would be easy to adapt. Arabic was adapted to write persian and hebrew to write yiddish...in both cases the languages are further remove from e. other than egypt. And hebrew. It would not, however, imo, be more economical.

Could one write hebrew in hieroglyphics easily? Well, japanese is written mainly with kanji or chinese based logograms. However, they have to devise separate characters to supply grammar markers, -ing, -ed, -es...etc. it's probably not as economical as purely phonetic writing.

Although, having looked at the anthon manuscript, it reminds me of the japanese system. Some characters are very busy, a la kanji-type characters, logograms...others seem simple and appear more frequently and suggest phones which may be grammatical markers.

Forget about the Anthon manuscript. There is nothing on that document that shares any characters with Egyptian hieroglyphs or Egyptian hieratic scripts. There is nothing on the Anthon manuscript that shares any similarity with any known language. It might as well be make-believe scribbles.

[canard78]

You might also want to note that King Benjamin=s three sons, Mosiah, Helorum, and Helaman, were Ataught in all the language of@ their forefathers, and were taught to read the Egyptian engravings of the Brass Plates just as Lehi had handed the knowledge down (Mosiah 1:2-4 Ain the language of the Egyptians@; cf. I Nephi 3:19, Enos 1).

"The language of Lehi=s forefathers was a foreign language; and when the Book of Mormon tells us it was the language of the Egyptians, it means what it says." Hugh W. Nibley, ALehi in the Desert,@ part II, Improvement Era, 53/2 (Feb 1950):155 = Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, V:24.

“This was a book written in the language of the Egyptians on golden plates"”Gordon B. Hinckley, November 9, 1997, transcript online at http://www.abc.net.au/compass/intervs/hinckley.htm .

Thanks. I wasn't disputing the claim that anything other than Egyptian characters are said to be on the plates.

However, there are Semitic text written in Egyptian:

Shisha-Halevy, Ariel. AAn Early North-West Semitic Text in the Egyptian Hieratic Script,@Orientalia, 47 (1978):145-162.

Tvedtnes, John, and Stephen Ricks, AJewish and Other Semitic Texts Written in Egyptian Characters,@ Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 5/2 (1996):156-163 = ASemitic Texts Written in Egyptian Characters,@ in J. W. Welch & M. J. Thorne, eds., Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon (Provo: FARMS, 1999), 237-243.

Bowman, Raymond, AAn Aramaic Religious Text in Demotic Script,@ JNES, 3 (Oct 1944):219-231 (re pAmherst 63:VI-IX, XI, XV-XVII, XIX-XXI, and Psalm 20).

So would there be no issue at all writing Hebrew in Egyptian? I'm guessing not. Can you explain how that would be done on a practical level.

[thesometimesaint]

http://www.academia.edu/4177204/The_Influence_of_the_Ancient_Egyptian_Language_on_the_European_Languages

[canard78]

http://www.academia.edu/4177204/The_Influence_of_the_Ancient_Egyptian_Language_on_the_European_Languages

Not entirely what I was looking for, unless I'm missing something. Is there anything in this article that would explain how Hebrew is written in Egyptian characters and why writing in Egyptian would be more efficient.

[Robert F. Smith]

So does that mean that a Hebrew speaker could express him/herself just as eloquently in Egyptian characters as in Hebrew script. Nothing is lost. Sentences are articulated as desired and the richness of the text and intention of the message is fully retained?

Mormon 9:33, 

"And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record."

 

Apparently something is lost in translation.

[Robert F. Smith]

Thanks. I wasn't disputing the claim that anything other than Egyptian characters are said to be on the plates.

You did however seem to be disputing that Egyptian language was being used.

 

So would there be no issue at all writing Hebrew in Egyptian? I'm guessing not. Can you explain how that would be done on a practical level.

