1 - Automatic Translation
of Ancient Egyptian
by Carlos Galucci
The author, student at the Uruguayan Institute of Egyptology
Electronic computers have been with us for over 50 years now but since the 70s of the XXth century, when the first personal computers appeared in the market, experts from many countries began to use them to solve many problems, among them, those related to the hieroglyphic writing system of ancient Egypt.
The first problem to be solved was how to reproduce consistently such characters. At first and until fairly recently, it was common to find hand-drawn signs, even in expensive specialized publications.
Later, special printing fonts were made in France first and then in England, the process culminated with the appearance of the Gardiner font early in this century which became a standard tool, especially in English-speaking countries. The hand-written signs found elsewhere often led to confusion and misunderstandings.
Personal computers contributed to eliminate this problem and to put at anyone’s service sophisticated fonts of Egyptian hieroglyphs as well as hieratic, demotic, coptic, meroitic and other related scripts.
Those hieroglyphic signs, of which we know about 769 different basic ones, were incorporated into the computer’s memory at first as dot matrixes, with a smaller or greater definition depending on the program. Bubble-jet and laser printers led to an improvement in the appearance of such characters.
Already since the 70s, groups of people in several countries have been involved in trying to achieve automatic translations of modern and ancient texts in various languages, although unfortunately with little success due partly to the complexities of the languages themselves with their rich variety of meaning, structure and local dialect modifications.
The convenience of achieving reliable automatic translations has always been obvious to everyone, especially in archaeological work where the speed in interpreting written evidence found in the field can help direct the course of the excavation itself.
Our work involved developing a complex algorithm that detects and separates each word in a sentence and applying the grammatical rules known to us, provides a correct translation, even when a word has several possible meanings.
We started to work with a 486 PC (now we use a Pentium) programmed in C language. By means of a scanner we incorporated the hieroglyphs into the computer’s memory. Our first attempts were carried out with a basic vocabulary of about 500 words, and although the results were encouraging, they required an excessive intervention by the user in order to select the correct version among the several possibilities suggested by the machine. More recently, we have introduced modifications and improvements by which the computer itself does the selection and offers the best possible translation, although at the flip of a key, the user can consult other possibilities if he / she is not satisfied with what the computer indicates.
The first version of our program is already available, which includes a basic dictionary of more than 20,000 words and can be inspected further and purchased at:
IMPORTANT - If you already own a copy of the Glyphkey 2.1 CD-ROM and wish to download the latest dictionary and grammar upgrade that the author will be providing at regular intervals, just press on the link below. After you have downloaded it into your hard disk, start Glyphkey and press the button that says "upgrade", it will give you the option to activate it and automatically upgrade your version. These upgrades are completely free of charge:
In order to download this upgrade file you have to click on the above link, then it will ask you to "sign in", enter glyphkey21 as the name and passwo as the password, and then it will start to download the upgrade file into your computer.
Further versions will increase both the vocabulary and the capacity of the computer to provide more sophisticated translations, with even less user’s intervention. We are currently incorporating into the program Faulkner’s Concise Dictionary, we used Erman and Grapow’s as well, and also the improved knowledge provided by the new Berlin Dictionary as it becomes available. The first version will provide translations of texts in Middle (Classical) Egyptian. Later versions will deal with those in Old or Late Egyptian. We submitted a report on our work in progress to the Berlin team and Dr. Stefan Grunert of the Berlin Academy of Sciences kindly replied pointing out that: "The structure that you outline is impressive and your program, once it is finished, will surely be an interesting useful contribution for its users". I will provide now some simple examples of how the program at this stage works. The example in Figs. 1 and 2 is very basic, the program identifies the first word as the verb "to rise" (or "to shine"), the next word is the noun "the sun" followed by a preposition and another noun. Using the ancient Egyptian basic word-order, the automatic translation does not seem difficult. "Say your names to this scribe" ("Digan vuestros nombres a este escriba") (and other possible variations according to the context such as "when you tell your names to this scribe, ...........", etc. etc.). The second example we have chosen (Fig. 3), although it involves another relatively simple sentence, is more complicated. The program starts by trying to identify the first word in the sentence and finds the verb "to say" or "to speak". As for the rest, it finds that the following three signs can be interpreted in various ways, as shown in Figs. 4 to 7. In Fig. 4 the program finds the presence of two suffix pronouns together as unacceptable and thus discards this possibility. The sequence verb-suffix pronoun-preposition (Fig. 5) is not bad but the next word does not exist, so this possibility is not probably correct. The combination of a verb and a dependent pronoun as indicated in Fig. 6 is not very good either, especially because the following word does not exist, as in Fig. 5. The sequence verb-suffix pronoun is grammatically correct and also leaves as next word the noun "name" (Fig. 7) and thus the program selects this one as the correct translation of this first part of the sentence. Then it proceeds to translate the following signs (Fig. 8). As before, it finds a similar sequence of signs but preceded by a noun instead of a verb. The program discards the possibility as suffix pronouns and accepts the correct one of a possessive adjective. The following signs are pretty straightforward and do not present any difficulty to the program which renders the final translation as in Fig. 9. The user only has to put the sentence together in proper English (or Spanish or German, because the program will be made available in those three languages) and that’s that. If the user is not satisfied, the program can backtrack and offer any of the discarded possibilities, which in other special cases may prove to be more appropriate, the user has the chance to evaluate and decide for himself. In the case of the verb, the program offers at first the meaning "to say" but if the user is not satisfied, it can provide also at the flip of a key the other alternatives, in this case, "to speak". If you have any questions or comments about this project, you can contact me at our Institute or personally at the following email address: 
2 – The Western Valley
of the Kings in Egypt
by Jorge Casariego
Among the many archaeological sites to be found in Upper Egypt, near modern Luxor, we would like to draw the reader’s attention to one which has a very special characteristic: it is now known as the Eastern Valley of the Kings and was the burial ground where the bodies of most of the Pharaohs of the XVIII, XIX and XX Dynasties (between approximately 1550 to 1100 BC) were laid to rest.
