Thursday, August 1, 2002

LexiLine Journal #19 - 2002 : Khasekhemwy and Dictionairies

Welcome!

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This provides you with some more information about the LexiLine list owner and moderator, whose works are included in LexiLine newsletters.

For those of you out there who are both English and German-speaking, it may interest you to know that I was a member of a team of four authors for the just published 2002 revised version of the Langenscheidt Routledge Dictionary of Business, Commerce and Finance English-German German-English, 1230 pages, ca. 60,000 terms both ways, i.e. a total of ca. 120,000 terms (not just single words, but many terms of art and phrases).

We worked hard to make this the finest dictionary of its kind in the world. The CD-ROM which appears in October, costs 175 Euros (one Euro is about the same as one US Dollar). The book at present is still listed at the Langenscheidt website at 99 Euros. Routledge does not yet list it. Libri.de does. I do not know if this price will be maintained in the future.

In German the book title is: Langenscheidt Routledge Fachwörterbuch Wirtschaft, Handel und Finanzen.

As a book the ISBN is 3-86117-191-0.
As a CD-ROM (first available in October) the ISBN is 3-86117-208-9.

See http://www.langenscheidt.de/deutsch/ - Langenscheidt is the world's largest dictionary maker - and then click the option Neuerscheinungen and then the option Langenscheidt Fachverlag - which brings you to the page with the new publications ....

Since we surely have few German speakers on this list, this of course is not advertising but just information for you as list members. You should be aware that my areas of responsibility for this dictionary include law, patents, enviroment, travel and tourism, and information techonology (all very much "law-related") - including the internet. I know this stuff, much as I know the megaliths.

Without meaning to be disparaging, I myself as a dictionary author look at entries in other dictionaries for comparison, such as The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, to see "what is really known", so e.g. under the entry "Khasekhemwy" where we find the following RELATIVE text excerpts, all in ONE short article about Khasekhemwy [emphasis added by us]:

"probably his son"
"it has been suggested"
"perhaps also political"
"probably an excessively historical explanation"
"what may have been an iconographic phenomenon"
"debate...hinges partly on the question"
"The picture was once believed to be"
"was thought to refer to another ruler"
"depictions...have been interpreted as evidence"
"generally considered"
"probably the forerunners of the valley temples"
"generally considered"
"poor excavation...has hindered any more definite statement"

Do these people know what they are talking about? NO.

When we look under "literature", it is written in that same work:

"Throughout the Pharaonic period it is often difficult to distinguish between fictional narratives and accounts of actual events, and part of this problem stems from a general inability to recognize the aims and contexts of particular texts. "

What happens in the course of time in Egyptology, however, is that all of these unclear texts, suppositions and assumptions creep into the mainstream literature, are cited by scholars, citing their cronies and professors, and then are quoted LATER as fact - even though originally such alleged facts were just nice suppositions, often supported by little or no evidence, and to which generally no new supporting knowledge has been added.

As written further under "literature" in the British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt:
"Many such documents are perhaps best regarded as semi-fictional works.... "

And so also should one regard Egyptological dictionaries, as "semi-fictional works", whatever that means. When the Egyptologists KNOW what they are writing and defining, the definitions and explanations will look different than they do now.

When you look to have Khasekhemwy "defined" properly, you will find
that done best, in my opinion, at my LexiLine website at http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi762.htm

When the British Musuem Dictionary "definition" writes of Khasekhemwy that "[t]he depictions of slain enemies on the two statues [one statue shown at the LexiLine pages] have been interpreted as evidence of military activities during his reign", you can toss such nonsense straight into the wastebasket. The Egyptologists on that score do not know what they are talking about.

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