Nibley went so far as to graphically demonstrate (see his illustration) just how abbreviated such short-hand Egyptian could be in his Since Cumorah, 2^nd ed., CWHN VII:149.  John Sorenson has repeatedly emphasized that Egyptian writing could be very ambiguous at times due to individual characters representing “whole, complex morphemes or words (called logograms by linguists) rather than” alphabetic sounds, and that these would have to be memorized.  Sorenson, “Mormon’s Sources,” Willes Book of Mormon Lecture, BYU, Sept 8, 2011, 5, citing John Gee, “Egyptian Society during the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty,” in Welch, Seely, and Seely, eds., Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem, 282.

 

As Nibley, Edward Ashment, and others have noted, the demotic Egyptian language is closely bound to the space-saving demotic Egyptian writing system, i.e., it would make little sense for the Nephites to have used it to write Hebrew.  Why?  Simply because no space could be saved thereby, and space-saving was of course the explicit raison d=être for use of Areformed Egyptian@ (Mormon 9:32-33).  Nibley, ALehi in the Desert,@ part II, Improvement Era, 53/2 (Feb 1950):102, and n. 60; E. H. Ashment, A>A Record in the Language of My Father=: Evidence of Ancient Egyptian and Hebrew in the Book of Mormon,A in B. L. Metcalfe, ed., New Approaches to the Book of Mormon: Explorations in Critical Methodology (SLC: Signature Books/Smith Research Associates, 1993), 341. 

 

[Robert F. Smith]

Not entirely what I was looking for, unless I'm missing something. Is there anything in this article that would explain how Hebrew is written in Egyptian characters and why writing in Egyptian would be more efficient.

In that article which you just rejected, the author begins with the Egyptian word dshrt, from which we get our word desert.  You  might want to take a look at the Sign List on pages 442-548 of Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1957).  In that assemblage of hieroglyphs you will see many logorams (single signs) which constitute an entire word.   In the case of Egyptian dshrt (Sign List L2 and S3), for example, it can be represented by a single glyph, the honey bee (which is in the Book of Mormon at Ether 2:3).  Such detailed glyphs can also be written in hieratic, which is merely abbreviated hieroglyphs.  Hebrew, which does not use logograms, cannot be nearly so efficient.

Edited January 12, 2015 by Robert F. Smith

[Hillel2]

Forget about the Anthon manuscript. There is nothing on that document that shares any characters with Egyptian hieroglyphs or Egyptian hieratic scripts. There is nothing on the Anthon manuscript that shares any similarity with any known language. It might as well be make-believe scribbles.

Hello. I too do not see any similarity between the AM and Egyptian hieroglyphic/hieratic writing. It also does not bear any similarity to any language I know. However, it does not, to my mind, appear just to be scribbles. There seems to be enough repetition and design to suggest that, at the very least, someone may have been trying to create what LOOKED like a plausible script.

 

Some of the "characters" suggest Logograms which are usually very complex. Some are very simple. IF the text were a real language, one could postulate that these less complex characters are either a) high frequency logograms which have undergone a simplification process or b) phonetic writing which would be used to indicate grammar.

 

IF i were going to write Hebrew in a logographic script, i would also be moved to devise a phonetic system for indicating grammatical and syntactical endings. Logograms alone wouldn't cut it.

 

That's all that i'm saying. I have no personal investment in whether the AM is valid or not. I was just playing with ideas. :-)

[thesometimesaint]

SEE Demotic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demotic_%28Egyptian%29

[Hillel2]

So does that mean that a Hebrew speaker could express him/herself just as eloquently in Egyptian characters as in Hebrew script. Nothing is lost. Sentences are articulated as desired and the richness of the text and intention of the message is fully retained?

Hello.

 

One could certainly do so. I was playing around with it last night. It is, of course, cumbersome. Also, as i might have mentioned previously, Hebrew grammar would necessitate the use of some phonetic characters, perhaps of a non-Egyptian origin (hence the reformed Egyptian?).

 

As to things being lost...? I suppose some notions would have been lost, others added. Use of a logographic script would probably create a visual "subtext" which would not have been present in the original Hebrew. Example: Chinese "Good" is written with two characters; mother and child. I believe "peace" is written with the character of a woman under a roof. "War" is written using two of the characters for woman under one roof! So you can see how the use of a logographic script adds a whole new layer of meaning and/or reveals a kind of "ideology."

