Rick,
I'm no Egyptologist either, but from your summary of Gardiner it seems his
note on 'heaven', namely, "i.e. the loftiest point he can reach(?)", is not
Gardiner's literal rendering of PET but his conjecture about what the
statement "A good disposition is a man's heaven" might mean... as though
Gardiner couldn't get his head around the undogmatic notion that heaven is
not "the afterlife". Undogmatic, that is, from both a Western point-of-view
and an Egyption point-of-view. Pound sees Kati as a kindred spirit, as
having taken a rather un-Egyptian undogmatic view of heaven.  Paradise is
to be found not in "the afterlife" but here on earth in one's heart.

So I think you have got it backwards when you write "Clearly Pound is
trying to link a non-man created Paradise with Kati and later with
Kung."  The paradise to which Pound refers is emphatically NOT the "Western
Christian", and your criticism of the translation for introducing an alien
western concept is based on a misunderstanding of Pound.  Pound is saying
that each man creates his own paradise -- each man *lives* his own
paradise.  Paradise is not a place good men go when they die; that is the
"artificial" paradise, the pearly-gates paradise.

Tim Romano







At 11:12 PM 8/31/03, Richard Seddon wrote:
>Charles:
>
>Just back from a week at a state park.  Thank you for your reply to my last.
>First, as you probably have guessed, I am not an Egyptologist.  I am merely
>a person fascinated by their history to the point of dabbling in their
>language.
>
>Don't rely heavily on Budge.  His reputation amongst today's reputable
>Egyptologists is not very good.  Alan Gardiner remains the authority.  James
>Allen has a book just published in 2000 entitled "Middle Egyptian".  Of
>course your opinion of today's Egyptologists may be such that Budge remains
>your authority.  As near as I can tell, though,  Budge never translated the
>"Instruction for King Merikere".
>
>Gardiner did the definitive transaltion of the "Instruction" in a 1914
>article "New Literary Works from Ancient Egypt" in "Journal of Egyptian
>Archaeology" Volume 1.  He translates the sentence as "A good disposition is
>a man's
>heaven".  He also footnotes the word "heaven" as "i.e. the loftiest point he
>can reach(?)".   Boris should have been aware of this article.
>
>The western idea of paradise and heaven as being a perfect place in the sky
>where perfect souls dwell is not what was intended in the Egyptian.  What
>was intended with the instruction was something like "A good disposition is
>the highest achievement of a man".
>
>Concerning the word order and the emphasis within the translation.
>Boris/Pound translate the sentence in almost the same order as the signs
>appear.  This assumes the same order to the parts of the sentence in
>Egyptian as in English.  The English sentence typically is subject first and
>then predicate.  However, in the Egyptian verbal sentence (Egyptian can have
>a non-verbal sentence) the order is predicate and then subject. Reading the
>signs from left to rignt, "Pet" (sky or highest that can be reached) and the
>signs for "pw"(it is), "nt" (of) and
>"'s' logo man" (man)  are in the predicate of the Egyptian sentence; "iwn"
>(nature) and "nefer" (good) are in the subject. The sentence then reads
>something like "Good nature is of the highest man can reach".  Egyptian does
>not have an "A" equivalent but supplying it,  "A good
>nature is of the highest a man can reach".  The translation you point to by
>Lichtheim follows the norm with "Good nature" being the subject of the
>sentence.  No translator of the sentence uses the construction that
>Boris/Pound uses.
>
>Boris/Pound have inverted the proper sentence order, changed the emphasis
>and wrongly introduced the idea of "Paradise" (A Western Christian concept)
>to the translation.  This linkage is explicit in a letter from Pound to
>Boris which Boris recounts in his article "Pagan and Magical Elements in
>Ezra Pound's Works" which appeared in Eva Hesse "New Approaches to Ezra
>Pound".  The letter. as recounted by Boris,  clearly links King "KATI" to
>Pound's prior used phrase "Le Paradis n'est pas artificiel".  Pound uses
>this phrase 7 times beginning with Canto 74 and ending with Canto 92.
>Clearly Pound is trying to link a non-man created Paradise with Kati and
>later with Kung.  Even Budge on page 74 of his "Egyptian Language" defines
>"Pet" as "what is above, heaven" (heaven is not capitalized).  On page 107
>he again defines "Pet" as
>heaven.  I can find no translation of "Pet" as "paradise".   In fact a "p"
>with a little star hanging from it is a logo for night,  with zig zag lines
>coming down it is a logo for rain.  Boris/Pound's changes do not even fit
>within Pound's generous translation ideology of making/letting an author
>speak in a different language.  The Egyptian was not trying to say what
>Boris/Pound have him saying.  Boris has not "humanized the egyptians/ and
>Budge didn't".  Boris has struck out totally on his own.
>
>I am not pointing this out as a bad translation.  The important question is
>why did Boris decide to strike out on his own with this translation?
>Gardiner's article on the instruction was written in 1914 and would have
>been available to Boris.   Gardiner's grammar was not written until 1957,
>however, Samuel Mercer wrote "The Handbook of Egyptian Hieroglyphics" in
>1926.  Numerous German Egyptian grammars were available in the 1920's
>including one by Adolf Erman.  Adolf Erman's "Ancient Egyptian Poetry and
>Prose" was
>available in German in 1923 and in English in 1927.  Erman's translation of
>the instruction closely follows Gardiner's.  These scholars were the
>recognized authorities and should have been well
>known to any 20th century student of Egypt.
>
>Rick Seddon
>McIntosh, NM
>
>
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