Friday, September 26, 2014

declaration of serviceability in Egyptian hieroglyphics

This phrase is among the most touching sentiments I've seen. On the wall of a burial chamber, I suppose, a noble is commending their own intimate butt-kissing relationship with pharaoh. Although wealthy enough for funerary decoration, still liege.

This is typeface but in hand drawn pictures it would make an excellent tattoo.

   r-kh          n-f                    b3-kh                       n-f         ib       y

rekh nef bakh nef iby.



For a slave.

For the slave-minded. For someone devoted to a relationship. For a religious person. This would be a good tattoo for all those people, it says:

"He knew I was serviceably-minded toward him"

Is that gay or what? Ha ha, what a sub. What a bottom. What an ultra maroon-pants. 

The circle with horizontal lines we saw already in the name "Khufu" so we even know they sound like a gurgling "kh."  The smashed football above is a stylized mouth and it means the sound "r" so "r-kh."  Rekh means "know." (The mouth also signals "speaker" "he who speaks" administrator.) The flat thing is a document rolled up. It is a determinative sign meaning the word in front of it is in the conceptual world not the concrete world, as law, loyalty, math, and the like, words such as "know," "feel" and "think,"  things that happen in the mind.

Zig-zag water is "n" sound and also prepositional "to, for" 

Horned viper is masculine "father, he, him, his," and the like. It represents the sound "f." 

The bird is jabiru, b3, ba, a portion of the soul, ba+k means "do work," "do service," "serve," "deal with." Drawn with a little kneeling man ba+k+little man means "servant." There are other ways to say servant, a baseball bat "hn" biliteral. 

servant, b3-k, bak


The little man kneeling means "I" or "me" and this would make a great part of the tattoo. He wears a little skirt and a broad necklace and wide arm bracelets, eye kohl. 

The jug means "heart" The stroke under it means "the previous thing is real", a real heart, not just the sound "ib." The heart jug is another great tattoo element. It is a valentine, but right after the heart and "one" stroke are two diagonal strokes meaning precisely "two." 

Two hearts.

I can see how that could be confusing. They just said "a heart" and then they said "two." 

Two is exactly two. Never "a few" or "some."  

But three can be any plural three or beyond. 

Whereas in English we add an "s" sound to pluralize a word, ancient Egyptians added a "w" or "u" sound. The "y" sound expresses duality, depicted by two sedge fronds, two strokes, or repeating the noun once. Pluralizing to three and beyond, by drawing three of the same noun, or three strokes or "w" or "u."

"know to him service I to him two hearts."

"he knows my service to him is double hearted."

Good Lord, that is gay. 

Pay an artist to paint that across your interior mausoleum wall. For eternity.

By way of bragging, your boner fides as royal sub. 

He urgently wants to ease the way for himself into the afterlife. To all concerned he is bragging about knowing his place and keeping to it. He wants terribly to pick up where he left off. He is announcing his concern about his superior's awareness of his own slave-mindedness and his adherence to structure, his willingness to maintain order by hierarchy in pursuit of maat by obsequious servile compliancy. 

A better gay brag would be:

I fucked the pharaoh. And I also fucked the deputy. 

They said that's what they wanted so I honored their seniority.

It just sounds so weird when splayed out like that in little pictures then translated to English but it does have its Christian corollary.

"Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven."

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

The idea is your personal salvation is in your aligning all your desires with the urgency of divinity.

8 comments:

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

As I read I was pursuing a more earthly bond... related to a resignation.

Resignation... there is a relation for you.

A Time for Us Andy Williams?

Where did that come from?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

A time for us someday there'll be
When chains are torn by courage born of a love that's free
A time when dreams so long denied
Can flourish as we unveil the love we now must hide

A time for us at last to see
A life worthwhile for you and me


Holy Moli

Read more: Andy Williams - A Time For Us Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Terrific post btw.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

(1) He urgently wants to ease the way for himself into the afterlife.

Probably. But it's just as likely that he's also hoping to preserve or improve the prospects for his progeny, servants, allies, etc., here on earth.

(2) The idea is your personal salvation is in your aligning all your desires with the urgency of divinity.

For example, please see, The Father of Our Country.™

(3) "Forgive me, Godfather, but with you gone, me and Pete will come under Barzini's thumb sooner or later."

-- Salvatore Tessio, The Godfather (1972)

(4) And I'm with Lem. Thank you for a terrific post, Mr. Ahoy.

Shouting Thomas said...

Each time I pass before the crucifix in church, I genuflect. Yes, this is an act of submission before the Lord. It is good to humble yourself once a week before the Lord. Brings peace to my mind and soul.

You've got to serve somebody. Why the modern mind rebels so angrily against this is not a mystery to me, because I once felt the same way. Fighting against submitting to the wisdom of God made me utterly miserable and unsuccessful. Seeking a logical explanation for this is a waste of time.

I never fully understood the Our Father until my father died, and then I understood it completely. It is a prayer of gratitude for what God, reflected in our fathers provides to us without any effort on our part. Being grateful for the gifts of our fathers makes me content. If you don't understand the hellish catastrophe that the absence of the good father creates, read Crack.

The 60s mindset that dominates our thoughts posits that it is institutions that carry the evil the lives from generation to generation. This was both a completely infantile misunderstanding of humans, and a way for the individual to get himself off the hook.

Evil exists in each individual. Evil cannot be eradicated by destroying human institutions and returning to the Year Zero. It continues to live insider each of us.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Seems it's not just the popular entertainment industry that flatters its audience.

ricpic said...

"He knew I was serviceably minded to him" really means "I was loyal." Which is priority #1 in an aristocrat. So having that written in his tomb is an aristocrat's way of declaring that he fulfilled his most important obligation to the monarch.

ricpic said...

Great post, ST. You've gotten to the heart of the modern catastrophe: liberation from all forms of fidelity.