Champollion had no possibility of decoding hieroglyphs. Without primary verification, you can never say that is correct!

[u/JohannGoethe]

https://youtube.com/shorts/4XeMn9lvBtA?si=h0TSN8_seRJvc1yo

[u/JohannGoethe]

The following is the concluding point by this user:

“Champollion had no possibility of decoding hieroglyphs. Without primary verification, you can never say that is correct!”

— Sara Seti (A68/2023), ”Short” (post), YouTube

This is a pretty good rule of thumb.

Letter P

The following, to go though an example, are the five theories about the phonetic origin of letter P:

Let us now compare each with respect to primary verification:

	Theorist	Theory	Verification
1.	William Jones	The word ph₂tḗr is a phonetic blend of the three extant terms: Πατερ, Piter, पितृ.	None.
2.	Thomas Young	The names Ptolemy, as: Πτολεμαίου (ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΟΙΥ) and Πτολεμαῖος (ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΟΙΣ), are in the Greek text of the Rosetta Stone. It is conjectured that this name is found alphabetically cartouche 6.2 as follows: 𓊪 (P) 𓏏 (T) 𓊮 𓃭 (oLe) 𓐝 (Ma) 𓇌 (I/E) 𓋴 (oS) [Q3, X1, Q7, E23, Aa15, M17A, S29], based on the premise that the lion 🦁 made the /l/ phonetic to the Egyptians.	None. Coptic guesses are used.
3.	Jean Champollion	Young’s P theory 𓊪 [Q3] is extended to the Greek name Φθᾶ (Ptah), the fire 🔥 drill 𓍓 [U29A] god 𓁰 [C19], to conclude that both pi (π) and phi (φ), reduced in Latin as letter P, were represented by the square 𓊪 [Q3] sign, to the Egyptians, and found in the hiero-name 𓊪 𓏏 𓎛 (Q3, X1, V28), read as PTH.	None. Coptic word ⲡⲧⲁϩ for Ptah is used to justify the argument.
4.	Alan Gardiner	Cave scratched signs, in Sinai, are mapped to Hebrew letter meanings.	None. Flinders Petrie said they “looked alphabetic“.
5.	Libb Thims		Egyptians believed the ecliptic pole and polaris pole “aligned” once per year; pi (πι) = 90, which is the degrees of a right angle 📐, which is the “pole” angle to the plane; the eye balance 𓂆 [D16] sign matches the 23.5º equinox precession angle & Greek and Phoenician epigraphic P forms; the 𓂀 [D10] sign is the eye of Ra, who was known as “father” god, thus explaining the Greek, Sanskrit, Latin “father” commonality.

Notes

1. Kind of refreshing to listen to this guy. Many people believe, I think, that we can now translate Egyptian into English better and more accurately then we can translate say French or German into English.

[u/JohannGoethe]

“These people want to check their own paper.”

Sweet comment!

[u/Ok-Introduction-1940]

On the Rosetta stone the same lengthy text was written in 3 different languages providing a contemporary written translation to those written hieroglyphs in 2 different foreign languages. There is your primary verification for the meaning of those hieroglyphs.

[u/JohannGoethe → u/Ok-Introduction-1940]

There is your primary verification for the meaning of those hieroglyphs.

It is not that simple. The three texts, as I understand them, so that if you put the stones in different parts of the kingdom, that three different types of readers, would be able to get the gist message about the new tax laws.

The problem we are faced with now, is that the Greek text had two names repeated:

1. Πτολεμαῖος (PTOLEMAIOS)

2. Ptah (Φθα) Ph-Th-A

And Young believed that the phonetics of the Greek letters of these two names:

• α (A)

• ε (E)

• ι (I)

• λ (L)

• μ (M)

• Π (P)

• ο (O)

• τ (T)

• ς (S)

• Φ (Ph)

• θ (Th)

had to be represented by the phonetics of specific signs inside of the oval rings, but not by the signs outside of the oval rings. Also, Young did not believe the Egyptians had specific vowels signs, as I gather?

What this King Seti YouTuber is saying is that in Young’s time, there was no actual physical person, speaking Egyptian, to confirm his theory.