 

OTH, in the Hebrew tradition there is this notion that the very shapes of the Hebrew letters have esoteric meanings which are known by those who have a right to know. If You believe that, these things would have been lost. 

[ERayR]

Forget about the Anthon manuscript. There is nothing on that document that shares any characters with Egyptian hieroglyphs or Egyptian hieratic scripts. There is nothing on the Anthon manuscript that shares any similarity with any known language. It might as well be make-believe scribbles.

 

Perhaps Mormon 9:32 might answer your objections.

 

32 And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech.

 

It was removed from Egyptian contact by a thousand years.  It is not as if these things don't have a tendency to change.  Just try reading medieval English.

Edited January 12, 2015 by ERayR

[Robert F. Smith]

Forget about the Anthon manuscript. There is nothing on that document that shares any characters with Egyptian hieroglyphs or Egyptian hieratic scripts. There is nothing on the Anthon manuscript that shares any similarity with any known language. It might as well be make-believe scribbles.

Hi bcuzbcuz.

Nowadays we generally don't refer to the old "Anthon" document as having anything to do with Professor Anthon, since it does not fit his description.  Instead it is generally now called the "Caractors transcript," or memento.  However, you can call it anything you like.

 

I'm not sure what you base your opinion on, since the Caractors transcript contains many characters which look exactly like ancient Egyptian hieratic.  They even face in the correct direction so as to be read from right to left.  Indeed,  the late Egyptologists William C. Hayes and Richard A. Parker separately both claimed that it appeared to be actual Egyptian script, Parker thinking that it might be in another language, such as Meroitic.  Hayes actually discussed it with a Mormon grad student and demonstrated how part of the first line should read in hieroglyphic transcription, and then translated it.  I have a copy of Hayes' notes and the grad student's diary entry.

Edited January 13, 2015 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

Hello. I too do not see any similarity between the AM and Egyptian hieroglyphic/hieratic writing. It also does not bear any similarity to any language I know. However, it does not, to my mind, appear just to be scribbles. There seems to be enough repetition and design to suggest that, at the very least, someone may have been trying to create what LOOKED like a plausible script.

 

Some of the "characters" suggest Logograms which are usually very complex. Some are very simple. IF the text were a real language, one could postulate that these less complex characters are either a) high frequency logograms which have undergone a simplification process or b) phonetic writing which would be used to indicate grammar.

.........................................................................

You make some interesting comments, and I would be interested to see something more analytic and substantive from you.  What do you see there that eliminates the notion of just scribbles?  Does it have structure?

 

For example, note that the document consists of lines of large and lines of small characters.  This is not happenstantial, and both sets of lines are separate structures.  You can discover for yourself what those structures are by using the repetitive characters and groups of characters, as well as applying the punctuation contained in it (cf. the usual verse points used in Egyptian and Coptic).  Once you have the structure laid out, then you can examine the discrete stichs or cola which are more amenable to decipherment.  Examining parallel phrases or word pairs might help a lot in such an endeavor.

[Hillel2]

You make some interesting comments, and I would be interested to see something more analytic and substantive from you.  What do you see there that eliminates the notion of just scribbles?  Does it have structure?

 

For example, note that the document consists of lines of large and lines of small characters.  This is not happenstantial, and both sets of lines are separate structures.  You can discover for yourself what those structures are by using the repetitive characters and groups of characters, as well as applying the punctuation contained in it (cf. the usual verse points used in Egyptian and Coptic).  Once you have the structure laid out, then you can examine the discrete stichs or cola which are more amenable to decipherment.  Examining parallel phrases or word pairs might help a lot in such an endeavor.

Hello. Well, I haven't worked with this document so i doubt i could contribute anything by way of its decipherment. However, part of my background is in linguistics and i'm familiar with a large number of divergent scripts.

 

The detail of some of the characters (sorry, i can't replicate them from here which makes references difficult) suggests planning, not spontaneity. I.E. the copy is either from an original source OR the characters were devised as the AM was produced.

