VMs: sun = gold? [was Re: further ramblings]

["Barbara Barrett" <barbarabarrett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gyps Gifeted;
<snip>A circle with a dot in it means sun and gold in Egyptian
> hieroglyphics.  <snip>

Barbara Blithers;
I've two problems with the above, the first, being fluent in Hieroglyphs, is
pedantic.

A circle within a dot, logographically, meant the god [r'] "ra". *Only* when
the "interpret literally" stroke was placed beneath did it mean [Sw] "sun",
although usually this was interpreted as [drw] "day". The sign could also
act as a clarifying determinative after words like [wbn] "sunrise", [sf]
"yesterday, [wrS] "spend all day", or after units of time such as [wnwt]
"hours". The sign played no part in the word "gold" or anything to do with
gold.

In fact the sign for gold was the [nbw] colar (a homophone for gold), the
colar sign ligatured with another and used as a verb meant [nbi] "to guild,
or to fashion", and ligatured with other symbols became the nouns [dj'm]
"fine gold", and [Hdj] "silver".

In Ancient Egyptian there was no relationship either in the language or the
writing system between "sun" and "gold".

The second problem is time frame, with reference to the vms.

The knowlege of hieroglyphs was lost when the Christians overran the last
bastion of the ancient faith (the temple of Isis at Philae) in 452ad.
Partial knowlege of hieroglyphs wasn't recovered until the discovery of
Horapollo's book on the subject in Greece in the early 1400s, but it took
quite a while before it was translated and circulated in europe and indeed
wasn't what you'd call "common knowlege" amoung the educated until the
1600s. Horapollo got many meanings right, but gave them fancyful and
eronious allegoriacal  explainations. Although this *might* fit in the right
time frame of the vms Horapollo didn't as far as I can recall from reading
him, make a connection between "sun" and "gold".

It wasn't until after Athanasius Kircher published his massive neo-platonist
"Oedipus Aegyptiacus" between 1652 and 1654 that egyptian hieroglyphs
entered hermetic and alchemic lore. Kircher was 100% wrong about everything,
he interpreted hieroglyphs "philosophically" by "intuitive" means (much like
Big Jim's "end times" interpretation, truth be told). Nevertheless, there
was no one to contradict him, and by sheer force of reputation and without a
shred of evidence the Kircher "decipherments" caught the imagination of all
those involved in esotorica. Kircher was the first to make the error of
connecting "sun" with "gold".

Nowso, we know from the letter found with the vms that it was finished at
the time of Kircher because the letter was addressed to him, but it was only
during his middle years that the notion of sun=gold entred alchemical lore.
Therefore the conection is well after the vms time frame and couldn't have
been known to its author(s).

Here endeth today's lesson, ['H'w]! (period!) ;-)

Barbara




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