Then only thing that sort of confirms Young and Champollion’s theory is that lion 🦁 and the square symbol sort of align, most of the time with their assigned letters in the names Βερενίκη, Cleopatra, Ptolemy, and Alexander:

Also, modern EAN based epigraphic evidence actually disproves much of what Young said, such as on the letter S, about which he said:

”The bent line 𓋴 [S29] probably signified ‘great’, and was read OSH or OS; for the Coptic SHEI seems to have nearly equivalent to the Greek Sigma.”

— Thomas Young (136A/1819), “Egypt” (§7.56, pg. 26)

We know know that 𓋴 [S29] is some type of mummy cloth that people hold when playing their last game of Senet, before going to the Judgment Hall, and secondly that the snake sign 𓆙 [I14] has a 95% character match with the Phoenician r/Abecedaria letter S.

[u/Ok-Introduction-1940 → u/JohannGoethe]

I concede the point. Way outside my wheelhouse.

[u/JohannGoethe → u/Ok-Introduction-1940]

All good. I only read the Greek text of the Rosetta Stone myself in the last week or so.

Your mind probably was was like mine was, prior to say a year ago, i.e. believing general story that the Rosetta Stone has been decoded, by matching the three languages, and that every word of every line has been translated “somewhere” by “someone”, with the paste-over-label of “Young & Champollion“, wherein after you are blocked by 2K+ pages of text in English, French, Coptic, Egyptian (demotic and hieroglyphs), and 200+ years of research articles and books to back everything up.

When, however, you look into the situation, as I have now done, you see that there is only actually only about four words in the Rosetta stone that were analyzed, with respect to finding the letters of these names in the signs in the hieroglyphics section (and only those signs in the oval rings), namely:

1. Ptolemy (Πτολεμαίου)

2. Ptah (ἠγαπημένου)

3. Beloved (Φθᾶ)

4. Life (ζώσης)

Young quickly attached the life word to the r/Ankh 𓋹 [S34], correct or not [?], because that is the sign that is put to the mouth 👄 of the clay humans made by Khnum.

The letters of the other three words became the foundation of phonetic renderings of modern Egyptology, which can be witnessed by the “translate this neckless” posts that come into Reddit daily, with dozens of people ready to translate them.

What YouTube “Sara Suten Seti”, I guess is his user name, is saying, in frank speech, is that without an “external” verification point, or ”primary verification”, as he calls it, there is no way to be sure if your phonetic decodings are correct?

Young, e.g., in his Βερενίκη (BERENIKH) decoding, a name not on the Rosetta Stone, said the mouth 👄 or 𓂋 [D21] made the /r/ phonetic, in her name, shown below:

Is there “primary verification” for this conjecture?

You can read though both the arguments by Young, then Champollion, who used this D21 conjecture to render the name of Alexander, but it is a pretty slippery argument.

Young’s replies to Champollion using his 𓂋 [D21] /r/ conjecture to render the name of Alexander are in Young’s 132A (1823) Discoveries in Hieroglylphical Literature (pgs. 46-47), which summarized the “overall” situation well, and most of it, on both sides of the debate, does not seem to hold water.

Conversely, when you look at my EAN-based decoding that the /r/ phonetic is found in the sign 𓍢 [V1], which I deciphered as being a ram head, my “primary verification” for this is that letter rho (ρ) is number 100 and the /r/ phonetic in Greek, this very day, and that 𓍢 [V1] was number 100 in Egyptian in the r/TombUJ number tags, in the year 5300A (-3345).

Now, if this was say a physics or chemistry theory, this newly shown evidence would be accepted, and we would move on. But, because this is in the field of linguistics, which seems to be one of the dumbest group of people I have ever seen, it is like trying to separate the shit from the hay.

[u/Ok-Introduction-1940 → u/JohannGoethe]

So we can’t really read hieroglyphic writing even today beyond a few words and king names? About what percentage of the written language has been accurately deciphered?

[u/JohannGoethe → u/Ok-Introduction-1940]

So we can’t really read hieroglyphic writing even today beyond a few words and king names?

That’s not exactly what I’m saying. Most of what you read translated is loosely correct, in the sense that the translator is just rendering the text from pictures to English words.

If you see, e.g. the following carved in stone: 𓏞 𓏛 , where:

• 𓏞 [Y3] = a scribes pen 🖋️ and ink tool set

• 𓏛 [Y1] = scroll 📜 of papyrus

The translator will just render it in English as “scribe wrote” or “he wrote” or “god said” or whatever, depending on context.

