[HN Gopher] Egyptologist uncovers hidden messages on Paris's ico...
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Egyptologist uncovers hidden messages on Paris's iconic obelisk
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 72 points
Date : 2025-05-08 08:04 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.artnet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.artnet.com)
| bhickey wrote:
| You can change the link: https://news.artnet.com/art-
| world/hidden-messages-paris-luxo...
| Luc wrote:
| Yes, this is a much better link.
| dang wrote:
| Wow, thanks! That's so much better that I think we can change
| the link above (from
| https://archaeology.org/news/2025/05/06/secret-messages-
| dete...) and re-up the thread.
| helpfulclippy wrote:
| I've seen a few articles on this now. They keep calling it a
| "secret" message and "hieroglyphic cryptography," but then talk
| about how sufficiently literate people are supposed to understand
| it, and the content is along the lines of "The god-king cannot be
| dethroned" and "Make offerings to the gods." Nothing about this
| sounds like it was intended to be kept secret or confidential
| from anyone.
|
| This seems more like fancy typesetting than cryptography,
| combined with an awareness that the writing at the top of a big
| tall obelisk will only be readable from a distance.
| pdw wrote:
| Crypto-hieroglyphic writing is a real thing:
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/hieroglyphic-writing/Crypto...
|
| Such writing would give non-standard meanings to signs, or
| drawn them in non-standard ways, or use entirely invented
| signs. It would be a puzzle to work out the meaning, and I
| imagine most people who weren't very literate would be stumped.
| They certainly stumped egyptologists for a while when the first
| examples were discovered.
| autoexec wrote:
| I imagine most people who weren't very literate would also be
| stumped by things written fairly plainly.
| betterThanTexas wrote:
| From the way they describe how the message is read, it
| doesn't seem written very plainly at all. It would be odd
| to assume that this knowledge was accessible to many people
| if the manner in which it's written is only found in
| certain circumstances.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Sufficiently literate people can understand any encrypted
| message.
| Zamiel_Snawley wrote:
| Pi is equal to 3 for sufficiently small values of pi, and
| sufficiently large values of 3.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Are the same messages on the obelisk in Central Park? I believe
| it's essentially the same obelisk. I walk by that one at least
| once a week. Pretty sad how much the NYC climate has damaged it,
| though, as opposed to the desert climate it originated from.
| walthamstow wrote:
| The London and NYC ones ('Cleopatra's Needles') are related to
| each other but I don't think they are related to the Paris one
| Trasmatta wrote:
| You're right, I mixed up the Paris and London obelisks.
| Luc wrote:
| https://www.progres.net.eg/plusieurs-messages-caches-sur-lob...
|
| In this article in French, they mention hieroglyphs encoded in
| the way arms and legs are drawn of a figure on the throne of
| Tutankhamun, and that only 6 Egyptologists in the whole worlds
| are able to decode them.
|
| Hmmm, I wonder how mainstream these ideas are? Do other
| Egyptologists respect them?
| orwin wrote:
| The idea of cryptohieroglyphs is accepted as true it seems (at
| least in France), even though most Egyptologist think they are
| highly interpretative: think about literature and how some
| literature expert would interpret Poe's books (sorry only
| classic US author i know beside Kerouac), except worse.
|
| Still, it's clear ancient egyptians loved their puzzles, the
| clear interpretation of what they mean is what elude us.
| thechao wrote:
| I suspect, that in the context of "reputable academically sound
| Egyptologist" the number "6" is a bumper crop of Egyptologists.
| The set of reputable academics in these fields is always a lot
| smaller than you'd like. I think that's why there's so many
| cranks.
| Luc wrote:
| There appears to be 300 to 500 practicing academic
| Egyptologists. So from 1% to 2% can read the secret messages.
| tough wrote:
| do they share notes? how do the 6 know their interpretation
| of the secret meaning is correct.
| permo-w wrote:
| I struggle with Egyptology as a whole. you watch even
| mainstream, reputable documentaries on Ancient Egypt and
| there is a lot of what and little why, and it makes you
| wonder how much of it is actual science and how much of it is
| just the most exciting available interpretation of the facts
| to please the Egyptians/draw in viewers. the Egyptian
| authorities want tourists, and control archaeology licenses
| tightly, and "we found a scroll that mentions moving some
| building materials near the great pyramid" sells far less
| plane tickets than "we found a scroll written by _the
| architect of The Great Pyramid_!!!! "
| betterThanTexas wrote:
| > and it makes you wonder how much of it is actual science
|
| I don't wonder. You can look up egyptian texts with
| translations and pronunciation guides. We have literally
| hundreds of thousands of discarded papyri and plenty of
| papers detailing the archaeological processes of their
| excavations and interpretations. It's a gold-mine of
| explicit documentation about their practices and beliefs
| and logistics over millennia. We know about their diets,
| their genetics, how their ruling class changed over time,
| how they interpreted life and death, to the extent where we
| can draw likely religious transmission among stories with
| other near-east religions. The extent of evidence we have
| demonstrating actual knowledge is better than anything else
| in the ancient world.
