On Categorization and Metaphorical Structuring: Some Remarks on Egyptian Art and Language

Abstract

This article discusses some aspects of the way the ancient Egyptians classified their world. The Egyptian method of representation aimed at showing things as they existed in the imagination of the artist who accordingly rendered them as they ‘really were’, and not as they were seen, that is, without having recourse to foreshortening, shadow, perspective. What is stored is a mental image of the prototype or ‘genus’ of the object. Linguistic and pictorial material provide evidence of the existence of inalienable properties of a given mental picture. Another set of components is the interactional properties. Both are grounded in the basic experience of the perceptual, motor and intellectual apparatus of the body. Their distribution is overlapping, because the factual inalienability of its own members is one of the first experiences of a child. While some aspects of the conceptual system and categorization grow out of this immediate experience, others can only be understood in terms of other types of experience, such as metaphors in the sense of Lakoff and Johnson. Hieroglyphs and art are discussed in terms of the notion of metaphorical structuring.

Anjtauy: Notas Sobre Su Naturaleza Y Localización Entre El Reino Antiguo Y El Reino Nuevo

“…Since the Eighteenth Dynasty the determinative that is added to the end of the compound and that classifies the entire word is the 'hill-land' hieroglyph ( , N25) {r-t, v-x}, that as logogram refers the word xAst 'hill- 49 The theoretical grounds of this approach in Egyptology can be found in Goldwasser 1995;ead. 2002;Frandsen 1997. 50 References to the hieroglyphic spellings, listed in the Appendix C, are given within curly parentheses ({}).…”

“Mythophor”: A Digital Tool for the Collection and Analysis of Mythical Metaphor in Ancient Egypt

“…A contribution outlining how mythical actors may function in this system is in preparation. 5 Earlier arguments in this regard: e.g Englund 1989;Frandsen 1997;. also Kurth 1977 for the use of secondary deities as "classifiers" in determining specific functions of a superordinate deity in so called "hyphenated", syncretistically fused gods and goddesses such as Hathor-Tefnet.…”

Ancient Egypt, New Technology

“…A contribution outlining how mythical actors may function in this system is in preparation. 5 Earlier arguments in this regard: e.g Englund 1989;Frandsen 1997;. also Kurth 1977 for the use of secondary deities as "classifiers" in determining specific functions of a superordinate deity in so called "hyphenated", syncretistically fused gods and goddesses such as Hathor-Tefnet.6 Lakoff and Johnson 1980; see alsoLakoff and Turner 1989; Glucksberg et al 1997.…”