Image talk:3kr.jpg

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The uploader, Rktect describes 3kr.jpg as 3kr the personifed god of the land itself. The Manuel de Codage clearly recommends that ɜ should be transliterated as 'A' but Rktect (and Steve Whittet) obstinately insists on using '3'. If we treat it as 'A', it suggests the god Aker for which Wiki has an article, but sadly no picture. It describes Aker as the deification of the horizon … originally depicted as a narrow strip of land (i.e. a horizon), with heads on either side. Which does not quite fit Rktect's description nor does it fit image 3kr.jpg.

3kr.jpg is derived from part of the Narmer label Abydos but it can be called original research simply on the grounds that 3kr.jpg is a long way from being an accurate reproduction of the original.

Rktect also references the right hand image of these two which we also have in the Narmer article. He is presumably referring to the creature extracted in the image on the right here.

But the difficulty is that he has not actually produced any independent evidence that these are images of Aker! Nowhere in either of the references or in the pages that link to them or in the Narmer article, do I see Aker mentioned. It is simply Rktect's original research.

-- RHaworth 2005-09-06 21:28:47

"Transliteration of ancient Egyptian

A table of common transliteration systems for ancient Egyptian is given in this article [see 1 below]. In the field of Egyptology, transliteration is the process of converting (or mapping) texts written in the Egyptian language to alphabetic symbols representing uniliteral hieroglyphs or their hieratic and demotic counterparts. This process facilitates the publication of texts where the inclusion of photographs or drawings of an actual Egyptian document is impractical."

It should be emphasised that transliteration is not the same as transcription. Transcription seeks to reproduce the pronunciation of a text. For example, the name of the founder of the Twenty-second dynasty is transliterated as ššnq but transcribed Shoshenq in English, Chéchanq in French, Sjesjonk in Dutch, and Scheschonq in German.

[transliteration] [2]

[transcription]

None of what I contribute is original research. If you don't already know this, most of what you find online is just there to give you a starting point and mention some terms you can go look up.

From what you describe [3] your article about the horizon is actually about the aten [4] which is not quite the same thing. "3kr an earth god" is on p 550 of Gardiner's "Egyptian Grammer". "3kr n, div earth god Aker pyr 796 Urk V, 205, 17 the earth itself pyr 325; pl earth gods, pyr 393 det. G7 2202, TY 59,3,det. I14 hf3w det. king hm majesty is on p6 Faulkner "Middle Egyptian".

The point to emphasising the pronunciation is that it gives you a much better feel for the fact that the Egyptians are people like us. Their ideas are subtle and sophisticated. Transliteration has a hard time with the implied vowels in consonant only languages. Aside from that even an ugly picture can be worth a thousand words if cooler heads prevail. Wikipedia could be a lot better place without all the attitude.

Its ok that you don't know the difference between transliteration and transcription [5] but it bothers me that you are among those who are contributing speculation and opinion in place of knowledge. If you desire to know more about things Egyptian you can always try phrasing things as a question and then maybe in the process of discussion you can teach me how to write a better article. Failures to communicate like this one leave me rather dissappointed in my experience here thus far.

The point of tying an image of the god of the land itself to a discussion of some of the early palettes of Narmer and Scorpion is that they show us how the first kings gained control of the land by controlling the water that irrigated it. Irrigation ditches were the first infrastructure.

Rktect 01:29, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

OK, I will phrase things as questions (numbers refer up to your comment):

1. which article?

Aker

1. why link to a Wiki clone? This is Wikipedia - you can link direct.

Good point, I did in fact link direct and will probably end up changing the image as it doesn't seem to have been very well received.

1. from what you describe - I am describing the Aker article here on Wikipedia. Have you read it?

Yes, Bottom line you say. "However, since Aker was not really much more than the concept of the horizon, he was not considered worthy of worship in temples of his own." [Aker]

Unfortunately most of the discussion of Egyptian gods derives from people writing about a century ago (Budge) and typically their commentaries are clueless. They have all the information or at least some of it but when I look at them it comes across as the Egyptians worshipping gods.

My take on it is that the Egyptians wanted to be able to know and control the essence of things. If you control a few acres then the land itself feeds you and gives you stone to build things and metals and dams and dikes and levees to bring the water where you want it.

Here is an article which is similar to yours.[aker]

"It was Aker who opened the earth's gate for the king to pass into the Underworld. He was also known to absorb the poison from the body of anyone bitten by a snake and he neutralizes the venom in the belly of a person who has swallowed an obnoxious fly. More importantly, he imprisons the coils of the snake, Apophis, after it is hacked to pieces by Isis, and Aker could, along his back, provide a secure passage for the sun-god's boat as it traveled from west to east during the hours of the night."

There are a number which say the same thing and use the double lion glyph with the sun at the horizon. Here is one which at least is aware of the personified field version. "Aker Earth-god that in the earliest stages was represented as a strip of land with a human head. Later this changed into two lion heads, or a double sphinx. In some instances, Aker was the helper of the dead." [Aker]

My interest is in the measured earth. Over about 3 millenia the sense of 3kr goes from personified field, to measured field and from the land of Egypt being measured by its surveyors to a land measured to the ends of the Earth from horizon to horizon. My expectation is that some of the Egyptian concepts are both subtle and sophisticated. People writing about them and getting them all wrong is nothing new it goes back to the Greeks.

In the sense of measuring to the ends of the earth and Aker having some association to bending,

the measurement of the land eventually comes down to stretching the rope so it doesn't bend and the measurement is kept accurate on long ropes by having a lot of people pulling on it like a tug of war.

