FOUND IN TRANSLATION

The Guardian (UK) reports that the old stories from ancient Egypt will get a modern translation.

Toby Wilkinson said he had decided to begin work on the anthology because there was a missing dimension in how ancient Egypt was viewed: “The life of the mind, as expressed in the written word.”

The written tradition lasted nearly 3,500 years and writing is found on almost every tomb and temple wall. Yet there had been a temptation to see it as “mere decoration”, he said, with museums often displaying papyri as artefacts rather than texts.

The public were missing out on a rich literary tradition, Wilkinson said. “What will surprise people are the insights behind the well-known facade of ancient Egypt, behind the image that everyone has of the pharaohs, Tutankhamun’s mask and the pyramids.”

Hieroglyphs were pictures but they conveyed concepts in as sophisticated a manner as Greek or Latin script, he said. Filled with metaphor and symbolism, they reveal life through the eyes of the ancient Egyptians. Tales of shipwreck and wonder, first-hand descriptions of battles and natural disasters, songs and satires make up the anthology, titled Writings from Ancient Egypt.

Penguin Classics, which is releasing the book on Wednesday, described it as a groundbreaking publication because “these writings have never before been published together in an accessible collection."

Wilkinson, a fellow of Clare College and author of other books on ancient Egypt, said some of the texts had not been translated for the best part of 100 years. “The English in which they are rendered – assuming they are in English – is very old-fashioned and impenetrable, and actually makes ancient Egypt seem an even more remote society,” he said.

There was a heavy ancient Egyptian theme in LOST. I spent many days trying to translate the set hieroglyphs to determine meaning of the show's plots and basic premise. I always thought there had to be a reason for such difficult detail of set design with the hieroglyphs to NOT mean something important in the show mythology.

The Book of the Dead was the text that stated the ancient belief system of what happened to a person when they died (their body and soul would separate and reunite after a journey through the underworld). But this new book will translate everyday life of the Egyptians: from stories, songs and writings of average farmers to give us a view of what this society was thinking and doing thousands of years ago. I suspect it will be a fascinating read.