Reformed Egyptian

 

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Bill Hamblin

postFeb 12 2008, 12:02 PM

Post #59



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QUOTE(soren @ Feb 12 2008, 08:12 AM) *


That is conceivable but unlikely. Reformed Egyptian script was shorter in length than Hebrew, and so would almost certainly have been a hieroglyphic script. Hebrew is a very short script itself because it has no vowels and only consonant are written. If reformed Egyptian takes less space on a plate than Hebrew, it would have to have an even denser alphabet, which, since the language comes from Egypt, is probably not phonetic but heiroglyphic. Yet hieroglyphs do not represent more than one spoken language. You can’t spell Hebrew words with Egyptian pictures. All you can do is represent Egyptian words, unless you assume there is verbal equivalence between Hebrew and Egyptian, which there isn’t.



Sorry, but this is simply nonsense. There are numerous consonantal signs in hieroglyphics, including biliteral and triliteral signs--that is, characters representing clusters of two or three consonants. Furthermore, Egyptians were perfectly capable of writing foreign words and proper names in hieroglyphics--there are numerous examples, including the names Jerusalem and Israel.

Finally, it is crucial to keep in mind the distinction between script and language. Reformed Egyptian is a script (set of written symbols). In principle, any script can be used to write any language. See, for example, Psalm 20 written in Egyptian script:
Charles F. Nims, Richard C. Steiner "A Paganized Version of Psalm 20:2-6 from the Aramaic Text in Demotic Script" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 103, No. 1, (Jan. - Mar., 1983), pp. 261-274.

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