 

Children (as a game) and some "professional psychics" sometimes produce documents in an "original" script. Usually these are just scribblings. One can tell because there is little repetition, generally no complexity and also, the physical depth of the inscription is fairly light (usually when we engage in real writing, it requires a certain amount of physical effort lacking in scribbling....note; children lack full motor control, psychics are experiencing whatever that state of mind is that makes them psychic :-)). Given some of the characters and their apparent depth, the Caractors document does not suggest a child's game or a psychic's spontaneous meanderings.

 

I am not saying the Caractors document is or is not a real language. I don't have the skill or the faith background to make that determination. I would like to say that the characters COULD be real characters of a kind. Logograms (Chinese) tend to be busy. Graphemes (Arabic, Hebrew, Latin) tend to be fairly simple. The document contains examples of both complex and simple "characters" so, if it is genuine, i would think it mainly a logographic script with some simple logograms or possibly graphemes thrown in to express syntactic and grammatical changes to the word. Were i using Egyptian hieroglyphics (busy) or a completely new logographic system to write Hebrew, I would also want to employ graphemes (simple) to convey the grammar and syntax. We could do this in English. Ex: You want to write "dogs." You draw a picture of a dog. To make it plural you add the "s."

 

I am not well versed with the Egyptian scripts although i understand how they work. The characters don't look Egyptian to me but of course, if genuine, they certainly could have changed over time as stated in the BOM. To my own eyes, they remind me of the Cherokee syllabary (i am not proposing any connection) which in turn was based on the shape of English (Latin) letters. Of course, completely different languages with different alphabets can have identical characters. Georgian has characters that look an awful lot like Burmese characters even though there was no traffic between the two ethnic groups and, hence, no connection between the languages. I'm wandering away a bit from the original thread question but i just wanted to try to answer Your question as best as i could.

[canard78]

Hello. Well, I haven't worked with this document so i doubt i could contribute anything by way of its decipherment. However, part of my background is in linguistics and i'm familiar with a large number of divergent scripts.

The detail of some of the characters (sorry, i can't replicate them from here which makes references difficult) suggests planning, not spontaneity. I.E. the copy is either from an original source OR the characters were devised as the AM was produced.

Children (as a game) and some "professional psychics" sometimes produce documents in an "original" script. Usually these are just scribblings. One can tell because there is little repetition, generally no complexity and also, the physical depth of the inscription is fairly light (usually when we engage in real writing, it requires a certain amount of physical effort lacking in scribbling....note; children lack full motor control, psychics are experiencing whatever that state of mind is that makes them psychic :-)). Given some of the characters and their apparent depth, the Caractors document does not suggest a child's game or a psychic's spontaneous meanderings.

I am not saying the Caractors document is or is not a real language. I don't have the skill or the faith background to make that determination. I would like to say that the characters COULD be real characters of a kind. Logograms (Chinese) tend to be busy. Graphemes (Arabic, Hebrew, Latin) tend to be fairly simple. The document contains examples of both complex and simple "characters" so, if it is genuine, i would think it mainly a logographic script with some simple logograms or possibly graphemes thrown in to express syntactic and grammatical changes to the word. Were i using Egyptian hieroglyphics (busy) or a completely new logographic system to write Hebrew, I would also want to employ graphemes (simple) to convey the grammar and syntax. We could do this in English. Ex: You want to write "dogs." You draw a picture of a dog. To make it plural you add the "s."

I am not well versed with the Egyptian scripts although i understand how they work. The characters don't look Egyptian to me but of course, if genuine, they certainly could have changed over time as stated in the BOM. To my own eyes, they remind me of the Cherokee syllabary (i am not proposing any connection) which in turn was based on the shape of English (Latin) letters. Of course, completely different languages with different alphabets can have identical characters. Georgian has characters that look an awful lot like Burmese characters even though there was no traffic between the two ethnic groups and, hence, no connection between the languages. I'm wandering away a bit from the original thread question but i just wanted to try to answer Your question as best as i could.

