Certainly the Hieroglyphic chapter is in words of one syllable and any
kindergarten teacher can understand it. Chapter nineteen adds a bit to
the idea. I do not know how warranted I am in displaying Egyptian
learning. Newspaper reporters never tire of getting me to talk about
hieroglyphics in their relation to the photoplays, and always give me
respectful headlines on the theme. I can only say that up to this hour,
every time I have toured art museums, I have begun with the Egyptian
exhibit, and if my patient guest was willing, lectured on every period on
to the present time, giving a little time to the principal exhibits in
each room, but I have always found myself returning to Egypt as a
standard. It seems my natural classic land of art. So when I took up
hieroglyphics more seriously last summer, I found them extraordinarily
easy as though I were looking at a "movie" in a book. I think Egyptian
picture-writing came easy because I have analyzed so many hundreds of
photoplay films, merely for recreation, and the same style of composition
is in both. Any child who reads one can read the other. But of course
the literal translation must be there at hand to correct all wrong
guesses. I figure that in just one thousand years I can read
hieroglyphics without a pony. But meanwhile, I tour museums and I ride
Pharaoh's "horse," and suggest to all photoplay enthusiasts they do the
same. I recommend these two books most heartily: Elementary Egyptian
Grammar, by Margaret A. Murray, London, Bernard Quaritch, 11 Grafton
Street, Bond Street, W., and the three volumes of the Book of the Dead,
which are, indeed, the Papyrus of Ani, referred to in this chapter, pages
255-258. It is edited, translated, and reproduced in fac-simile by the
keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum,
Professor E.A. Wallis Budge; published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York,
and Philip Lee Warner, London. This book is certainly the greatest motion
picture I ever attended. I have gone through it several times, and it is
the only book one can read twelve hours at a stretch, on the Pullman,
when he is making thirty-six hour and forty-eight hour jumps from town to
town.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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