|
| Granted, interpretation _isn 't science_, but it's still
| expected to be presented rationally. The linguistics that
| yielded the translation itself proved empirically very
| reliable.
|
| There are _many_ cranks into Egyptian history with many
| different agendas, though, and I 'm sure many of them call
| themselves egyptologists.
| nunobrito wrote:
| The news article was a true click-bait.
|
| The messages were not secret at all, they were just written on
| the face of the obelisk that faces the river. Meaning that only
| visitors by boat would read them when docking rather than the
| poor pedestrians using the normal road.
| dang wrote:
| (we've since changed the URL above - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43925101)
| BurnGpuBurn wrote:
| Would they ever give the thing back though?
| gopher_space wrote:
| The whole idea of giving things back to Egypt is currently
| tainted by the complete lack of professional respect everyone
| else on the planet has for the guy running things there. I
| could picture institutions saying they'll send artifacts back
| and then just dragging their feet until he retires.
| autoexec wrote:
| Why give it back? It seems like a nice gift.
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| While hieroglyphic cryptography is a thing (as is BTW "sportive
| orthography" in Ancient Egyptian), this is not it. I am all for
| acknowledging that Ancient Egyptian art is often merging writing
| and depiction in a way that escapes the unprepared who would
| point to a prominent figure in a grave wall decoration and say
| 'this is a picture', then point to some hieroglyphs and say 'that
| is writing'. It's in principle not wrong but misses the point
| that frequently the choice of hieroglyphs, their orientation and
| variations in orthography correspond to details of the depicted
| subject, while the pictures can often be read out, either by
| describing the participants and their actions, or by naming the
| parts.
|
| As for the latter, there's a statue of "Ramesses II (Dyn XIX) as
| a Child"[1] which shows Horus as a falcon with the sun ( _r_ ) on
| his breast, a child ( _ms_ ) beneath it, in his hand a sedge
| plant ( _sw_ ). Naming the parts--sun, child, sedge--in this
| order gives _rmssw_ , vocalized _ramissaw_ , roughly maybe
| approximately [ra?'missaw], in any event the very name of
| Ramesses, meaning "He is / was born / brought forth by Ra / the
| Sun". Note that you'll have to choose to omit _hr_ "Horus"
| although the falcon dominates the sculpture, and that the sedge
| does not represent a plant but, by virtue of sounding like it,
| the 3rd person suffix _sw_ "he", so there's some guesswork
| involved. All said, it's a fine example of a "rebus".
|
| Neither rebus reading nor pictorial description are commonly
| classified as cryptographic orthography in Egyptology.
|
| The statue demonstrates nicely how acutely aware of their
| language, their artistic traditions and their writing Egyptian
| artists were. When we look at the depiction of Pharaoh and Amun
| on the obelisk as explained by Olette-Pelletier, however, we
| hardly see any of this. Yes, an arm with an offering on the palm
| of the hand was often used to write _dy_ "to give", but usually
| those offerings are triangular bread loaves, not round _nw_
| vessels. Yes, the hieroglyph for "htp" looks like a flat
| rectangle but, again, with a bread offering on it which is
| missing from the flat rectangle that pharaoh is kneeling on.
|
| I really wonder what the fuzz is about; clearly it's a picture of
| the king giving offering to the god, and all he does is read out
| the picture. This is something that you can do with a lot of
| Egyptian art: there's the king, you know him by the distinctive
| crown, and there's Amun, which you know again by his distinctive
| headdress sporting two long feathers. The king is kneeling
| because he's offering, and he has his arms stretched out
| presenting stuff because he's, well, giving. The king is giving
| things to the god. What part of that was not known before, what
| part of that is cryptographic?
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ramesses_II_as_child.jpg
| conartist6 wrote:
| Very interesting. Could this just be a miscommunication caused
| by a blogger literally looking to write clickbait? Hype up a
| paper without revealing its main conclusion? I would have no
| way of knowing if this very literal reading of the scene
| contains some wordplay that would require knowing how these
| words sounded.
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| I must say I'm a little unhappy with how this thread has been
| usurped to be not about the writing on the obelisk but the
| appropriateness of it being in Paris. The latter is an important
| question with no easy answers but completely unrelated to the
| former.
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