Talking Pyramids: Ancient Egyptian Pyramids» Talking Pyramids: Ancient Egyptian Pyramids News

Thank you

Vincent — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:25:09 +0000

* Bastet * - by Pareeerica CC by NC ND 2.0

It was back in January 2008 that I began Talking Pyramids and I’ve enjoyed running the blog over that time. Thinking about the future and areas to improve upon, I have been reflecting on how the blog has grown during it’s relatively short life. Over the past three months alone there have been 41049 visits, 32 953 Visitors, and 109 576 page views.

I’ve received a lot of mail from readers thanking me for providing this service and I feel it is time that I gave thanks back to the people who have given thier support.

Some of you will know that this blog is just one part of the larger network of sites that I run, which I presumptuously refer to as the ‘Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Network’. The network consists of about eight main areas that have grown individually over the past seven or so years.

An annual subscription to the Flickr account, which serves as a repository for many of the images used on the network, was very kindly paid for by Hans Ollermann. If you have not yet viewed his fine photos on Flickr then be sure to visit his page.

Hans has a magnificent collection of photos that he keeps adding to at a rapid rate. Hans has given me permission to use several of his photos on Talking Pyramids and in also some of the videos that were created as educational flash card videos, part of the supporting materials for VOCAB: with Bennu. One day, out of the blue, Hans presented me with a year’s subscription to Flickr. This account is where much of the supporting materials for VOCAB: with Bennu is stored and is used as a way of engaging with other photographers who have supported Talking Pyramids. Some of these photographers who have contributed photos and on the ground information include Cool Unyot, Lenka Peackock, Mary Harrsch, Morrigan19, tutincommon, ~irene~, Guy Flâneur, Tracey Delaney, Axletriple, Pareeerica, Steven Wagner, Ricardo Liberato, kairoinfo4u and more.

Su Bayfield from England, who runs the informative Egyptian Monuments, has been very kind to allow the use of many of the pyramid photos that appear on the individual pyramid galleries. Thank you Su for your support.

Jon Bodsworth, a brilliant photographer, also from the UK, has supported my work for many years by allowing the use of his photos on my websites. He visits Egypt regularly and has provided many of the photos used on this blog. Jon has also supplied many of the photos used on Pyramid Texts Online, and has even taken specific photos at my request with no expectation of compensation. I can’t thank Jon enough for his generosity.

Heidi Kontkanen ventured into the pyramid of Amenemehet II to report on the current state of the water levels. As regular readers know, I am always trying to stay up to date with the specific states of the pyramids and visitor access to them and I thank Heidi for providing up to date information as well as scans of recent tickets to a number of places throughout Egypt.

Minjae Ormes from National Geographic deserves a big thank you also for her support in providing photographs to be used.

Thanks to Shelly Bernstein and the Brooklyn Museum for use of thier archive photos and their ongoing support and engagement.

There are many people on Twitter who’ve supported Talking Pyramids and would be difficult to name them all here. Some that come to mind are Bettina Tizzy, Vint Falken and the rest of the team over at Heritage Key, teal64, Nepthys14747, Alun, TAG, Diana Wyatt, Dave Wallace, and shadowsinstone. Thanks to Bob Skinner for help compiling some of the Kamrin resources for VOCAB: with Bennu, and to the rest of the GlyphStudy group. Thanks also to fellow bloggers Geoff Carter, Keith Payne, Andie Byrnes, Ben Morales-Correa, Su Bayfield, Stefan Geens and others for mentioning Talking Pyramids on your blogs.

All of you who have purchased books from the Talking Pyramids Book Shop and the Pyramid Texts Online Bookshop and also games from the Games Shop have also helped as a small commission is given on each sale.

Finally, I’d like to thank the few of you who have directly provided financial support by giving donations through the PayPal donation link on Pyramid Texts Online. Your kindness to put your hand in your pocket and give money to help keep the network of Ancient Egyptian Pyramids sites running has been GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks also to all of you who I have not named who have helped in one way another.

And of course I must thank you, the reader. YOU are the reason this blog exists.

Thanks.

Vincent.

Learning Middle Egyptian with GlyphStudy

Vincent — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:42:57 +0000

GlyphStudy Yahoo Group

The Yahoo group GlyphStudy is running three new Middle Egyptian study groups, each starting in July. One of the groups will be using James Hoch’s Middle Egyptian Grammar, another will use James Allen’s Middle Egyptian: An introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, and the third group will be using How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Step-by-Step Guide to Teach Yourself, Revised Edition by Mark Collier and Bill Manley

The three groups are open to anyone who wishes to participate, the only requirement is that you have the text book for that course and that you sign up for a Yahoo account and subscribe to GlyphStudy. Yahoo accounts are free and so is the subscription to GlyphStudy.

Here are the details:

#1. Hoch 2009 section:
Middle Egyptian Grammar (SSEA Publication) (Plastic Comb) by James Hoch.
The Hoch group will start on July 12th, the first homework will be due on July 26th. You will need to have the book in hand to work with the course. You will not need to purchase Hoch’s sign list.