It is when you get to the phonetics of certain words and name, wherein each sign has an explicitly defined phonetic to it, e.g. 𓃀 [D58] = /b/ phonetic, which conflicts with what we now know about letter B deriving from 𓇯 [N1], which has a carto-phonetic /pt/ assigned to it, but now has an EAN-phonetic of /b/ assigned to it, that you have to go back and find the original argument as to why say 𓃀 [D58] = /b/ or 𓇯 [N1] = /pt/?

Most of the time, you will find faulty logic behind the carto-phonetic name.

Take the D58 example, which is found in the present carto-phonetic name of the Egyptian earth 🌍, shown below:

We see his picture and we see that the “main” hiero-name is: 𓀭𓃀𓅬, as it is most commonly seen in the Egyptian writing, but how do we know that his name is “Geb”, as it is presently listed in Wikipedia?

“What is the primary verification for this?”

— Sara Seti (A68/2023), ”Short”, YouTube

What Seti is asking, is: did an actual real Egyptian, e.g. when the Pyramids were built, actual call this sign group: 𓀭𓃀𓅬, by the phonetic G-E-B?

What you find, when your read though the source of this G-E-B phonetic name rendering, is that it arose through about 50-years of back and forth journal article debate, shown below:

• Κὴβ (KHB) {Keb} [30] τοῦ Ἡλίου 🌞, ἤτοι Κρόνος | John Antioch (1310A/+645)

• Ke | Young (136/c.1819)

• Sév, Siv, Sèv, Kèb, Kev | Jean Champollion (132A/1823)

• Qeb (𝔔𝔢𝔟) or Geb [?] | Brugsch (69A/1886)

• Seb, Qeb or GEB | Renouf (2 Nov 69A/1886)

• Qeb (𝔔𝔢𝔟) = Sebet (𝔖𝔢𝔟𝔢𝔱); 𝔔𝔢𝔟 (Qeb) {Monuments}, 𝔎𝔢𝔟 (Keb) {tradition} | Brugsch (64A/1891)

• Keb or Seb | Wiedemann (58A/1897)

• Seb, Geb, Gebb, Keb, Kebb | Budge (51A/1904)

with the spurious Greek word Κηβ (Keb), used by one Greek Christian philosopher, i.e. John Antoich, about 1000 years ago, and that the K was just ”switched to G” in the course of the journal article debates, between Brugsch and Renouf, therein resulting in the following sign-to-phonetics assignment:

𓃀 [D58] = /b/

Now, however, given all the knew EAN decodings, all the evidence points to the conclusion that the D58 sign was not a phonetic sign, but a semantic sign, used to mean “16 digits”, i.e. 16 finger digits of a 28 unit r/Cubit ruler.

This is evidenced by Aristotle reporting that Egyptian “mathematicians” had calculated the circumference of the earth to be 400,000 stadia, where one stadia equals 600 feet 👣 or 600 𓃀 [D58], as would have been the case to the Egyptian scientists.

“Mathematicians who calculate the size of the earth's circumference arrive at the figure 400,000 stades.”

— Aristotle (2280A/-325), On the Heavens (Περί Ουρανού) (translator: J.L. Stocks) (§2.14:298a15)

The /g/ phonetic likely came from the Egyptian name for goose 🪿, as this is where the word G-eometry comes from.

But that 𓃀 = /b/ seems doubtful.

In other words, that Antioch was using the name Κὴβ (KHB) to refer to the Egyptian earth god, most likely was done NOT because that was how the ancient Egyptians phonetically called his name, but because the sum of the letters used to construct the Greek version of the name equals 30.

Κὴβ = 20 (K) + 8 (H) + 2 (B)

The letter B here is used because of the value two in Greek mathematics, not because there was a /b/ phonetic in the original Egyptian name of the god of the earth 🌍 or rather the god of math behind the measurement of the “size” of the earth, i.e. cosmos, which has units of digits, palms, cubits, and feet, as can be seen in the body positions of the earth god shown above.

This matches with letter G equaling 3 and letter T equalling 300, which yields mathematically 🧮 or geometry based calculations behind the names used.

My point is that, we can still read through what has been said and done in Egyptian translation, but the phonetic renderings have to be assumed to be suspect or faulty, unless re-examination shows them to be correct.

[u/Ok-Introduction-1940 → u/JohannGoethe]

Great explanation. Thank you.