Sunday, April 12, 2009

Phoenix

Egg Gyft
Phoenix and Easter Eggs

Prov.1:12
"Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit: 12 degluttiamus eum sicut infernus viventem et integrum quasi descendentem in lacum"


Chess: "Tiger Woods" "Joaquin Phoenix"

goldfinch: Spinus tristis, gondola, Moses Gomberg : Russian chemist, discovered free radicals … Camilo Golgi: Golgi apparatus .... Oliver Goldsmith...Lagoon of Venice "People gave vent to their unutterable relief that the slaughter was over" [Walter Lippmann ("Golf")] "And yet men are so foolishly venturous as to set out lightly on pilgrimage" [Bunyan ("Venus")]…… "Johnny Cash": "Knoxville" : "Great Smokey Mountain" Johnny Cash, Country Musician / Country Singer /

Johnny Cash
Country singer Johnny Cash was nicknamed "The Man in Black," a nod to his wardrobe as well as to the darker themes of his music. He got his start with Sun Records in 1955. Like fellow Sun recording artists Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley, Cash used country and gospel influences in what was called rockabilly, an early form of rock 'n' roll. He wrote "Folsom Prison Blues" while serving in the Air Force and in 1956 the song became one of his first big hits. In the 1950s and '60s Cash toured relentlessly and had many more hits, employing his rumbling, mournful baritone on tunes like "I Walk the Line" and "Ring of Fire." In 1968 he married June Carter of the Carter Family Singers. Cash later performed with artists as diverse as Bob Dylan and U2. He earned a new audience with his 1994 acoustic album American Recordings and continued to record new songs in spite of ongoing struggles with pneumonia, diabetes and a nervous system disease known as autonomic neuropathy. Cash was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. Two years before his death, in 2001, he received the National Medal of the Arts for artistic excellence.

Johnny's daughter, Roseanne Cash, is also a country singer... Johnny Cash was played by Joaquin Phoenix in the 2005 biographical film Walk the Line. June Carter Cash was played by Reese Witherspoon... A theatrical musical based on his life, Ring of Fire, opened in 2006.

Mosaico epistolar:

A question for Sculptors only, could the construction of Macchu Picchu had been directed (coordinated) by Norsemen-i.e. Swedes at the time?
Also keep in mind, there is a positive to the word "forge", and there is a negative to that word. Is it possible to forge seminal languages without a Theology? Is it possible to do Science without a seminal privileged language? Holy Spirit, Batman!!!!
From "Pigeon Forge" greetings,
"Mach 2"
P.S. :Just a little bit of humour. Greetings to all.


Given the contingent nature of linguistic change, it doesn't seem to me that the disappearance of "speculum" in favor of "miroir" really requires us to abandon (or even to question) a Romance etymology for the latter. Such things happen. On the other hand, I do think that if you're going to seriously propose that mAA-Hr is the source of "miroir", you have to deal with a couple of issues:
1) the fact that the earliest (that I've found) attestation of this word in French is the 11th-century word "miradoir". If from mAA-Hr, whence the 'd'?
2) the existence in Spanish of "mirador" meaning "viewpoint" or "windowed balcony" or "spectator". This word testifies to the existence of a Romance word meaning "look" developed from Latin "mirari" and capable of spawning nouns. Also, if an Egyptian word meaning "mirror" is required to explain the existence of "miradoir", with the same meaning, in medieval French, why does essentially the same word in Spanish mean something so different?
The meaning "spectator" for "mirador" also shows that it's possible to develop multiple words with the same meaning from native materials. The existence of Latin "spectator" (which gives modern "espectador") didn't prevent "mirador" from taking on the same meaning. This means that the argument for mAA-Hr can't be that "miroir" would never have developed from Romance roots in the presence of "speculum", but must instead be that, once developed, it wouldn't have replaced the original word. And I don't see how you can make a good case for that; new words replace old ones all the time.
Surely it's most parsimonious to posit a parallel development of "miradoir"/"mirador", with the general sense of "looker; a thing for looking", from antecedents that French and Spanish had in common. The hypothesis of a connection with Egyptian may be interesting, but, as LaPlace is supposed to have said about God vis-à-vis celestial mechanics, there's no need for it.



