In this article in French, they mention hieroglyphs encoded in the way arms and legs are drawn of a figure on the throne of Tutankhamun, and that only 6 Egyptologists in the whole worlds are able to decode them.
Hmmm, I wonder how mainstream these ideas are? Do other Egyptologists respect them?
The idea of cryptohieroglyphs is accepted as true it seems (at least in France), even though most Egyptologist think they are highly interpretative: think about literature and how some literature expert would interpret Poe's books (sorry only classic US author i know beside Kerouac), except worse.
Still, it's clear ancient egyptians loved their puzzles, the clear interpretation of what they mean is what elude us.
Poe didn't really write books. He's most famous for poems and short stories. He wrote one novel ( The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket) and published a collection of poems.
Not that it matters. Just a bit of trivia. The only thing you need to know is that he's a gazillion times better than Kerouac, who did write books and shouldn't have.
I suspect, that in the context of "reputable academically sound Egyptologist" the number "6" is a bumper crop of Egyptologists. The set of reputable academics in these fields is always a lot smaller than you'd like. I think that's why there's so many cranks.
I struggle with Egyptology as a whole. you watch even mainstream, reputable documentaries on Ancient Egypt and there is a lot of what and little why, and it makes you wonder how much of it is actual science and how much of it is just the most exciting available interpretation of the facts to please the Egyptians/draw in viewers. the Egyptian authorities want tourists, and control archaeology licenses tightly, and "we found a scroll that mentions moving some building materials near the great pyramid" sells far less plane tickets than "we found a scroll written by the architect of The Great Pyramid!!!!"
> and it makes you wonder how much of it is actual science
I don't wonder. You can look up egyptian texts with translations and pronunciation guides. We have literally hundreds of thousands of discarded papyri and plenty of papers detailing the archaeological processes of their excavations and interpretations. It's a gold-mine of explicit documentation about their practices and beliefs and logistics over millennia. We know about their diets, their genetics, how their ruling class changed over time, how they interpreted life and death, to the extent where we can draw likely religious transmission among stories with other near-east religions. The extent of evidence we have demonstrating actual knowledge is better than anything else in the ancient world.
Granted, interpretation isn't science, but it's still expected to be presented rationally. The linguistics that yielded the translation itself proved empirically very reliable.
There are many cranks into Egyptian history with many different agendas, though, and I'm sure many of them call themselves egyptologists.
This is a strange viewpoint, do you care to elaborate? I mean, for ancient Egypt, understanding the writing has its origin in a very clear, well understood event and a very specific researcher's career (Rosetta Stone and Champollion), after which there is a sea of research papers which anyone can go and (spend an education and career) judging for themselves. The documentaries easily skip all that but it's not a big mystery that "all that" is there?
It would be nice if someone created a video similar to the "distance ladder" video but for hieroglyphs. Beyond Champollion and into the progress to now. That would be fascinating. It may exist already.
In this article in French, they mention hieroglyphs encoded in the way arms and legs are drawn of a figure on the throne of Tutankhamun, and that only 6 Egyptologists in the whole worlds are able to decode them.
Hmmm, I wonder how mainstream these ideas are? Do other Egyptologists respect them?