I have a Jewish friend who is a flying instructor and collects bronze

I have a Jewish friend who is a flying instructor and collects bronze
statues
of Tibetan Buddhist deities. He is always looking for ways to
help other
spiritual people. He makes meditation pyramids for New
Agers in his spare
time, and sometimes stained glass images like the
Horakhty falcon. The other
day he said, "So, Bob; if you wanted to
make some good luck charms for modern
people using old school spells,
what would you need?" I said that I would
need some sea rush. Behind
his house is a river bed that is dry for part of
the year. He said
that he had some growing in his back yard, and would send
me some,
along with some Sumi ink, as I had given him some, years ago.


He asked me to make him some calligraphic religious art, like
the
Egyptian version of what we see in Chinese wall scrolls; and if
I
wanted to make it available to more people he would put it on ebay.
I
told him I had been thinking about just that sort of thing for my
own
environment, ever since I got a copy of the book _Global Ritualism_.

There are all kinds of wonderful, authentic looking works of scribal
art
available for traditions around the world. Why not for the
Egyptian one? I
have come across an artist in Germany who does
hieratic, and he is very good.
I don't know if he speaks English,
though. And, I came across one who does
Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and
Egyptian papyrus art, but his Egyptian glyphs seem
not yet blessed
with an inspired grasp of ancient style.

But, anyway,
I came across a discussion from ten years ago from the
University of Chicago
where (if I read it correctly) one expert said
that earlier papyri than
generally thought seemed to him to have been
written with Phragmites reed,
rather than Juncus rush. Reed pens seem
to have replaced rush brushes for
writing with the arrival of
Hellenism in Egypt. One can see the brush strokes
on hieratic papyri
and ostraca, and the rush brush may have remained the
standard for
everyday scribal needs until Alexander arrived. But, looking at
the
ink technique, it seems that some of the Book of the Dead
manuscripts
in semi-cursive may have been written with reed, as early as the
New
Kingdom. I saw one Saite scroll that really does look very much
like
it was done with reed.

So, I was wondering if anyone on this
list might have given any
thought to our future "language commune", and the
possibilities of
ancient Egyptian calligraphy for the our aesthetic needs? I
noticed
from examples of Arabic calligraphy that the difference between
the
student and the master is that the student has a grasp of
stroke
direction, proportion, and sequence. But, the master is able to
make
his pen strokes free of any wobbly imperfections. If there
is
anything as a solid core Egyptophile that I would love to
immerse
myself in, it is Egyptian calligraphy. Dr. Bob Bianchi made a
comment
on the Thoth-Scribe list about getting inside the heads of the
ancient
priests. As for my approach to doing this, it seems to me
that
understanding their brush technique might be one cool way.

I saw
the PBS show, the other night, about the ancient art of making
katanas or
Samurai swords. Ever step of the process is approached
with a reverent
attitude and prodigious amounts of focus. Many of the
Egyptians obviously
approached the mdw nTr in a similar way.
Consequently, I would like to ask
the members of this list to consider
sending me any links off line that might
contribute to a better
understanding of how the scribes of old approached
their task. I have
not looked at John Baines' new book on the culture of
literacy in
Egypt, yet, as it is several hundred dollars. Also, when my ADD
kicks
in and my mind starts wandering from the grammatical explanations
in
Gardiner and Allen, I think it a nice boon to my intuitive
cerebral
hemisphere to grab a calligraphy pen and copy out some exercises.


Fischer's book shows us pencil skeletons of monumental glyphs, but
a
good Arab artist could use them to help guide his hand in the
formation
of true calligraphy. What I am contemplating is to build on
his work, which
forms part of a good basis for what might be done in
the future, but contains
very little information on the Art History or
paleographic considerations of
reconstructing the work of the old
scribes. In order to create a page of
script like we see in Papyrus
Ani, there are numerous things that have yet to
find their way into
discussion, as far I as I can tell. If anyone has come
across such
discussions, please mention them to me. If they do not seem
very
appropriate to this list, please e-mail me,