>How, one might ask, did the Spanish latch onto the word "adobe", >which very likely comes from Egyptian??
Through Arabic, of course, "at-tub" meaning "the brick" and that's how it sometimes works--but one needs to give the etymological credit to the oldest culture involved in the cognate and/or diffusion of the term in the --in this case the brick-making one.
>The term which we transliterate as "mAA" even from its very spelling >[see Hannig, p. 314, col. 2] probably was vocalized something >like "mar" or even "mir", evidenced by the Maru-Aten, short for Pa->maru-en-pa-aten [The Viewing-Palace-of-the-Aten]. From the >transliterations, it would seem that it's been thought that the >sign, the *eye* ["ir"]in the spellings was a mere determinative, >even though its place in the word is not where determinatives most >often were.
It doesn't much matter, as transliterations are a separate issue from pronunciation, anyway. "mAA", I am quite sure, is part of a Near Eastern linguistic pattern for "viewing". Hebrew has "mareh" for "view" [noun] and another noun, "a look or glance". But, in Hebrew, the verb "to look" is something different. Regardless, the Biblical Hebrew for "mirror" is "marah", as evidenced by Exodus 38:8
"And he made the laver of brass, and the foot of it of brass, of the lookingglasses of the women assembling, which assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation." The plural "marot" is used there.
Finally, I do not think the older Egyptian "mAA Hr" survived into Coptic. I cannot find it in Crum. My best guess as to how it was once vocalized is "marho". The Phoenicians have been credited with getting around quite a bit and, of course, they used west-Semitic and their word for "mirror" was probably identical to that of Hebrew.
So, as I have said more than once, there is nothing to be proved about the word "mirror" but its Latin etymology is suspect for reasons I have already stated.
As for "Mary" and "Miriam"--there was also another version of "Miriam" and that was "Mariamne"--this being the name of the wife of Herod. In all other cultures other than Jewish and English, the name of "Mary" is called "Maryam". For sure. Could the road there lead nack to "mryt-imn"? Hard to say.
>A popular one that I heard a few times links the name "Mary" with
>"mr" (Gardiner U6 or U7), "beloved".
>Is there any justification for that one?
Mary comes from Maria <>
Hebrew name Miriam (mrim; cp. sister of Moses).
So you will see there is a pesky -m at the end. ;)
The meaning or origin of the Hebrew name is not fully clear
(the rabbis linked it with a word for "bitter", many modern
scholars with a word for "rebellion"). I've no opinion on that.
>The proposed derivation of "mirror" from mAA-Hr suffers from the >same deficiency. The French word "miroir" is clearly a "thing for >looking", from "mirer" (to look at), from Latin "mirari" (to wonder >at, admire) from "mirus" (wonderful), ultimately from PIE "smei-" >(to >smile).
The etmology may seem to be "clear" but the fact remains that French is evidently the only Romance language that did not adopt the *actual* Latin word for "mirror" which is "speculum". Why not? To wit:
Italian--"specchio"
Spanish--"espejo"
Portuguese--"espelho"
and even Germanic "Spiegel"
It would seem strange that French did not follow suit but took a completely different Latin term to describe this item, which did have a name and was *supposedly* not known in Gaul until the Romans arrived there.
> There's just no reason to abandon this perfectly reasonable >etymology in favor of a speculative and (so far as I know) >undocumented connection between medieval French and a phrase from >Middle Egyptian.
It may be very speculative but one answer could be that the object was known previous to the advent of the Latin language in Gaul by a different name. The south of France is, after all, accessible by the Mediterranean and mirrors were Egyptian objects long before others used them. How, one might ask, did the Spanish latch onto the word "adobe", which very likely comes from Egyptian?? The term which we transliterate as "mAA" even from its very spelling [see Hannig, p. 314, col. 2] probably was vocalized something like "mar" or even "mir", evidenced by the Maru-Aten, short for Pa-maru-en-pa-aten [The Viewing-Palace-of-the-Aten]. From the transliterations, it would seem that it's been thought that the sign, the *eye* ["ir"]in the spellings was a mere determinative, even though its place in the word is not where determinatives most often were. More I cannot say and, as I stated previously, there is no way to prove a connection. I wonder if Carsten Peust had anything to say about "mAA". His book on Egyptian phonology is downloadable, but too great a file for my, at present, too-slow connection.


