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I must say I'm a little unhappy with how this thread has been usurped to be not about the writing on the obelisk but the appropriateness of it being in Paris. The latter is an important question with no easy answers but completely unrelated to the former.
Yet it also mentions why the obelisk is in Paris: a gift from the, Muslim, Ottoman, ruler of Egypt to France.
Fun facts, prophet Moses is the most mentioned prophet in the Quran even more than Muhammad. The main protagonist during Moses time is Pharaoh and his fake claim of divinity is recorded verbatim in the Quran [1].
Pharaoh declared, “O chiefs! I know of no other god for you but myself. So bake bricks out of clay for me, O Hamân, and build a high tower so I may look at the God of Moses, although I am sure he is a liar.”
[1] Quran Surah Al-Qasas (The Story): Ayat 38:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No way this was ever said. No way. It's so wild it's funny. I ought to follow US news more (and sorry for people who live there).
It's genuinely not bad as long as you don't have terminally online syndrome. The vast majority of the country, even people who don't like Trump, gets along with their everyday lives without stressing out about him. It's just that most people commenting on forums online are terminally online and get very worked up about things.
I've seen a few articles on this now. They keep calling it a "secret" message and "hieroglyphic cryptography," but then talk about how sufficiently literate people are supposed to understand it, and the content is along the lines of "The god-king cannot be dethroned" and "Make offerings to the gods." Nothing about this sounds like it was intended to be kept secret or confidential from anyone. This seems more like fan…
Crypto-hieroglyphic writing is a real thing: https://www.britannica.com/topic/hieroglyphic-writing/Crypto... Such writing would give non-standard meanings to signs, or drawn them in non-standard ways, or use entirely invented signs. It would be a puzzle to work out the meaning, and I imagine most people who weren't very literate would be stumped. They certainly stumped egyptologists for a while when the first example…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Egypt was subjugated to the Ottoman Empire at the time. And even if they had some kind of king/dictator, it is certainly was a decision of a free people. What antique France monuments did France give away just like that for no reason? Do not take what should not have been offered.
> What antique France monuments did France give away just like that for no reason? It may stretch the definition of "antique" but does the Statue of Liberty count? Nations give other nations things all the time, and when power changes hands that doesn't negate those gifts of the spirit in which they were offered.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
the ruler was maybe somewhat independent, the nation was not. Romans also considered Herolds to be a just ruler of an "free" Judea as far as they are conceres. That's how often subjugation works.
It was kind of the opposite, AIUI; the Ottomans claimed that Muhammad Ali was just a regional governor, but the country was de facto independent; the Ottomans had no ability to control it.
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They were, Egypt was conquered at the time. The empires pillaged it and gifted it among themselves.
What nations have never been conquered at any time? Rulers come and go. Countries are born and die and become new countries that get conquered and become something else ruled by someone else. Everything in America can be considered "pillaged" by that same standard, but would you see it all returned?
>In broad terms, the messages seek to remind the elite that Ramses had been chosen by the gods and claimed his ancestry from Amun-Re and Maat. Ramses had come to the throne relatively late at the age of 25 years old following the death of his father Seti. Having not been born a king, Ramses used the obelisk as a propaganda tool early in his reign to reinforce his supremacy and divine nature. Fun facts, prophet Moses…
https://www.progres.net.eg/plusieurs-messages-caches-sur-lob... In this article in French, they mention hieroglyphs encoded in the way arms and legs are drawn of a figure on the throne of Tutankhamun, and that only 6 Egyptologists in the whole worlds are able to decode them. Hmmm, I wonder how mainstream these ideas are? Do other Egyptologists respect them?
The idea of cryptohieroglyphs is accepted as true it seems (at least in France), even though most Egyptologist think they are highly interpretative: think about literature and how some literature expert would interpret Poe's books (sorry only classic US author i know beside Kerouac), except worse. Still, it's clear ancient egyptians loved their puzzles, the clear interpretation of what they mean is what elude us.
While hieroglyphic cryptography is a thing (as is BTW "sportive orthography" in Ancient Egyptian), this is not it. I am all for acknowledging that Ancient Egyptian art is often merging writing and depiction in a way that escapes the unprepared who would point to a prominent figure in a grave wall decoration and say 'this is a picture', then point to some hieroglyphs and say 'that is writing'. It's in principle not wr…
Very interesting. Could this just be a miscommunication caused by a blogger literally looking to write clickbait? Hype up a paper without revealing its main conclusion? I would have no way of knowing if this very literal reading of the scene contains some wordplay that would require knowing how these words sounded.
That said I'm no Egyptologist myself as seemingly the journalists aren't, either, but as for me I'm itching to write a scathing takedown of this affair. I'm open to discovering that maybe the originator of the theory was misunderstood by the media, maybe his wording was not clear enough. I guess what I want to say is when you want clicks there's more than one way to do it; my way would roughly be (1) criticize use of the term 'cryptography' when all they do is tell me what they see in the picture: king giving offerings to god; king's sitting on a mat(?), god's standing on a plinth (as is customary); (2) criticize the very specific interpretation they give for this particular depiction when we find this same motive all over the place, all of the time; (3) criticize the claim that only nobles travelling by boat would have been able to see and understand the message when in Ancient Egypt taking a boat to cross the river as well as, as a local of Thebes, taking part in festivities must both have been very commonplace for old and young, rich and poor alike; also, artists in general and, for example, the foremen of worker gangs working on Khufu's pyramid were very well able to use writing and depictions to express themselves.