No problem at all. Please feel free to pursue this tangent as long as you and Robert want to. It's far more interesting than my OP.

[Robert F. Smith]

Hello. Well, I haven't worked with this document so i doubt i could contribute anything by way of its decipherment. However, part of my background is in linguistics and i'm familiar with a large number of divergent scripts.

 

The detail of some of the characters (sorry, i can't replicate them from here which makes references difficult) suggests planning, not spontaneity. I.E. the copy is either from an original source OR the characters were devised as the AM was produced.

.............................................................................................

 I'm wandering away a bit from the original thread question but i just wanted to try to answer Your question as best as i could.

A nice public domain photo of the Caractors Transcript is available here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Caractors_large.jpg , and an initial analysis of them has been made at http://www.shields-research.org/General/SEHA/SEHA_Newsletter_122-2.PDF .

 

One unique thing you might notice, Hillel, is that the second group of small characters (3 lines) in the Transcript have a series of hyphens or dashes within the characters -- something absent from the first group of large characters (4 lines).  When examined separately, although the script is similar, the two groups exhibit separate structures.  One can see this by using the hyphens of the second group to lay out the groups of characters in separate lines.  With a hyphen at the outset of each phrase or line, reading from right to left, one can then discern an overall rhetorical structure.  The same type of rhetorical structure also organizes the larger first group of characters (top four lines), except that there the punctuation is not hyphens, but rather small round circles at the ends of beginning, close, and center.  Just four such small circles.  There thus seems to be an overarching parallelism governing these structures.  That taken together with the symmetrical repetition of certain groups of characters ought to have linguistic significance, don't you think?

[Tacenda]

I can't for the life of me take the Caracters Transcript serious, because of remembering kids in grade school writing this way for fun.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Tacenda

[Hillel2]

A nice public domain photo of the Caractors Transcript is available here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Caractors_large.jpg , and an initial analysis of them has been made at http://www.shields-research.org/General/SEHA/SEHA_Newsletter_122-2.PDF .

 

One unique thing you might notice, Hillel, is that the second group of small characters (3 lines) in the Transcript have a series of hyphens or dashes within the characters -- something absent from the first group of large characters (4 lines).  When examined separately, although the script is similar, the two groups exhibit separate structures.  One can see this by using the hyphens of the second group to lay out the groups of characters in separate lines.  With a hyphen at the outset of each phrase or line, reading from right to left, one can then discern an overall rhetorical structure.  The same type of rhetorical structure also organizes the larger first group of characters (top four lines), except that there the punctuation is not hyphens, but rather small round circles at the ends of beginning, close, and center.  Just four such small circles.  There thus seems to be an overarching parallelism governing these structures.  That taken together with the symmetrical repetition of certain groups of characters ought to have linguistic significance, don't you think?

Hello.

 

Thank You for the referrences. What i would like to be able to do is cut and paste some of the characters which would make it easier to illustrate what i mean. I'm sure there's a way to do that but...

 

I agree with You: though not able to decipher the document (if that is even possible), it strikes me as not haphazard but as planned. Mind You, one could make up a text with no real phonetic or semantic values and then present it as an artifact. Sci-fi and fantasy movies do this all the time.

 

OTOH, the nature of the characters in the document bifurcate; some are very simple, some are very complex.Sci-fi scripts until recently really were just a bunch of squiggles and lines. The writers didn't bother to take the time to plan what COULD be a real script because the viewers didn't require it...squiggles looked authentic enough. The AM strikes me as more complex.

 

The second reference You sent me talks about this as well (I remember reading this article many years ago. I thought it also interesting but am disappointed that, as far a i know, there really hasn't been any attempt since 1970 to continue with or analyze further the data along the lines proposed by C.H. Jones. I realize that it might produce no results at all...it's extremely hard to work with a single artifact when deconding a script but i'm surprised that more people wouldn't keep trying just for the fun, if nothing else, of it). He believes the simple strokes are probably single syllable logograms and that the more complex characters represent polysyllabic characters. 