This text runs $49 at Amazon USA but you can receive a discount if you order from Oxbow books directly. To receive the discount you will need to mention AEL (the discount is through the old parent group AncientEgyptianLanguage and not GlyphStudy-so say AEL).

Study guides will be available and also a web-site where things like vocabulary lists, grammar summaries, sign lists, and the like will be maintained in addition to the study guides and collation materials that will also be available on GlyphStudy.

Anyone who is interested in the Hoch group should send an e-mail to Bob at manske_r @ yahoo . com (delete the spaces around the @ sign and the period – otherwise it won’t reach Bob) stating your interest in taking the course.
Put “HOCH” in the subject line, that will be helpful. The return address will be used to send the formal invitation to you to join the group.

#2 Collier and Manley 2009 section:
How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Step-by-Step Guide to Teach Yourself, Revised Edition by Mark Collier and Bill Manley.

These are reasonably priced at Amazon and you can even acquire a used or remainder copy through Amazon Sellers at a discount. The lessons are based on the 2004 reprint of Collier & Manley’s ‘How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A step-by-step Guide to teach yourself ‘. If you have an edition prior to 2003, you may find that it has a few errors in it (particularly in the answers to the exercises!) – but I don’t think you should find this a significant problem.

Collier and Manley is a beginner’s book – it introduces you to hieroglyhs. It concentrates on funerary inscriptions; it uses stelae from the British Museum for examples and exercises. By the end of the book you should be able to visit Egypt (or a museum) and read the basic inscriptions. A rough estimate to complete the course is 18 months.

The study group will start on the 12th July with the reading of Chapter 1. The first homework will be due 26th July. Timetables, details of where and how to post homework, etc. will be published in the next couple of weeks. It is hoped that everyone will do all the exercises, starting with all the exercises for chapter 1 in one go, but spreading the exercises out over more than one week after that.

If there is anyone who would liketo join, please send an email to Angela on manna1@btopenworld.com putting ‘C&M 2009′ in the subject box. Official invites will be sent out over the next few weeks. If you have any concerns or questions, you can ask Angela directly at the address above.

#3 Allen 2009 section:
Middle Egyptian: An introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs by James Allen.

A 2009 Allen Group will start on the 12th July with the reading of chapter 1 (you will not need to submit homework for this chapter).

Timetables, details of where and how to post homework, etc will be published in the next couple of weeks. There will be a week to read a chapter and the first homework for the chapter will be due at the end of the following week. After the first three lessons the pace will slow down and increase the reading time to two weeks, and even three weeks reading for the final chapters of the book.

The exercises will be spread over several weeks; each of you will receive an allocated 2/3 exercises each week, so that each exercise should be completed by at least three people.

If you would like to join this Group, please send Angela an email to manna1@btopenworld.com – putting ‘Allen 2009′ in the subject box.

Visit the group’s page on Yahoo Groups: GlyphStudy.
Sign up with Yahoo.

Contact Karen at kmotc@swbell.net for more information.

JSesh Update – Version 2.8.1

Vincent — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:13:10 +0000

Serj Rosmorduc has updated his hieroglyphic software JSesh to eradicate some bugs, improve usability, update fonts and call for volunteers to help develop the glyph description tool.

Here is his email to the Ancient Egyptian Language group:

Dear all,
Version 2.8.1 of JSesh, my free hieroglyphic text editor, is available.
It can be found as usual on :

http://jsesh.qenherkhopeshef.org/

What’s new ?

* IMPORTANT BUG FIX: the scale used in “edited groups” was wrong since august 2008 (I typed 10000 instead of 1000 when cleaning up the drawingSpecification system). Old groups did not print well as a result of this. Of course, with this bug fix,
you will need to re-arrange groups in text written with the faulty systems.

* Usability improvement: cut and paste of right-to-left text or text in column did give strange results with the default settings. I have fixed this, and introduced a new option in the preferences: “respect layout”, which is “on” by default. When it’s “off”, JSesh uses left-to-right text. A new “copy” mode has been introduced: wysiwyg. Note that right-to-left cut and paste will probably be improved at some time, because the left-to-right default is not very “international” (it doesn’t mix well with arabic or hebrew texts, for instance).

* And, once more, a whole new family of font have been updated. JSesh has now a complete “N” family from S. Thomas. I have also worked on the glyphs description, and the “man and its occupation” family is on its way. More to come

While I’m saying this, I will had that JSesh includes a tool to describe glyphs, which can be found in the “bin” folder. Anyone with a reasonable knowledge of hieroglyphs can help… The glyph description data can only be created “by hand”, and it takes time. It’s also a task that can be easily shared by many people. So, consider this as a call to volunteers

Best regards,

S. Rosmorduc

ENiM – An Open Digital Journal

Vincent — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:56:40 +0000

As reported on Ancient World Bloggers Group (AWBG) a new open access Egyptological Journal has been launched by the Institut d’Egyptologie FranÃ§ois Daumas – UMR 5140 – ArchÃ©ologie des SociÃ©tÃ©s MÃ©diterranÃ©ennes Â» (Cnrs) – niversitÃ© Paul ValÃ©ry – Montpellier III

The ENiM website

From the ENiM:

ENiM is the first French magazine digital Egyptology. It is the expression of the activities of the team Nilotic Egypt and Mediterranean “of the UMR 5140,” Archeology of Mediterranean societies. ” It also hosts the work of other members of the international community Egyptological.

