Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Giraffes and Egyptians and seeing the future
The Egyptians used a hieroglyph that appears to the innocent eye as a giraffe, but to the learned Egyptian the image reads "foresee" or "predict." Yet I think it was innocent eyes that recognized that indeed, the long-necked creature could see into the future, for in the tall-grass savanna the human ambles along blindly toward a pride of lions, and it is the giraffe that watches the scene and if asked, could foretell the future of that present-sighted human.
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1 comment:
Oh, language. I love things like this--the many linkages between seemingly unrelated words (or, in this case, images) could be the mental food for several lifetimes. It's fascinating how language works and how different words emerge from one another.
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