The first task was translating the Mayan into English. We knew this would prove to be a difficult process, because it is not a fully translated or understood language, so we gave the task to Diane! She did a great job and found that their message translated to
"His name is Chaki son of Yuluku and Xako day keeper of Red Lake City".
Although this may not seem like a very long message, when you are writing something in stone, it is. Our original message was "For passage over the water there is a bridge", which was even shorter in the Old Brythonic language we translated it into. When I first heard that this was the phrase that we had to translate, I was frightened. This is a testament to the media we write in determining the things we write and the way we write them. Our original message was short and written in an alphabet of short, straight lines. This new message was relatively long and written in intricate hieroglyphs. Undaunted (ok maybe slightly daunted), we continued on with the process.
The biggest question we had was how we were going to get these small and intricate hieroglyphs accurately carved into stone. None of us had enough skill with a chisel and hammer to realistically expect to do it in this method. In a stroke of luck, James's brother-in-law, who happened to own a Dremmel tool (a modern tool made for carving stone), was in town for the weekend. This answered our first question. (Really our only question; we pretty much knew what we were going to from there.)
We all gathered at Sam's apartment early Saturday morning, and the first step was copying the original Mayan characters onto the stone in pencil. Alicia did a really, really good job of this.
After all the glyphs were copied, it was time to etch them in with the Dremmel. With a little bit of practice, this proved to be much easier than using the chisel. I think this is because using the Dremmel is similar to using a pen, something we are all familiar with, as opposed to something none of us had any experience in, using a chisel and hammer. Once the hard part was done, the Mayan characters, we engraved the English and Ogham to complete the Rosetta Stone.
Here are the main things I took away from the mid-term:
- The medium greatly influences the message.
- Writing in any medium becomes easier with practice and familiarity. Writing in the Dremmel was fairly easy because we were all familiar with using pens. Even writing using the chisel became easier the more I did.
- Written language preserves things in a way that oral language cannot. Very shortly after I left Sam's apartment, I had already forgotten our message. Luckily, it was written in stone, so I could reference it. This is a testament to how much more effective written language is at preserving precise knowledge than spoken language. However, written language does still have its flaws. People still mess up and things get lost and changed.
- Folk knowledge and oral knowledge pervade into the writing process more than I realized. It took time practicing with the chisel and Dremmel to get good at using them, just as it took folk learning to learn to write when we were in kindergarten. We constantly used oral language to communicate during the translating and creation process.
- Writing in stone is much more gratifying than writing with a pencil on paper! I think the more time and effort you put into something, the more you will appreciate it, and vice versa. The more you value something, the more time and effort you put into preserving it.
I really enjoyed this process (even more than memorizing scripture for the last mid-term, believe it or not), and it gave me a greater appreciation for the written word. Growing up being constantly surrounded by written language kind of made me take it for granted, but writing something in stone is somewhat of a wake up call to just how valuable written language is.
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