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Papyrus definition kids1/4/2024 ![]() ![]() It’s named after the museum in Turin, Italy, where it’s normally housed. GWIN: Scholars call the papyrus Fred just showed us the Judicial Papyrus of Turin. REDFORD: Yeah, that’s what I call myself. GWIN: Penn State University’s Susan Redford is, well, a dirt archaeologist. SUSAN REDFORD (Egyptologist): I'm a dirt archaeologist. But thanks to science and some clever detective work by dogged archeologists, we now have a better idea about what really went down. What happened to Ramesses III? It’s been a mystery for more than 3000 years. And this is a story that has stumped scholars for a very long time. Egyptology is a field based on best interpretations. GWIN: It’s remarkable how much we still don’t know about Ancient Egypt. This week: a dynasty in disarray, a secret kept for millennia, and some new science that cracks the case wide open. A show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, and beautiful world. GWIN: I’m Peter Gwin and this is Overheard at National Geographic. A conspiracy hatched by the Pharaoh’s own family, by one of his wives. This papyrus tells the story of an inside job. Others were executed or forced to kill themselves. GWIN: 39 people were convicted of high treason. ![]() It describes how the perpetrators were forced to commit suicide. It describes having the perpetrators plead guilty. It's a record of a court proceeding, in which the court has identified a couple of perpetrators who were scheming to assassinate pharaoh Ramesses III. But the details written down here? Those are not pretty. GWIN: Fred says the text is written in hieratic - a cursive form of hieroglyphics. it's about 18 feet long, describing this conspiracy that happened to pop off the Pharaoh. HEIBERT: So we have here an absolutely unique papyrus. GWIN: He brings us over to a long glass case. We know that we have to open the box and it's like – wait, wait - oh, it's Thutmose! Here's this big box, it has no label whatsoever. HEIBERT: Opening the boxes, it's like Christmas 350 times over. GWIN: This is clearly a man who loves his job. HIEBERT: That’s a life-sized sculpture of Thutmose I. He points out a perfectly preserved royal sandal, a bust of Cleopatra, some stone statues of Pharaohs from the Valley of the Kings. Fred winds us through the dimly-lit exhibit. GWIN: When Fred’s not out in the field studying ancient trade routes or searching for Nefertiti’s Tomb, he’s back here, helping to curate this museum. ![]() HIEBERT: It's got 350 artifacts in it from the very oldest collection of Egyptian antiquities, actually, in the world. The museum hasn’t even opened yet and we’re getting a special tour from archaeologist-in-residence Fred Hiebert. PETER GWIN (HOST): So it’s 8:30 in the morning. for a magnificent new exhibition on Queens of Egypt. Hieroglyphics can be pictures of living creatures, objects used in daily life or symbols.FRED HIEBERT (ARCHAEOLOGIST): We're at the National Geographic Museum here in Washington D.C. You can’t exactly match our alphabet to hieroglyphics, because they are two very different languages, but historians have come up with a simplified translation of our letters and Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Egyptian symbol for a mouth can mean mouth but it’s usually read as the sound “r”. In Egyptian, the owl stands for the sound “m”. Most of the pictures can stand for the object they represent, but usually they stand for sounds. That’s why pharaohs’ names were written in hieroglyphics in their tombs! If someone’s name was remembered then he or she would survive in the afterlife. The Egyptians believed there was great power in a name. “Hiero” means “holy” and “glyphics” means “marks” or “writings” – so the word means “ holy writings“. ![]() Learn about how Egyptian writing works and what it all represents, plus find out how to spell your name in hieroglyphics – cool!Īlthough hieroglyphics are Egyptian, the word hieroglyphics is Greek. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics were one of the hardest of Egypt’s mysteries to uncover! Check out our fascinating facts about hieroglyphics… ![]()
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