Talk:Ankh wedja seneb

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Contents 1 Recent changes 2 Not an acronym 3 Usage of the a.u.s. in the Rosetta Stone 4 Do you really think this is the oldest acronym?

[edit] Recent changes

There are no spaces in Egyptian so there is no need to insert them in the hieroglyphs.

Y1 (the bookroll determinative) is appropriate and attested in the Altägyptisches Wörterbuch; Aa29 (the builder's level) is not and is incorrect.

Under "wedja" was this:

Dominion is a second term that is implied with prosperity. The raising of the Djed pillar was symbolic of the pharaoh creating, and maintaining his kingdom. It is the reason some pharaohs campaigned beyond the Egyptian border, leaving a legacy for the next pharaohs to deal with.

Wedja does not mean "dominion" at all. The word word for "dominion" is was, which was sometimes used in this formula, but not typically. The meaning of "wedja" is quite clear; see the Altägyptisches Wörterbuch. The rest about the djed pillar and why kings campaigned have nothing to do with this particular formula in Egyptian.

I also removed the section on the Rosetta Stone. If you were to list every ancient Egyptian text mentioning "ankh, wedja, seneb," the article would be several megabytes long. Furthermore there is nothing special about the Rosetta Stone in this context; several other texts could also be listed. Frogmanjoe 04:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not an acronym

According to the article Acronym and initialism, an acronym is "formed using the initial letters of words or word parts in a phrase or name". If so, "ankh wedja seneb" is not an acronym. The 1st word, ankh, is technically not abbreviated in any manner (though there is a fuller writing with optional phonetic components). The 2nd word, "wedja," is written with the 2nd hieroglyph of the fully written word (= "dja" NOT "w"), and not the 1st (= "w"). The last component, "seneb," is the only one showing initialism (1st hieroglyph = "s"). So while I am sure we can all agree this is an abbreviation, it is highly debatable if it can be regarded as a true acronym. Frogmanjoe 05:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Usage of the a.u.s. in the Rosetta Stone

"given by the gods: victory, might, life, strength, health, and everything good-- in hieroglyphs

This easily shows the correct usage of the a.u.s. from the Rosetta Stone. (Please refer to the Re-Added section) ...from the SonoranDesert of Arizona -...-Mmcannis 22:51, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do you really think this is the oldest acronym?

I will bet there are some examples from Cuneiform script. If more of the transliterations of scripts were available, people who don't know what they're talking about wouldn't get away with so much. If I knew more than just the Amarna letters text corpus, I might be able to offer some examples of cuneiform (But the time range and the evolution of all the scripts complicates the discussion). By late Greek Ptolemaic Egypt things were fixed. When the transformation to acronym-type stuff developed is probably part of the the history of Demotic and Hieratic, (or the study of other cultures). from the HotAZ desertSonoran- ...-Mmcannis 23:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)