Many people do not know that separated by a hill, there is another valley called the Western Valley of the Kings, where up to the present day only a few royal tombs have been found, among them those of kings Ay and Amenhotep III of the XVIII Dynasty.
To the left, a view of the Western Valley of the Kings. At the centre, Jorge Casariego at the entrance to the Valley. To the right, standing, Dr. Otto Schaden who was doing work at the Western Valley with Dr. Richard Wilkinson at the time J. Casariego was performing his preliminary exploration of the same Valley as a starting point for further work there. Both scholars received the author with great hospitality and an open attitude that was much appreciated.
After the tomb of king Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922 in the Eastern Valley of the Kings, the general opinion was that no more royal tombs were likely to be found there. However, the recent discovery (or rather, the re-discovery) of KV-5 showed that there is much work to be done in this area and nobody can tell for sure what can come to light as the outcome of such endeavours.
A few years ago an American scholar presented in an international conference the results of his work at, of all places, the great Temple of Karnak, where he had found in an area visited by millions of tourists every year (and also by hundreds of scholars) the remains of erased reliefs depicting Ramses II in battle with the Hittites which had been replaced by others telling us of a treaty with that nation.
Therefore, it is not unlikely that future dramatic discoveries may still take place anywhere in Egypt and particularly, in the Western Valley of the Kings, which has deserved comparatively little attention from scholars in the last hundred years.
If we bear in mind that the tombs of several kings belonging to the New Kingdom are missing in this area, as well as probably those of countless other members of royal families, the chances are good for the success of any long term project involving the Western Valley.
It is hard to figure out the reason for the abundance of tombs in the Eastern Valley and for the few that have been found in its Western side, but some of the possible explanations that have been advanced such as the more difficult access, an advantage from a security point of view but a probable logistic nightmare for the architect, or the bad reputation of the place after having been used by kings tainted with the Amarna stigma, do not sound wholly convincing and I feel that only after a thorough survey using modern technology we will be able to say whether there is nothing more to be expected to come to light here.
On three occasions, between 1988 and 1997, I have spent several weeks exploring the Western Valley gathering evidence that may lead to a more precisely defined project which can be presented to the Egyptian antiquities authorities for approval. I plan to return shortly to continue with my research and in the meantime I am also trying to secure the necessary funding that such an enterprise may require in the future.
Anyone interested in this line of research who wishes to contact me, may do so at our Institute’s postal or email address, as follows:
Address: 4 de Julio 3068 Montevideo
Uruguay CP 11600
3 – New Museum/Classroom Project
by Daniel Luongo and Víctor Capuchio
When the idea of an Egyptian Museum in Montevideo was conceived, the purpose and dimension of the task seemed at the time limited by a number of variables, but the inauguration of the museum in 1984 fulfilled for a time the purpose that had led to its creation.
However, as time went by, the development of the institution and the increase in the number of objects generously donated by individuals who visited the museum, led to the need for a re-design of the space and the display cases so as to use to the best possible advantage the limited area of our premises devoted to such a purpose.
The same applied to the areas used for teaching which also required modifications so as to offer students and teaching staff the best possible conditions within our means.
In 1997 a work group which included the writers and Ricardo García, Instructor at the Institute, presented to the Board of the Uruguayan Society of Egyptology, a project for the refurbishment of both, which was duly considered and approved on the 17th of March of that year.
Computer layouts of the new classroom for our Institute
By means of voluntary contributions from Members of the Society and through the hard personal work of some students, toiling after working hours and during weekends, this project could finally be completed although the delay or neglect by some people to keep up their commitments, put some of the improvised builders in the red for quite a while.
The museum refurbishment is quite another matter. We estimate its cost at about U$S 7,000, always considering of course that much of the actual work will be done by the Museum Committee, but we think that the final result which we can see below, justifies the effort.
Computer layouts and design of display cases and labels
So far all our steps to convey to national government, municipal or ministry of culture officials the importance of what we have to offer to the public and the very limited expense involved, at least from a government point of view considering the sums they usually handle, have been unsuccessful. In some cases it has been deemed more appropriate to grant funds for projects such as a play that is performed for a few weeks and it is discontinued, valuable cultural undertaking but of ephemeral duration, or for setting up temporary exhibitions, denying them for projects such as ours which involve the permanent exhibition of a small but rich collection which private individuals and educational institutions frequently visit. Maybe it is also that we, as an institution, have refused to get involved in the chain of influence manipulation that is so deeply ingrained in this country (and in others, no doubt), but which we feel is unfair and detrimental to the cultural development of Uruguay.
We are currently involved therefore in fund-raising which we plan to carry out by means of personal donations, raffles and other such means. We wish to thank the Board of our institution which showed its will to contribute to our goal by deciding to devote all donations at the museum and 10% of the annual member subscriptions to the purpose.
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