I'm in the process of reading some of the Dune (by Frank Herbert) books, and I'm up to Children of Dune. First, I hadn't remembered so many snippets of conlang, and I have been remiss in not adding them to The Conlanger's Library. I'll be remedying that. But, what I'm curious about is the brief passage where Leto and Ghanima supposedly are speaking ancient Egyptian to each other in my 1976 edition around page 70. I'm just past this part, so if they do it again, I'm not aware yet. The phrases in question:
"Mohw'pwium d'mi hish pash moh'm ka""The capture of my soul is the capture of a thousand souls"Verified Middle Egyptian:mH (H=/x/) = seizekA = spirit, soulbut xAw = thousands
"Wabun 'k wabunat""Rising, thou risest"Verified Middle Egyptian:wbn = rise.k = 2nd person masculine singular pronoun
"Muriyat""It must be done lovingly"Verfied Middle Egyptian:
mrj (or mri) = love
m'smow"the foul odor of a summer night"Verified Middle Egyptian:Smw (S = /S/) = summer
My understanding of Middle Egyptian is rudimentary at this point, but there are enough similarities in roots between real Middle Egyptian and Leto & Ghanima's conversation to make me wonder how far off (I'm under the assumption quite a ways) this is from some scholarly conjectures on what Middle Egyptian sounded like since hieroglyphs don't record vowels. And I know it's supposed to be Middle Egyptian because later in the same chapter Ghanima tells Leto "You are not Osiris." I am fully aware that Herbert played around with Arabic for some of the Fremen languages (http://baheyeldin.com/literature/arabic-and-islamic-themes-in-frank-herberts-dune.html), so did he do the same for Egyptian (even though Leto and Ghanima are supposed to be fluent because of their genetic memories of their ancestors)?
Dr. Stuart Tyson Smith's language reconstructions for The Mummy and Stargate are from a scholarly perspective. Did Herbert have access to someone who might have given him some suggestions, or did he simply use some roots he found in an ancient Egyptian dictionary and then riff on those out of his imagination?
Just wondering if anyone has any insights. Thanks.
Donhttp://library.conlang.org
