Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Vocalized video of Baufra's Tale

You Tube (Orlando Mezzabotta)

Thanks to Vincent Brown for linking to this on his collection of You Tube sites.

This is a brilliant attempt to read the Papyrus Westcar's "Prince Baufra's Tale" out loud. The voice used is fabulously deep and the intonation is excellent. The sounds are reconstructed hypothetically but they sound so good. The vocalization is accompanied by the text broken down into manageable chunks, complete with transliteration. The author says that it is an experiment, but it is an incredibly powerful way of engaging with the ancient Egyptian language.

1 comment:

Jamie Gibbs said...

This is a brilliant idea!

I wanted to do something similar a while back with the Cannibal Hymn, but never got around to doing so. I think it's a great way to engage students and enthusiasts into the language.

One thing that is often lost when reading Egyptian is a sense of rhythm and tone, and it becomes a stale and dull language. At the Experiment and Experience conference at Swansea University last month, Richard Parkinson and actress Barbara Erwing did a vocal rendition of "dialogue of a man with his ba". It was quite haunting, since we were able to hear the expression and personality wihin the words. I think this is a way forward in Egyptian language studies.