Great Courses, Bob Brier, tweets composed and sent while dog-walking.

For continuity, start with Part 1:

Lecture 5

The professor said his goal was that everyone should be able to read and write his name in hieroglyphs his talks conclusion. Up till then I thought maybe the lecture would be too technical to tweet, but it’s game on!

OK, ancient Egyptian is not picture writing. Most people think it is, but it’s not. I thought it was.

Two languages are on the Rosetta Stone, but three scripts. Briar says it is like Egyptian in type, Egypt in cursive, and Greek.

St Mark entered Egypt in the first century CE, says briar. He was preaching the Trinity, which the Egyptians ate right up. They were used to trinity’s.

Egyptian Christians are cops. Monotheism is divisive, says Bob. Because it is saying I am right, and all you others are wrong. Yeah, I suppose. Sometimes things like that.

Coptic is ancient Egyptian written phonetically. And those ancient Christians were Copts, not cops. Thank you AI

In fairness, though, perhaps a few of them became cops.

As usual, I’m walking the dog. I’m keeping abreast with a pair of robins on the other side of the fence beautiful weather lately. Spring is at hand. And I saw a cartoon of Batman’s Robin peeking behind a tree presented as a sign of spring.

Neither of these dogs are mine, but they’re having a ball in the nearby creek.

The Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799, brought to Egypt Britain in in 1801, was not deciphered until 1822. When it was, the written history of ancient Egypt could be on earth,

There is an extremely frisky brown puppy that keeps getting under my feet, tripping me up. He was trying to play with my old dog, who kept saying, I don’t want to play, but remember, I’m the boss!

The Rosetta stone is basically a thank you note written by the priest of Egypt thanking time with me for excusing them from Texas. [taxes—AI strikes again] Written in hieroglyphs, because it was important and the language of the people so others could read it, and Greek, because no Greeks could read it

I don’t think Bob’s project will work, that I can write my name in hieroglyphs. But I am distracted, walking the dog. I could if I was at home.

There were no vowels in ancient Egyptian, just like ancient Hebrew. Bob says it is because people were mostly illiterate, and a vowel is just a placeholder, not very significant in itself.

The point is, and I get this, a hieroglyph does not represent a picture. It represents a sound. So choose the sounds, or hieroglyphs, that correspond to your name, and you are home free.

Oh. OK. They could be pictorial, but usually weren’t. Three ways to write hieroglyphs. One of them was a picture, if you didn’t have the space to write something out.

There are now four dogs in the dog park. A German Shepherd has entered, bigger than my dog. Oh. My dog is trying to mount. Not to worry, he’s fixed. Where are his manners?

As much as I study the Bible with this dog, it doesn’t do a bit of good. Meanwhile, Bob says hieroglyphs can be written left to right, right to left, up to down, or down to up.

It was that way for artistic purposes, Bob says. Egyptian’s liked cemetery. The nail fold up to down bisecting the country making everything symmetrical. [symmetry—the Nile flowed]...I think I will post such corrections as a nod to AI

Lecture five, just ended, was the Rosetta stone. Lecture six, just starting, is the first nation in history.

Walk is over for the frisky dog that tripped me up. They are taking him out. Of course he leans my way to say bye. And I give them a good tousle.

No Egyptian crown has ever been found. There was none in King Tuts tomb, for example, he couldn’t take it with him. Bob thinks that at any given time there was only one in existence, history, which he admits might be wrong.

Huh! Bob says Egyptian temples would have inner compartments, called holy of holies, where just the god or statue was. So maybe it wasn’t just a Hebrew thing it was an attribute of other temples.

Dusk is falling, my wife just called for me to do something else. I’ll have to come back to this later. Usually I walk the dog much earlier in the day. But we were on a mission today.

...Several times Bob refers to the relief of the person with a nose ring with string attached to a falcon, (the king) and each time he does, he appends: “this poor guy.”

When the Greeks came into Egypt, the swampy mouth area of the Nile was triangular shaped, like the Greek letter ‘delta.’ That’s how rivers today often end in deltas

Other middle eastern areas had kings, but only Egypt had a god-king, and that was a “really good thing,” Bob says. Yeah, I think so, because he can do whatever he wants.

Another reference to Plato’s philosopher kings. I wrote about these guys, and how they are in most respects reflected in the Governing Body of JWs.

Bob carries on with much enthusiasm about what you can do with a strong king, even a god-king. You can raise armies and dig irrigation ditches. You just say what you want done, and people do it! Reminds me of that centurion speaking to Jesus.

...Go to Part 4

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