S u m a y a

Anontated bibliography

Adams, Sarah Spence. “Historical Ciphers and Ancient Languages.” Math Horizons, vol. 13, no. 4, 2006, pp. 5–7,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25678614.

Anontated bibliography

Benjamin, Snyder, et al. “A Statistical Model for Lost Language Decipherment.” Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association f

or Computational Linguistics, Association for Computational Linguistics, 2010, pp. 1048-1057, https://aclanthology.org/P10-1107.pdf.

Anontated bibliography

Knight, Kevin, et al. “Unsupervised Analysis for Decipherment Problems.” Proceedings of the COLING/ACL on Main Conference Poster

Sessions, Association for Computational Linguistics. 2006, pp. 499–506, https://doi.org/10.3115/1273073.1273138.

Blog Entry 8

Anontated bibliography

Wicker, F. D. P. “The Road to Punt.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 164, no. 2, 1998, pp. 155–67, https://doi.org/10.2307/3060367.

Anontated bibliography

Kitchen, K. A. “Punt and How to Get There.” Orientalia, vol. 40, no. 2, 1971, pp. 184–207, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43074450.

Anontated bibliography

Balanda, Stanley. “The So-Called ‘Mine of Punt’ and Its Location.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, vol. 42, 2005, pp. 33–44, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27651797.

Anontated bibliography

Dixon, D. M. “The Transplantation of Punt Incense Trees in Egypt.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 55, 1969, pp. 55–65, https://doi.org/10.2307/3856000.

Unpacking Ancient Languages & The Land Of Punt

What does one make sense of the word deciphering? Is it solving crossword puzzles? Or perhaps is it decoding military secret messages? Throughout time, this idea has been subject to various uses and techniques. Though the concentration and success are through decoding of ancient texts. Like the Rosetta stone, as it has exceptionally introduced the world to bilingual translation, new knowledge and unknown histories. In recent years, the world of deciphering made its way into academia with success. Thus, one would think that the merit for such work would be parallel to its success, however, it is shown to be quite underlooked. With this in mind, the essay will examine how deciphering ancient texts allows us to advance our knowledge in the field of linguistics as well as histories and cultures that are unknown to the world, notably the ancient Land of Punt.

This section will explore the importance of viewing decipherment of ancient languages, singularly, in relation to complexity, achievements, and enrichment of knowledge. For a brief historic overview, the first decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs was achieved thanks to the Rosetta stone. The Rosetta stone is the oldest recorded stone tablet, containing inscriptions of Egyptian hieroglyphs, Ancient Greek, and a Demotic script. It is said to be an “ultimate crib”, as it is a feasible key of bilingual decipherment. (Adams 3). To understand the relevance of decipherment in relation to various fields of study, it is pertinent to consider its meaning. In a general sense, it is simply the decoding, translating and identifying of unknown or ancient texts and languages. Languages such as Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Sanskrit are decoded using either image-based writing systems like iconographs, pictographs, or symbol based like Egyptian hieroglyphs. This said, decipherment branched into the studies of archaeology, history, and culture. Furthermore, the decipherer, requires prior knowledge of the aforementioned studies, as well as keen intellect and perhaps some talent of genius (pg 324). In fact, according to several scholars, since “Decipherment answers to both the intellect and the emotions at a deep level, the level of questions like 'What is it that makes us human?', 'What is it that makes us civilized?” ( Robinson 319). In terms of the achievement of deciphering a text, for experts, the general feeling is “an excitement, just like a physics discovery or something.” For the decipherer who succeeds, it is like winning a Nobel prize in literature or a solo Nobel in science-indeed perhaps of wider prestige when one thinks of the public fascination with ancient Egypt” ( Robinson 15). It is claimed that sometimes even as meritable “a 'cracking' of the genetic code” (Robinson 319). All things considered, there is hope that decipherment will be given due credit for its own achievements and regarded as flexible, epistemologically enriching and productive independently.

This section will provide an overview of the challenges and ambiguity of translating and interpreting undeciphered scripts, in particular Hieroglyphs, through the large body of scholarly disagreement. The disagreement is mainly regarding the methodology used to decipher the given languages as well as the decipherment of unknown languages (Adams 3). In the case of unknown languages, the disagreements perhaps cannot be proved wrong since they would require to be reinforced by other pieces of evidence (Adams 3). Scholars hypothesise in order to find advancements in research, which will still be surrounded with much controversy. For further clarification, the author of the short article, “Unsupervised analysis for decipherment problems'' and several linguists, indicate the formulation: universal phonetic decipherment, ought to follow the objective of “universal constraints on phoneme sequences” (Knight 503). Simultaneously, the opposite end of the spectrum of beliefs, assert that sound change is varied and therefore not universal, since language is always changing. Even within the concentration of Egyptian hieroglyphs there is scholarly division. In the article, “About Three Egyptian Hieroglyphs'', the writer reveals a detailed outlook on Egyptian hieroglyphs, pertaining to the ambiguity of certain iconographics, in which they are considered “faulty writing” by a number of scholars. (Badawy). While the author maintains that interpretations of symbols are still ambiguous in theory, it is the similarities between the symbols and the actions they translate to that essentially strengthen the meaning (Badawy). Overall, it is definite that this process of trial and error, struggles, different scholarly opinions, are components to gaining knowledge and getting one step closer to revealing the unknown.