>Specifically in the case of nTr, we must remember that Egyptian was a fully developed and written language centuries before Rome emerged even as village. Trade has been proven. Ideas travel with trade. Factor into this that as a function of etymological studies over the centuries between the silencing of Egyptian and its revival, Egyptian influence was unknown and, for them, unknowable. Our calendar came to us from Egypt via late Roman contact. Perhaps the concept of “divine nature” came from early Roman contact?


> Consider the possibility that the whole question of etymology has been
> skewed by the tendency by european students of ancient Egyptian to CHOOSE
> translations for poorly understood Egyptian words from the modern
> vocabularies with which they are familiar.
>
> In other words, critically thinking we should wonder whether the glyph(s)
> now taken by Euro/Anglo egyptologists to mean "seat" really does mean
> that, or if it is more probable that the English word "seat" FELT LIKE a
> nice translation because of the superficial phonetic similarity with
> Egyptian /st/ or /3st/?
>
> I am not skeptical of the reality of lexical spread - whether within
> language families or across - but the guessing and approximate nature of
> translation across a gap of thousands of years must be acknowledged too.
>
> matthew
Hi;
This is a really good point, though sometimes, a translator simply is
not always outstandingly intimate with his own language. I remember
once in Latin class where we were translating _sterno_, and the
professor said it was to "crush" or "smash". Since this case was in a
battle scene in the _Aeneid_, I ventured that it probably meant,
"squash", and she readily agreed.
One word that leaps out at me is _bAk_, which has an equivalent in
Sanskrit. In PtahHotep, it occurs in an instance where it seems to me
that it can only mean to issue rather than receive orders (i.e.,
"govern" your son, later on in the text), leading me to believe that the
meaning of the word is at least occasionally more causal and implicative
of real ability than it is generally given when translated "serve", or
similarly.
I wonder if there is an expert who could look at bAk n.k idbwy to see if
it might rather mean "as you govern the two shores"?
I think we will get more sensitive translations of Egyptian classics as
more and more scholars see Egypt with an appreciation toward their
observe-and-report values. It seems to me that certain modern axioms
might have to give way to a more empathetic approach; and this does seem
to be happening. Donald Redford's anthology on Egyptian religion is
full of entries that are surprisingly free of the old tendencies.

In order to rank the reasonableness of any etymological explanation, a
variety of factors must be considered and weighed. Very few proposed
etymological explanations hold up against scientific or logical scrutiny.
What kinds of tests would a good scientist apply?
phonological similarity (not just phonetic)
semantic similarity (very fuzzy)
grammatical similarity (category, affixation, etc)
membership in the same language family
more cognates in more closely related languages, less in less
appearance of cognates in related sets (not one at a time)
participation in clusters of cultural rules or practices
patterning consistent with diachronic phonological rules
evidence of linkage between languages for borrowing
similarities in spelling or other representations
participation in clusters of cultural rules or practices
Any other suggestions for criteria?
If each of these criteria were the basis of assigning one point, then the
strength of any posited cognate relationship would range between zero
points and may be ten points.
Proposing that AE /mr/ is related to the name of Mary or Miryam (or its
variations) would not do well against such a list of criteria, would it?
If we used only one or two of the above criteria, we could force
consideration of cognates that are completely impossible.
It might be valuable to examine what KINDS of AE words are likely to have
cognates with surrounding Afroasiatic languages, with surrounding Semitic
languages, and with surrounding non-related languages (through borrowing)?
My guess (experts could verify) would be that we would find similarity
between AE and Egyptian Arabic in semantic fields related to agriculture,
but more similarity between AE and Greek in religious terminology.
matthew





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