 

Were i to place myself in a position of defending the authenticity of the script (and i'm not saying it is or is not authentic) and were i to assume Hebrew as the underlying language, i would posit the complex characters as Noun and Verb stems. In English noun and many verb stems are stable (they usually don't change the internal vowel) and then one can add endings to them to create new words. Ex. PLAY (verb stem)>PLAY-ed, PLAY-ful, PLAY-s, dis-PLAY-ed, un-PLAY-ful-ness etc, etc. The less complex characters would represent prefixes and suffixes as in the example i have given with PLAY.

 

But there is a problem here. I'm not sure what Your knowledge of Hebrew and Semitic languages are but for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know...In Hebrew the unchanging part of the word is the consonantal stem. The internal vowels frequently change to convey meaning (like tense). Example: the sequence KTB has to do with writing. It isn't a word, just an abstract representation. Let's propose using the @ sign to represent KTB. So i might write the phrase "he wrote" (KaTaB) as @. Now let's say i want to express "he will write" (yi-KT-o-B). I might write the initial sequence "yi" phonetically so the phrase in our pseudo script could be yi-@. "I wrote" is KaTaBti and "I will write" is "e-KToB" so we could write these respectively as @-ti and e-@. The shift in underlying vowels is not a problem. But now lets say that want to write "Write!" (KToB). The word has undergone an internal shift not suggested by any surrounding prefixes or suffixes. How do i express this? Well, it's not a problem to come up with a way, i could just add a symbol that means "Imperative form" and the reader would then know how to read it. 

 

So what would be the point of this long segue? :-) Could one write Hebrew in Egyptian characters? Certainly. At the same time, it's not an efficient system. Lots of determining word pronunciation and meaning by context. Using two different types of writing (logographic and phonetic). On the other hand it could add a visual sub-text which for believers in esoterica might be an attractive notion.

 

I've only read the BOM through (carefully) twice so please forgive my not being able to remember where and exactly what. But, am i correct in remebering that the reason for using Reformed Egyptian was 1) because they needed to pack a lot of information onto a limitted number of plates, 2) The Hebrew took up too much room (this would be true), 3. The RE script was extremely concise, i.e. a sermon need only take up a few lines in RE versus several full plates in Hebrew.

 

If the script is logographic-phonetic (Egyptian, RE, or otherwise), i don't think it would accomplish this purpose.

 

A short hand system would be better.

 

Yet many of the characters are extremely complex which is not typical of short-hand.

 

Of course, in considering the AM as a genuine document of some sorts, could the script actually be entirely "pictorgraphic?" The Aztec speakers of Nahuatl, for example, did not have a developed writing system like that of the Maya. Basically, they drew pictures of events and had a handful of symbols that contextualized them (in the past, sequential, e.g. "it came to pass" sorts of symbols) If the symbols are basically just pictures (albeit of a highly highly abstract nature) they would just suggest an event known to the readers yet read differently by every reader (as different people would verbalize differently a picture of a man walking down a staircase holding a briefcase). Now there is no need for an underlying language like Hebrew. Though the Nephites may have spoken some kind of Hebrew, the underlying system is essentially just memory. Non-Hebrew speaking Nephites would have understood the pictures in the same way because they knew the back ground of events. Outsiders who did not, would just see a bunch of highly abstract pictures and not know what they were referring to.  A system of understood, highly abstract pictograms could be a very economical way to get a lot of information onto a small surface but we have to know the events ahead of time to get to the meaning. Ordinary mortals can't extract the meaning from the pictures without knowledge of the events (too abstract) unless one posits the use of "seership" which Joseph Smith is believed to have had by those who have faith in what he said. The other thing is that, at this point, we have actually moved backwards in the development of writing (from logo-graphic-phonetic to pictographic) which, though possible under the restraints of Mormon's environment, would be very very unusual.

[Robert F. Smith]

Hello.

 

Thank You for the referrences. What i would like to be able to do is cut and paste some of the characters which would make it easier to illustrate what i mean. I'm sure there's a way to do that but...

