Discovery

Computerised Heiroglyphics

An ancient language and artform meets the computer age in Auckland University's Classics Department.

Dr Antony Spalinger

It has often been said that the rapid introduction of modern computerisation has enabled small countries to advance technologically far beyond what was predicted. Perhaps more striking is the ability of these nations, such as New Zealand, to locate niches more effectively than their considerably larger counterparts.

My own field, that of Ancient History -- Egypt and the Ancient Near East in particular -- is a good case in point. Many find themselves innately attracted to its unsurpassed art or its will-'o-the-wisp religion, only to find themselves stumbling upon a vast literature written without the aid of an alphabet.

Learning any foreign language -- and a dead one at that -- is no easy task. If we add the situation of a script that requires some degree of hard memorisation and which also has no spaces between words, the reader will quickly recognise the difficulty of the task. Oddly enough, with its limited number of readable signs and clear pictorial representation, the hieroglyphic script can be nevertheless mastered in a mere couple of weeks unlike such complex scripts as Chinese and Japanese. The real problems lie in the grammar of Ancient Egyptian, a language which bears no connection to any Western one and which, for all practical purposes, is situated outside of the well-known Semitic language branch itself.

Despite all of these barriers it is a remarkable fact that much has been accomplished by students, interested engineers and scholars alike in preparing the way for a fully integrated and systematic use of computer technology in the area of Egyptology.

As early as 1981, I myself came across excellent fonts for Egyptian, all of which could be used with a personal computer. Not too long thereafter, with the introduction of international electronic information exchanges such as Internet, e-mail, ftp (file transfer protocol) and others, various individual programs were being written and tested in my field.

A good example is the free access Hieroglyphic Hypercard program set up for all and sundry at Britain's Newton Centre, in Cambridge. It has been copied and made available to all the students at Auckland University through the Faculty of Arts Computer Centre -- and hence is not merely accessible to those concentrating in Ancient Egypt -- and has been incorporated into my own teaching. As is typical of the personal interactions of scholars in Egyptology, it may be given to any interested party upon inquiry.

Such a Hypercard program is doubly successful in presenting the intricacies of any language, especially dead ones such as ancient Egyptian. The use of graphics in conjunction with music and various tone of voice (not to mention dialects of English) creates an immediate positive response on the basis of any student. The approach is likewise interactive, while at the same time avoiding -- at least from the student's viewpoint -- any opprobrium associated with wrong responses or off-centre questions.

Indeed, I found it most remarkable that this short course in hieroglyphs, which by no means was geared to simple novices, could be mastered in a short time. This was partly due to the fact that anyone can sit down and work with it any time and, providing one has a copy, anywhere. Hence, the necessity for structured classes or language labs, often set at certain times, is avoided. Yet at the same time, it further emphasises the visual aspect of the Egyptian script, often remarked upon and, in fact, one of the most attractive and easy to memorise aspects of the language.

I am supervising a project at Auckland University to prepare a similarly designed Hypercard-based program for beginning students in Egyptian. Supported by a grant from the Higher Education Research Office, this teaching aid will be available to any student at the university and will be set up on a file server for use by anyone.

It is hard for others, especially those working outside of ancient and non-European languages, to imagine the boon that such modern developments in computers has accomplished. This includes many teachers in modern languages who, at least, have not had to deal with intractable scripts and oddly written manuscripts. Moreover, languages such as French or German are replete with cognates in English and, of course, are written in the Roman script.

Consider, for example, how difficult it is to physically write Egyptian! Today anyone can use a hieroglyphic font package to mail articles, chapters of books, and simple letters as well, to colleagues abroad. There is also potential for long range extra-mural teaching.

Most of my present research is now communicated by electronic means, and I find it amusing -- from a scientific viewpoint as well as a personal one -- that I avoid the use of floppy disks. That is to say, with the swift move of Egyptology into file servers, electronic notice boards and the more mundane e-mail packages, one stage in the development of information transfer appears to have been ignored. The field has leapt over or side-stepped a level that has been and still is common in the hard sciences: namely, mailing disks to people.

At the beginning of 1993, to my knowledge I was the only individual in my field (except for my co-editor in Berkeley, California) who was composing a book via e-mail/ftp. During the year I transmitted 3 articles by a similar route rather than bother with the standard postage system. At the end of the year, when working in the US, I sent back to myself various chapters of an edited manuscript on Egyptian timekeeping and astronomy. Since all of the various diagram and charts can be easily composed and mailed off with a delay probably averaging two minutes at the most, the benefits to my work have been enormous.

Dr Anthony Spalinger is a lecturer in Auckland University's Classics Department.