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2015 December

Luke, I Am Your Father 2A.png

Star Wars meetS ancient Egypt

Jeff Burzacott December 9, 2015

STAR WARS MEETS ANCIENT EGYPT

Here is one of the all-time classic Star Wars lines written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs: "Luke, I am your father" ("Luk, inek itek").

This terrific hieroglyphic salute to Star Wars is by Per Reshut clothing. The design pays tribute to that famous sentence spoken by Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker in "The Empire Strikes back".

It's part of their wonderfully-named "Egeektian" range!

Luke’s name is written phonetically - which is how the Egyptians treated foreign names - and is surrounded by the royal cartouche, a protective knot enclosing royal and divine names.

No-one really knows how to speak ancient Egyptian.  This is because hieroglyphs only wrote the consonants and not vowels. We do have a few clues, however. Ancient diplomatic correspondence from neighbouring countries gives us an idea of how some Egyptian words sounded, and Classical authors also recorded some Egyptian names in Greek and Latin. Later, when Egypt converted to Christianity, their language was written down in Greek letters (Coptic), which also preserved some vowel sounds. For the majority of words however, we usually insert the letter ‘e’ between the consonants to make the words easier to pronounce.

Per Reshut was born when two Egyptologists decided to use their hieroglyphic know-how to create fun designs for T-shirts and tote bags. "Per Reshut" aptly means "House of Happiness".

Check out Per Reshut's Etsy store at www.etsy.com/listing/259699785/luke-im-your-father

And yes, for the die-hard Star Wars fans, we know the actual line is "No, I am your father." This is one of those occasions where the misquote is more famous than the original, just like "Beam me up, Scotty" and "Play it again, Sam".

Enjoy Star Wars everyone!

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Satisfy your passion for ancient Egypt.NILE Magazine June-July 2017 is out now. Inside:- The Tomb-1000 years of robbery and reuse.- Egypt's first ever funerary garden discovered.- World Museum's new ancient Egypt gallery.- Art and Archaeol…

Satisfy your passion for ancient Egypt.
NILE Magazine June-July 2017 is out now. Inside:
- The Tomb-1000 years of robbery and reuse.
- Egypt's first ever funerary garden discovered.
- World Museum's new ancient Egypt gallery.
- Art and Archaeology meet: the two worlds of Susan Osgood.
- The Royal Tombs of Ancient Egypt.
- Aswan's powerful governors.
- On This Day in Egyptology history.
- Plus much more.

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