Ancient Egyptian text used to keep snakes away from sarcophagus |
One of the coolest museum exhibits I’ve ever seen was King Tut. Saw it on a field trip in school in the 70s and was captivated. Easily impressed as a youth, but the fact that the exhibit has stuck with me over 30 years now tells me it was really something spectacular. Have you seen the Tut exhibit? If not, you’ll have another opportunity soon.
In November 2007 London will have the exhibit:
Since the discovery of his tomb in 1922, Tutankhamun has captured the hearts of people around the world. Buried with him were treasures beyond the imagination, a tomb holding the most magnificent treasures of the Golden Age of the Pharaohs and giving us a glittering glimpse into the past.
Egypt seems like a fascinating place and if it wasn’t geographically located so close to hazardous areas, I’d like to visit there someday. The snakes part worries me a bit, but I doubt they are roaming around Cairo. Fortunately, London much closer, so maybe if the visit makes it into 2008, we can plan a London trip.
As for snakes, apparently ancient Egyptians were concerned about keeping poisonous snakes away from the mummies.
While Egyptians considered their culture and religion superior to that of their neighbors to the north, they were willing to do anything to protect the mummies of their kings from the poisonous snakes.Believing that some snakes spoke the Semitic language of the Canaanites, Egyptians included the magic spells in inscriptions on two sides of the sarcophagus in an effort to ward them off.
This find is noteworthy because it “might be the most ancient Semitic text ever discovered” (Updated 6:08pm PST: quote per Richard Steiner, a professor of Semitic languages at Yeshiva University in New York. I also fixed the screwed up link which wasn’t wrapped around the IMG tag properly.)
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Do you have a source for the idea that this “might be the most ancient Semetic (sic) text ever discovered”?
Tutankhamen was buried in the 1300’s BC. We have Semitic texts from Babylonia and Ebla that are about 1000 years older than that. If you mean the Canaanite languages or their alphabet specifically, there are the Ugaritic texts that date to about 1400 BC.
Comment by Sterling Camden — January 24, 2007 @ 8:48 pm PST
Click on the USA Today logo, Sterling, the quote you had came from the article already linked in the post. The King Tut exhibit stuff is separate from the USA Today story. My own embellishment and memories there. And a little carbon dating on my age as well.
Comment by TDavid — January 24, 2007 @ 8:55 pm PST
Oops, my bad, the USA Today story wasn’t linked. I’m going to chase down that link and fix …
Comment by TDavid — January 24, 2007 @ 9:05 pm PST
Hey TD, I get no link on the USA Today logo. But if they’re talking about a different Pharaoh, then the inscriptions could theoretically be older than the oldest known Semitic texts. It would be interesting to see whether they used an alphabet, cuneiform, or hieroglyphics to represent the Canaanite words.
Comment by Sterling Camden — January 24, 2007 @ 9:07 pm PST
The link was there but the closing < /a> was in front of the IMG tag instead of behind. Doh! Has been fixed now. If you view the cache of the original post you’ll see it’s operator error on my part.
Again, they really are two separate stories. One is my memory of the King Tut exhibit and the other is the USA Today story. It’s just when I think of snakes and mummies, I think of King Tut.
Comment by TDavid — January 24, 2007 @ 9:11 pm PST
No problem, and thanks for fixing the link. That’s a fascinating story. They date the inscription to more than 1000 years earlier than Tut, so it could indeed be the oldest Semitic text. As the article says, the oldest previously known Semitic texts were from the 24th century BC (Old Babylonian and Eblaic). I take it that since they are mixed in with the Egyptian and were not recognized as Semitic for a century, they must be transcribed into hieroglyphics. I’d sure like to get hold of a picture of them to see for myself.
Comment by Sterling Camden — January 25, 2007 @ 12:14 pm PST
[…] Also, and this happened here yesterday to me. If you make a strong factual statement, make sure you reference (with link when possible) where the statement came from. […]
Pingback by Don’t let readers down, answer these five questions » Make You Go Hmm — January 25, 2007 @ 12:43 pm PST