Last week, walking through the small King Tut exhibit at the Children's Museum, I suddenly found myself desirous of refreshing my Greek. I had three years of Greek as an undergraduate, tested out of some Greek classes at Duke, and continued to study through the end of my seminary days alongside Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac and some other squiggly-lined languages. But there's no doubt I could still pick up my Greek again if I put a bit of time into it.
Over the weekend I perused some of the Greek texts which I have shoved to the back shelves of my library and discovered that I could parse some texts here and there.
I suppose this whole Greek experience was aroused because of the Hieroglyphics in the Tut display. I remembered that the secret to translating the ancient Egyptian language was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone (above) which was found on the floor of a river if memory serves. This stone had both Greek and Hieroglyphics side by side, and that was enough for scholars.
I'm not sure I'll want to take the time to learn to read Greek again . . . but it might be fun to take up in my old age (in 16 months, when I turn 50).
No comments:
Post a Comment