Aries Ancient Egyptian Zodiac Constellation ♈️ + Noun Basics | Write like an Egyptian Lesson 2
Channel: Sagan and Loki
Date: 2021-04-05

Wherein I (the Mom) paint Aries and tell you about the hieroglyph that implies "squee". Originals on Etsy: http://saganandloki.etsy.com

Reupload for an in-video typo I haven't made in 25 years. 🙄 It's OK to view this lesson out of order.

(I'm a paleographic folk artist. All of these paintings are original designs, not reproductions. It's fine to practice, but please don't steal them.)

00:00​ Imyat (Pigments) Scumbling and Colorblocks
04:45 Yew (The Calf) The Nuance of Ideograms
11:10 Plurals

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I will primarily be referencing Sir Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar: https://amzn.to/3bDXA68

Other suggested reading:

Books by Gay Robins: https://amzn.to/3cs61R9
Egyptian to English Dictionary: https://amzn.to/2PMweST
Egyptian Book of the Dead: https://amzn.to/38tOxTx
Sterling Innovation's Book of the Dead: https://amzn.to/3rHhtPf

#Zodiac #AncientEgypt #Aries

Transcript:

Hey, People!

Let's learn about Egyptian nouns while I paint The Newborn Calf.

Ahsha, First:

Henat, Pigments:

Because this is a nighttime piece, I'm using Titanium White instead of Unbleached Titanium. Unbleached Titanium's gold undertone competes with silver.

I use primers (colorblocks) for large areas to create a consistent surface. I usually use Yellow Ochre, like on this calf, for medium or speckled papyrus. 

You can create nuance of color without mixing pigments by scumbling. Use a dry brush with a small belly and drag a tiny amount of paint across the color block. (Bob Ross called this amount of paint, "two hairs and some air.")

Scumbling is great for blending fur while keeping the distressed look of an ancient piece.

Another way to create nuance is with a complementary color block.

Here, for water and a nighttime sky, I'm painting over a colorblock of Chrysocolla, or Cobalt Green Light. This creates a color-change effect. In the final painting, subdued light will show the night as Egyptian Blue Dark, almost an Indigo, but sunlight will penetrate the Lapis Lazuli layer, and turn the sky a bright blue from below.

Sadly, this is a nuance that won't translate to prints. 

Yew: The Hartebeest Calf

The Dendera Zodiac is a bas-relief from the ceiling of the Usir (Osiris) chapel in the temple of Hathor. The artist took the Greek constellations and turned them into Egyptian characters. (Because people love a crossover.)

The calf they used for Aries is posed like a baby red hartebeest, a species of African antelope. The hartebeest is known for being calm, and the baby hartebeest hieroglyph can represent any baby animal. Its nuance is the feeling you get when you look at something cute.

Its name is "Yew". Using the uniliteral phonograms, it would be written Reed Flower, Quail Chick.

The problem with writing it this way is Reed Flower, Quail Chick is also a copula, what we call in English class a linking verb, in this case, is or are. To make matters worse, Yew can also mean dog, injustice, come back, cry out, or island.

In order to show a word is specific, a silent ideogram at the end determines its sense or essence. Since "Yew" already meant a baby hartebeest, it became a Biliteral sign for the sound Yew. You can just draw one and it means what it says. But adding a dog, person, or sparrow after it turns it into a dog, cry out, or injustice.

Now, about nuance. The calf is a calm baby.

Yew as a Biliteral to replace Y W is used in words like inheritance, reward, to become pregnant, to make pregnant, sanctuary, announce (someone), balance, and dog. This lends its innocence and personality to these words. It's also used in the word for sin, where it is made opposite by the evil sparrow. It's not used in return, island, hump-back, yes, or pillared hall, because none of those words evoke a warm, fuzzy feeling.

The word featured in this painting is Yewhew, meaning inundation or flood. While Americans might see this as a problem, the people of the Nile relied on flooding to grow enough food. Yewhew is a generic inundation, not the name of Inundation season. Here, it's a change that comes with a reward. Something that makes you feel warm and fuzzy. In early YouTube parlance, a squee.

Ahsha: Plurals

At the beginning, I painted three emmer wheat plants. (In green, the color of luck.) Whenever you see three of an ideogram, it could literally mean three, but more often it means "many" or "an abundance of". 

A wheat plant. A wheat field. Water. Lots of water. Person or man. Woman. Couple. People.

Did you notice at the end of Yewhew is an ideogram of 3 waters?