• Did ancient peoples of Egypt and the Near East really imagine themselves as facing the past, with the future behind them?

    Author(s):
    Lloyd Graham (see profile)
    Date:
    2022
    Group(s):
    Ancient Near East, Assyriologists, Egyptology
    Subject(s):
    Egyptology, Middle East, History, Ancient, Metaphor, Cognitive science
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Semitic languages, Spatiotemporal metaphor, spatial concepts of time, Biblical studies, Ancient Egyptian language, Ancient Near East, Cognitive science
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/y2ga-7b42
    Abstract:
    Linguistic studies in Egyptology, Assyriology and Biblical Studies harbour a persistent trope in which the inhabitants of the Ancient Near East and Egypt are believed to have visualised the past as in front of them and the future as behind them. Analyses of the spatial conceptualisation of time in language have revealed that the opposite is true of almost all modern cultures. Cognitive Metaphor Theory provides two spatiotemporal models that use different reference points and are therefore mutually exclusive. In modern languages, including English, key spatiotemporal prepositions/adverbs from one model can stray into the other while retaining their original temporal meaning. Taken literally, the resulting expressions indicate that the speaker is facing the past, an orientation that happens to align with the powerful KNOWLEDGE IS VISION metaphor. Lexical drift of this kind is also likely to have occurred in Egyptian and the Semitic languages. Correcting for the “mixed metaphor” problem permits ancient speakers of Egyptian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Hebrew, etc., to have adopted the same spatiotemporal orientation as most modern people. However, very recent studies (2014–18) show that informants with a cultural or religious focus on the past tend to visualise past events as “in front of them” irrespective of the spatiotemporal metaphors in their language. Such mappings seem to be static rather than dynamic. It is therefore inappropriate to envisage ancient thinkers as walking backwards into the future or as sitting with their backs toward the source of the “river of time;” rather, we should imagine them stopping frequently on life’s path in order to turn about-face and contemplate the (temporal) terrain already traversed by their society. Traditional societies whose aim is to return the world to its original perfection may even see the past and future as interchangeable.
    Notes:
    Additional tags: Akkadian, Ugaritic, biblical Hebrew, ancient languages, spatiotemporal, spatio-temporal, temporal orientation, cognitive science, metaphors of time, spatial concepts of time, deictic, Ego-Reference Point, moving Ego, moving time, past in front, future in front, Aymara, interdisciplinary science-history
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Online publication     Show details
    Pub. URL:
    https://www.academia.edu/36840376/Did_ancient_peoples_of_Egypt_and_the_Near_East_really_imagine_themselves_as_facing_the_past_with_the_future_behind_them
    Publisher:
    Academia.edu
    Pub. Date:
    Original 14 June, 2018; this version 22 September, 2018
    Version:
    v02
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    1 year ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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