The existence of the ancient kingdom Punt is brought to light through Egyptian hieroglyphs. In the grand scheme of things, deciphering is more than simply encoding and decoding texts. It is an art and science that extensively reveals mysterious histories to the world. This is where the Land of Punt comes into play. The Land Of punt, also known as "The Land Of The Gods", an ancient kingdom that engaged in a long history of trade with Ancient Egypt (Mark). Evidence provides the long history of contact through enigmatic inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphs (Mahfouz). Through considerable research by decipherers, it is believed that one of numerous marks left behind by Punt, is encrypted within the Palermo Stone. This monument “preserves the earliest of Punt at present; at some point late in the Fifth Dynasty, a large quantity of goods, including 80,000 measures of antyw, were brought to Egypt from Punt” (Creasman 397). Now more detailed clues from inscriptions will be explored in order to share the distinct features of the land of punt. First, Egyptians emphasise the abundance of resources found within this so-called sacred land, including fragrant gums, ebony, trees, copper, etc. (Mark). “The aromatic substance par excellence, however, was that known as rntyw, the only known geographical source of which was the land of Punt (Pwenet) (Dixon 55 ). As illustrated in the passage above, The Land of punt seems to have been handled with great interest. At times, trade would go as far as carrying trees from Punt through expeditions, to the extent of transplanting these same trees in Egyptian lands. (Sinha 596). It is important to note that the mastermind behind the expeditions, Queen Hatshepsut was carrying out “The best-known and possibly the most fruitful voyages” (Wicker). Remarkably sending out five ships for both political and trading motives (Wicker 157). An additional piece of information useful to develop in this paper, found in Egyptian monuments is the location of Punt. Much proof claims the location to be either in Arabia or Africa (Kitchen). Specifically, "It has been identified with Syria, Southern Arabia, Eastern Sudan, Northern Ethiopia, Western Ethiopia and Somalia"30 and more recently with the Red Sea Coast of Saudi Arabia.31 Al (Balanda 5). The evidence derives from clues, fragrant gums are unique to East African cultures, therefore, it could be suggested that the location is within that proximity. Finally, thanks to clues left behind in scripts, bringing back knowledge, language contact, history and culture all through trade, was made possible.

To conclude, thanks to ancient texts, the world of decipherment opened doors to various areas of studies including historical linguistics, in effect, bringing to light mysterious lands like Punt. This paper reinforced this through scholarly accomplishments over the past years as well as extensive research. Seeing that this essay analysed Punt through the lens of Ancient Egypt, it encourages an Egyptian world view, in contrast to the much repetitive Eurocentric perspective throughout academia. Not to mention, the minimal scholarly approach on Punt through Somalia, Eritrea and the whole of East Africa, simply because oral tradition-based cultures are generally downplayed. Having said that, perhaps, scholars ought to be open to approaching cultures through their respective or even similar ways of knowing.

Works Cited

Adams, Sarah Spence. “Historical Ciphers and Ancient Languages.” Math Horizons, vol. 13, no. 4, 2006, pp. 5–7,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25678614.

Badawy, Alexander. “About Three Egyptian Hieroglyphs.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, University of Chicago Press, 1956, pp. 175–79, http://www.jstor.org/stable/542309.

Balanda, Stanley. “The So-Called ‘Mine of Punt’ and Its Location.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, vol. 42, 2005, pp. 33–44, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27651797.

Benjamin, Snyder, et al. “A Statistical Model for Lost Language Decipherment.” Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Association for Computational Linguistics, 2010, pp. 1048-1057, https://aclanthology.org/P10-1107.pdf.

Creasman, Pearce Paul. “Hatshepsut and the Politics of Punt.” The African Archaeological Review, vol. 31, no. 3, 2014, pp. 395–405, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43916715.

Dixon, D. M. “The Transplantation of Punt Incense Trees in Egypt.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 55, 1969, pp. 55–65, https://doi.org/10.2307/3856000.

Kitchen, K. A. “Punt and How to Get There.” Orientalia, vol. 40, no. 2, 1971, pp. 184–207, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43074450.

Knight, Kevin, et al. “Unsupervised Analysis for Decipherment Problems.” Proceedings of the COLING/ACL on Main Conference Poster Sessions, Association for Computational Linguistics. 2006, pp. 499–506, https://doi.org/10.3115/1273073.1273138.

Mahfouz, El-Sayed. "Ramses II and the Land of Punt in the light of Nubian Enigmatic Inscriptions." Abgadiyat, vol.11, no. 8, Egyptian Journals, 2016, pp.86-91, doi: 10.21608/abgad.2016.56691.

Mark, Joshua J.. "Punt." World History Encyclopedia, World History Encyclopedia, 01 Aug 2011. Web. 28 April 2022.

Sinha, R. K. “PUNT AND PUNTITES AE DEPICTED IN THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 44, Indian History Congress, 1983, pp. 593–98, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44139909.

Robinson, Andrew. "The Enigma Of The World's Undeciphered texts." Thames and Hudson, 2009.

Wicker, F. D. P. “The Road to Punt.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 164, no. 2, 1998, pp. 155–67, https://doi.org/10.2307/3060367.

Presentation