 

I agree with You: though not able to decipher the document (if that is even possible), it strikes me as not haphazard but as planned. Mind You, one could make up a text with no real phonetic or semantic values and then present it as an artifact. Sci-fi and fantasy movies do this all the time.

 

OTOH, the nature of the characters in the document bifurcate; some are very simple, some are very complex.Sci-fi scripts until recently really were just a bunch of squiggles and lines. The writers didn't bother to take the time to plan what COULD be a real script because the viewers didn't require it...squiggles looked authentic enough. The AM strikes me as more complex.

 

The second reference You sent me talks about this as well (I remember reading this article many years ago. I thought it also interesting but am disappointed that, as far a i know, there really hasn't been any attempt since 1970 to continue with or analyze further the data along the lines proposed by C.H. Jones. I realize that it might produce no results at all...it's extremely hard to work with a single artifact when deconding a script but i'm surprised that more people wouldn't keep trying just for the fun, if nothing else, of it). He believes the simple strokes are probably single syllable logograms and that the more complex characters represent polysyllabic characters. 

 

Were i to place myself in a position of defending the authenticity of the script (and i'm not saying it is or is not authentic) and were i to assume Hebrew as the underlying language, i would posit the complex characters as Noun and Verb stems. In English noun and many verb stems are stable (they usually don't change the internal vowel) and then one can add endings to them to create new words. Ex. PLAY (verb stem)>PLAY-ed, PLAY-ful, PLAY-s, dis-PLAY-ed, un-PLAY-ful-ness etc, etc. The less complex characters would represent prefixes and suffixes as in the example i have given with PLAY.

...............................................................................................................

A great deal has been done since Jones worked on it, and several people have tried lone-wolf efforts at decipherment, but without the distinctions which have mentioned here.  The internal structure was not understood at that stage.  Then there was the vertical forgery of the AT by Mark Hofmann, which had most people convinced – until he murdered two people and then confessed everything.  He is now in prison.  He made a deal.  Focus has waned since then, except for new light thrown on the rhetorical structure of the Transcript.

 

The AT character sets are actually available online.  Here for example are a couple of groups which are found in parallel with one another.  I have tried reading them as Egyptian here, just as an illustration:

 

FGHJ            B6   ˁšЗ pr(w) šsp  “many/rich are the temples of the Lord!”

CVB                     B6’   ˁšЗ šsp “the riches of the Lord”

 

What do you think?  Of course, both Hebrew and ancient Egyptian are very similar in linguistic structure, and Egyptian follows the same transformations as Hebrew in attaching prefixes and suffixes.

[Hillel2]

A great deal has been done since Jones worked on it, and several people have tried lone-wolf efforts at decipherment, but without the distinctions which have mentioned here.  The internal structure was not understood at that stage.  Then there was the vertical forgery of the AT by Mark Hofmann, which had most people convinced – until he murdered two people and then confessed everything.  He is now in prison.  He made a deal.  Focus has waned since then, except for new light thrown on the rhetorical structure of the Transcript.

 

The AT character sets are actually available online.  Here for example are a couple of groups which are found in parallel with one another.  I have tried reading them as Egyptian here, just as an illustration:

 

FGHJ            B6   ˁšЗ pr(w) šsp  “many/rich are the temples of the Lord!”

CVB                     B6’   ˁšЗ šsp “the riches of the Lord”

 

Hello. Might You possibly refer me to any on-line studies (good ones) on the AM (per our discussion). I would love to see anything along the same lines as Jone's work. One does wonder why more folk with a linguistic inclination and a penchant for trying to decypher the undecypherable aren't collaborating on this. I suppose not enough people with the background, desire and proximity.

 

I recall that Jones tried to match up part of the AM and the opening lines of the BOM. Do You remember if he had a background in Hebrew. I was going to write out that part of the text in my odd Hebrew and see if there were any patterns.  

 

Besides the Mi'kmaq connection (which i find complicated), has any one postulated the AM as a mnemonic system? What do You think of that possibility?