It publishes work on all aspects of ancient Egypt, from prehistory to the Coptic period.

ENiM aims to become a privileged relay the dissemination of knowledge of Egyptology with facilities and the great accessibility provided by new information technologies and communication (NTIC).

ENiM is a magazine completely free and downloadable from the site of the “Nilotic Egypt and Mediterranean.”

ENiM is an electronic journal, the process of preparation of the articles is accelerated. Their submission is made directly on the site of the journal. Treatment editorial concluded, items received are immediately online, in pdf format.

ENiM is a periodic annual compound all items successively online during the year, the annual volume being closed at the end of the calendar year.

Visit the ENiM website and browse through their online journals: ENiM

Remember that you can always translate a website with an online translator. Here is an English Translation of the ENiM website.

UCLA Puts the Temple of Karnak Online

Vincent — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 02:58:40 +0000

The digitally restored White Chapel in GoogleEarth

Listed in the items recently added to ABZU, is ‘Digital Karnak’, the latest addition to the growing number of archeological sites being digitally recreated online to provide wider accessibility.

The Digital Karnak Project, built by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), is no small website. There are three main sections: the Time Map is a graphic representation of the historical progression of the site, Experience Karnak has a large amount of information in the form of PDF documents, videos and digital animations, while the Google Earth section of the site provides a downloadable KML file to view a model of the temple in Google Earth.

From the University of California at Los Angeles’s website:

“The features of this website have been designed to provide college classrooms (and the interested public) with easily accessible, up-to-date, expert material relating to the temple precinct. As part of this goal, a 3-D Virtual Reality model of the temple was constructed, offering students a completely new way to view the temple: reign-by-reign, following the complex patterns of royal construction, modification and destruction that are now obscured by the latest building phases at the site. Footage of this model, as well as original videos and maps, are accompanied by thematic essays written and reviewed by Egyptologists to supply students and instructors with reliable information in a digital and visually dynamic platform. A simplified version of the Virtual Reality model of the temple is also made available in Google Earth, for a completely interactive experience.”

Animations

Click to view a fly-through of the first court of the Temple

The website has a large amount of videos and animations to view available in high quality. The animation above is just one of many that provide the visitor with unique views of the temple in it’s former glory.

Time Map

View stages of the temple using the Time Map

Stages of the site can be viewed with the use of the scale on the Time Map feature of the site. The Digital Karnak website has many other features and is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the Karnak temple.

Visit the site: Digital Karnak

Hierowords Version 3.4.7 Now Available

Vincent — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 04:16:09 +0000

Hierowords

Luca has announced an update to Hierowords, a free to download program that allows you to chose among 810 hieroglyphs of the Gardiner’s list and among 6717 hieroglyphs of the extended library from the CCER and arrange them in words.

In an email to the GlyphStudy group Luca wrote:

Dear all,

I am sorry for the long hiatus from my previous update on the Hieroword
software and dictionary.

As I was telling Mark I found it difficult to gather the enthusiasm to keep
up with the updates after the bitter episode of the Amazon.com published
dictionary.

However, I owe it to Mark and to all others who have contributed to
Hieroword and to all who benefit from it to continue my effort.

I finally got around to upload Mark’s new dictionary as well as Hieroword
3.4.7 (which I did a while ago).

Hieroword 3.4.7 acepts dictionaries of up to 50,000 definitions and
therefore you will need it if you use Mark’s dictionary or any of the other
re-sortings and variations of more than 15,000 entries.

As usual you can find everything here:

http://home.comcast.net/~thot/index.html

Enjoy and if you redistribute it do not forget to give credit where credit
is due.

Take care

Luca

Be aware that if you have not already installed the full version of HieroWords you will need to download and install 3.4.6 before updating to version 3.4.7. The 3.4.7 update extends the capacity of the program to up to 50,000 words from the original 15,000 limit.

Hierowords as well as JSesh and other Hieroglyph software can be found on the Pyramid Texts Online Tools page

JSesh Version 2.5beta Now Available

Vincent — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:55:50 +0000

Serge Rosmorduc has released an update to his hieroglyphic text editor, JSesh as well as two new tutorials.

In an email to the Ancient Egyptian Language list (AEL) Serge writes:

Version 2.5beta of JSesh, my free Hieroglyphic text editor is available.

It includes a few changes:
* cartouches width works correctly
* encapsulated postscript export
* and above all, lots (really lots) of new signs, including complete A, E and F families.

JSesh web site holds two new tutorials on how to draw glyphs for JSesh: http://jsesh.qenherkhopeshef.org/tutorial_list

JSesh web site : http://jsesh.qenherkhopeshef.org

To download JSesh: http://jsesh.qenherkhopeshef.org/download

I hope to increase the release rate of JSesh versions quite soon

Best regards,

Serge Rosmorduc