The Egyptian word for bend is w<f or wmhfw nht (to let the rope bend or (nht) drag on the ground. This is related in that the unflattering cologuialism for rope stretchers is rope draggers.

As to the ends of the earth being defined as the horizon, and whats beyond the horizon being the underworld that's a pretty common Egyptian concept. The sun is born at dawn, rises to its zenith at mid day, sinks back down at twilight, goes into the duat or underworld, then is born again the next day. (sef = yesterday duat = today) The mountain like glyph cupping the sun between the lions is called 3ht. (Gardiner N27 3ht = horizon). 3ht 3h-bit is listed see under i3h. i3hi M15 be innundated (using our personified field glyph less the personification) 3ht innundation season.

The pair of leopards are guarding the rwt meaning gateway, door or entrance to the underworld.

Double lions are one of the omphalos or geodetic markers and can be found all over the world. I honestly had no idea how common the image is so excuse me for sharing this.

[lion gate]

[lion gate]

[lion gate]

[lion gate]

[double lions

[double lions]

[double lions]

[double lions]

[double lions]

[doyuble lions]

[double lions]

3ht is also the word for the measure of fields by ht cords of rope or khet, a rope of 100 royal cubits used to measure the side of a st3t.

The next thing we see is Aker taking a river journey or itrw to the underworld (more free association, underworld = dead), broken up according to hours of march or distances of about 10 itrw or 700 3ht. This then turns into what the Greeks call a Periplus or listing of each station or stop along the route. Apparently the idea is you have to know the route to find your way back.

1. No. There is also an article about Aten which says it was used to designate a disc. Have you read that article?

Yes. The aten (as in ankh n atn) is the edge of the sun.

1. Very sorry, I am still not clear: is 3kr a transliteration or a transcription? How do we pronounce it? Is there a Wikipedia article (not written by you) about 3kr? What is its title? If not, how come no one has written one?

Its a transcription. Its pronounced acre. No. N/A. I don't know. Perhaps some aspects of Egyptology are not to everybody's taste. Where I come from most people are spending this time flipping back and forth between baseball and football.

1. Is there any page on the web and not created by you or Steve Whittet that links to these images and says that they are images of 3kr?

I presume you mean the personified fields rather than the lions. You can find sites that mention them or show them, but the amount of information about them is pretty limited on the web.

"The Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts at times amount to a guide for the dead in the netherworld, delimiting paths and supplying passwords for the inimical forces that are to be encountered. This, too, was a later Gnostic and Chaldean preoccupation. In the New Kingdom the “Livres” depict a subterranean realm of the dead in which the sun traverses twelve divisions from west to east (representing the hours of the night) above an underworld river. In both Middle and New Kingdom texts there are gates guarded by serpents Old Kingdom texts demonstrate the Egyptian desire to free themselves after death from the gods of the earth (3kr.w), Geb, and even the word t3 (lit. “earth” or “ground”) is used as the inhibitor of supernal flight. The hostile actions of demons are to be found in all descriptions of the Egyptian underworld and it is this feature that supplies us a clear lead in developing the precursors of Gnostic thought in ancient Egyptian cosmologies."

Here is an article that has the information but fails to make the necessary connection to the river journey and the concept of a charted course being measured in hours of time equivalent to distance. There is a sci fi novel called "riverworld" that comes closer.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:BBpu6B9y9iAJ:www.colba.net/~drmcb/Egyptian%2520Gnosis/Contents/Chapter%2520Two.doc+Egyptian+3kr&hl=en 3kr and river journey]]

"3 2 3 3KR + 3 gods + GB + H^PR + 4 goddesses 1 the double-sphinx 3KR

[3kr]

You find more on the 3ht as the innundation of the land itself and its season."

"The Season of the Inundation (Egyptian 3ht) is the first season in the ancient Egyptian calendar. It received its name because the ancient Egyptians marked the beginning of their year by the rising of the Nile flood waters; this event was important to these people because the waters left behind fertile silt and moisture which was the cause of the fertility of the Egyptian nation."

"The ancient Egyptians used this name in both their lunar and their civil calendars. The lunar calendar began on the heliacal rising of Sirius, which during the time of the ancient Egyptians occurred from July 17 to 19 (Julian); the four months of their lunar calendar are roughly equivalent to the period from the rising of Sirius to the middle of November. The civil calendar, however, moved through the seasons over time, losing about one day every four years, so its season does not continuously match any part of the modern calendar; it consists of the four 30-day months of Thoth, Phaophi, Athyr and Choiak."

It was followed by the Season of the Emergence."

[3ht]

If not, why not?

I found 2. Since there is apparently a 3kr stamp it makes the search difficult to filter.

-- RHaworth 02:08:53, 2005-09-08 (UTC)

All of the above is useless unless it gets tied together without going into the realm of the pyramidiot. Where I would like to see this develop is to tie the importance of the sustenence provided by the irrigated land to the concept that its worth it to get a bunch of guys together and dig some ditches.

The land then beomes property that gets distributed to the people who did the digging. In order to distribute it the land has to be measured and described with metes and bounds. The guy who organizes the building of the infrastructure ends up in charge. He controls the land because he controls the water that irrigates it. Pretty soon somebody figures out that the more land you have measured, the more land you control. Since the land itself is a god, its possible to extrapolate that taking the measure of any god allows you to control its powers. Its sort of like our reverence for science.

The measurement of the land and the rewards of hard work gets tied into the concept of leading a well balanced measured existence and doing what is right and proper with attention to craftsmanship and being straight, upright, plumb, square and well proportioned becomes a philosophy known as "Living the Life in Ma3t"

Rktect 02:38, September 11, 2005 (UTC)