Don Quixote and the Hieroglyphs - TAUTA (folk) THOTH TITILBIS and IBIS - ANE BC P1
Ancient Egypt Blog CHEOPS postings will be numbered consecutively and given the abbreviation ANE BC P (Ancient Egypt - Blog CHEOPS - Posting) starting with ANE BC P1, which is this post. This will simplify later references to individual postings, by us and by others.
In advance of my presentations on the Egyptian Hieroglyphs, we might call the material below "A Literary Lesson for Mainstream Scholarship".
Don Quixote
as seen by
Pablo Picasso
Don Quixote Admonishes his Opponents
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra wrote The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote (translation by Samuel Putnam, Viking Press, New York, 1949), which is regarded by numerous literary critics to be the first "modern" novel. Don Quixote is also ranked by many as the world's finest novel and we quote from it as follows:
"[S]aid Don Quixote: 'He is a wise enchanter, a great enemy of mine, who has a grudge against me because he knows by his arts and learning that in the course of time I am to fight in single combat with a knight whom he favors, and that I am to be the victor and he can do nothing to prevent it. For this reason he seeks to cause me all the trouble that he can, but I am warning him that it will be hard to gainsay or shun that which Heaven has ordained.'
'Who could doubt that it is so?' said the niece. 'But tell me, uncle, who is responsible for your being involved in these quarrels? Would it not be better to remain peacefully here at home and not go roaming through the world in search of better bread than is made from wheat, without taking into consideration that many who go for wool come back shorn?'
'My dear niece,' replied Don Quixote, 'how little you understand of these matters! Before they shear me, I will have plucked and stripped the beards of any who dare to touch the tip of a single hair of mine.'" p. 60
[somewhat later, fighting the windmills, p. 63]
'Do not seek to flee, cowards and vile creatures that you are, for it is but a single knight with whom you have to deal!'...
'Though you flourish as many arms as did the giant Briareus...you still shall have to answer to me.'
Forthcoming Postings on Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs will Show that Pharaonic is Indo-European in Foundation
I shall shortly begin publishing - very slowly and deliberately - by individual signs and words - my analysis of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs from my standpoint that Old Kingdom Pharaonic Egyptian language was Indo-European in foundation.
The Archaic Baltic Languages will be used as a Tool for Analysis
In doing so, I will make liberal use of Latvian comparables because Latvian is a very archaic language - indeed, together with Lithuanian, these Baltic tongues are the most archaic still spoken Indo-European languages, thus reflecting Indo-European as it was spoken throughout Europe and parts of Eurasia many thousands of years ago.
Other ancient Indo-European languages could and can be used for this comparison, e.g. Lu(t)wian [Latvian] Hittite. Of course, language comparisons to ancient Pharaonic Egyptian language in other more modern Indo-European languages will also be found - which will only serve to prove that Pharaonic Egyptian has an Indo-European stratum, especially in the Old Kingdom.
We use Latvian because we know the language well and because it is a very good language tool for this kind of work. Most Egyptologists are hampered by the fact that their basis of language is Western - hence, when they find a language such as Pharaonic Egyptian, which, for example has no definite or indefinite articles, they find this unusual, without recognizing that Latvian, for example, an archaic but still nevertheless Indo-European language, also has no definite or indefinite articles.
TAUTA THOTH TITILBIS and IBIS - The "people" invented the arts and sciences
Tauta - the name of this domain in Tauta.net - is a Latvian word meaning "folk, people" (we allege that TAUTA is the same as Egypt's Pharaonic THOTH - the inventor of writing and their god of knowledge - i.e. "the people" invented writing and knowledge, not a particular person) . Thoth was originally depicted in Egyptian hieroglyphs as the bird IBIS which in Latvian is called the TITILBIS i.e. TITH-ILBIS (here we see that what the Egyptologists write as TH in Pharaonic was a "sharp" T). This bird - the TITILBIS - was used anciently as the symbol for THOTH and IBIS because its name TIT-ILBIS was homophonic - the same sounding - as the words being hieroglyphed. Later in time Thoth was represented by a monkey in Egypt, but we do not discuss this matter here.
Sci.archaeology posting of January 31, 1997
I posted on this subject to sci.archaeology on January 31, 1997 as follows, with minor corrections:
"The Pharaonic Egyptian word for bird IBIS (etymologically and erroneously derived by the linguists from the Greek ibis) is transcribed by the Egyptologists as IB-. So fine, so good.
But WHY we must ask is the Egyptian God THOTH (as the inventor of writing and the arts) represented by the bird IBIS on hieroglyphs, a usage which is as phonologically mysterious as it is illogical. Why this? MOreover, why is the Egyptian God THOTH also affiliated with the Moon?
The Latvian gives us a very clear explanation as to why this is so.
The Latvian word for an IBIS-like bird is T I T I L B I S. TITILBIS is a term which applies to a bird having long legs, and especially those which wade in waters and on shores (it is even used to apply to people with long legs).
If we presume that the Pharaonic Egyptians had a similar a term which they originally applied to Thoth, then the mystery is explained.
When we thus want to know why the God THOTH as inventor of writing and the arts was represented by the bird IBIS then we see that this is because the original term is the Latvian T I T - I L B I S. I think it was used as the nearest concrete word to Latvian TAUTIBA or TAUTIBAS "nation, folk, people", who according to Pharaonic legend, as THOTH, Latvian TAUTA "folk, people" were the inventors of writing and the arts.
If we want to know why the T I T I L B I S was applied to the moon THOTH, then we must also know that the Latvians called the moon, among other things, TETIS or TETITIS in the ancient Latvian Dainas (a three-T variation is also found in the hieroglyphs), a term also set equivalent to "father" - but also applied to male birds.
Hence, T I T I L B I S was the closest term in ancient Indo-European having a representable concrete object similar in sound phonology to the concepts to be represented by hieroglyphs (i.e. TAUT- "folk" and TET- "father"). How would we represent the concept of "folk" by a pictogram in ancient days with a word having the same pronunciation? Essentially, we can regard the problem as the same as representing the English word DAD for father with a hieroglyph of a similar sound - what concrete object would you use in English? Very tough. It would be easier for SON, where we could use the pictograph of a SUN for both "old SOL" as well as for "male progeny", since SUN and SON are homophonic, i.e pronounced the same.
At some later time the initial T I T - of I L B I S was dropped and the bird came to be known as the I(L)BIS."