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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Thursday, May 30, 2013

a hieroglyphic hare

photo copyright Remih, via creative commons attribution - share alike 3.0
Somewhere on the warm golden walls of the Temple of Horus at Edfu, Egypt, this hare takes its part in the inscriptions.  The hieroglyph stands for the sound wn, or un, and is also a character for the verb to be.  Which I think is a fascinating choice on the part of the ancient Egyptians.  After all, what has to live more in the moment than a desert hare?

1 comment:

parlance said...

Interesting verb choice, indeed. In English we sort of use 'to be' as an antonym to 'to do'. So I guess that lively hare would be a great choice for our verb 'to do'.