Egyptian "Tomb Tray"-translate the hieroglyphics?

Got this at an antique market in PA, USA decades ago, had been tromping around this large outdoor market for hours and this tray was the only thing in the whole place I liked. Know nothing about it except it is copper, weighs maybe 5 lbs, thickness varies but averages 0.060 inch, diameter is about 23.5 in. Wires for hanging are not permanently attached. I liked it due to the fine engraving and copper metal which I had not seen on the large brass trays. My guess at date is early to mid 20th C. but who knows. Can anyone read the 'glyphs?

 

I think they bear as much resemblence to Pharonic heiroglyphics as wing dings do to Times New Roman.

I could very easily be wrong, but they just feel all wrong to me, in the same way as someone who cannot read Chinese might be able to say of some vaguely Chinese writing that it is not in fact Chinese or know two people speaking Russian are not in fact speaking Russian because it just sounds wrong.

Does Google translate have a heiroglyphics function?

 

Many sites found, most seem to be English to Hiero. only but still looking. I'd love to find an Egyptologist who could just look at it and tell me "Yeah, it's a 1937 Coca-Cola advertisement, we see these a lot" or whatever.

 

This is all I know about hieroglyphics -

 

Just my butt in session - but, Spf, I'd say Messilane's answer had no misspellings and is therefore more reliable than one that spells Times wrong.

And I ended my heiroglyphics class with a C-, so don't count on me for answers.

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I'd go along with AF, guessing that this is "Egyptian" in the same way that an item may be "NW Coast native" when made by someone who saw a NW Coast item, once.
But my knowledge of hieroglyphs is slim. I did happen to google the Rosetta stone yesterday, so I know that hieroglyphs are not easy to translate. Some of the symbols can be translated into phonetic equivalents; then if you speak ancient Egyptian you are in good shape.

There was a craze for all things Egyptian after the discovery of King Tut's tomb in 1922, so I'd guess this dates to after that.
King Tut used a number of different cartouches, and none of these look like his, however. A translation of one of his cartouches yields the name "Ntr-Nfr, Neb-taui" meaning "Perfect God, Lord of the Two Lands" so you can guess that even if the apparent hieroglyphs were translated to phonetics, it might not reveal much.

Just for fun, here's an an article about the hieroglyphic alphabet http://www.virtual-egypt.com/newhtml/hieroglyphics/sample/alphabet.htm
and a detailed treatise on how they work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs

 

Hi Spring, I can't help with any translation or authentication as to whether the glyphs are real or fantasy, but if you use Cairoware or Egyptian Revival as key words in combination with copper tray, hammered, engraved, etc., you might be able to find some good info somewhere.

 

Thanks, just tried that, seemed like a good idea but it seems that few trays have hieroglyphics. Since there are some cartouches on my tray and I'd think they were copied from historic ones, that would limit the possibilities enough to possibly find a matching cartouche with its meaning.

 

Here is a directory to drawings and photos of many common cartouches.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Egyptian_cartouches

 

Thanks, will look them over. The glyphs on the tray might be meaningless for all I know. It is starting to look like the cartouches on the tray might just be stuffed with whatever characters seemed to fit neatly in the space, but I'm not ready to quit just yet.

 

Hmmm, looked over hundreds of old cartouches and nothing fit, but there are thousands...

Now I'm wondering if some tourist went to an Egyptian engraver and had him engrave the tray with his/her family as the theme. Then the cartouches might contain the tourist's name spelled out in hieroglyph equivalent symbols. What gave me that idea was a visit to Bahrain where there were gold shops on every corner. One thing many visitors would do is to get a shop to make them a solid gold "name bracelet" with their name spelled out in Arabic (was beyond my means at the time.)

 

what ever it is.....it's very nicely done.

 

If anyone wants to try their hand at transliteration of a part of this, let's work on what looks like the main cartouche, this one. The glyph-to-English character charts are easy to find, then you have to decide which glyph on the chart matches one in the cartouche. For example the charts have three different birds, vulture, owl, and chick. Which of them is shown twice in the cartouche?

 

I followed suggestions and emailed local univ, "Sry can't help, you should contact Smithsonian, they have specialists in that area" (paraphrased-there was more and all very polite.)

Emailed Smithsonian as suggested.

"Thank you for contacting theSmithsonian, where you canexplore, discover, and create every day.

Smithsonian staff is unable to comment on (e.g., intended use, authenticity, age, materials, value) or to do research on items outside our own collections. Local sources of information or personnel to help you identify your object(s) are:

• University or area libraries
• State and local historical societies or museums
• State extension services

I wish you success as you continue to research your item.



Sincerely,


(Jane Doe)

Office of Visitor Services

Smithsonian"

Well serves me right for my laziness, cold-call emails usually wind up like that; good news is that I got answers right away.

Now I'll go back to the elbow-grease method that I've had good luck with before.

 

I think you are working on the product of an Egyptiam 'Billy and Charlie'.

 

We may know soon, I just joined what looks like an Egyptologist wannabe forum and posted my question. Should any serious responses be posted there I'll let you know.

 

I agree. I think this is a fantasy piece made to profit off the King Tut craze.
The figure laying in the middle looks similar to Tut

 

NNnnnoo, you made the same grevious error as many of my ill-informed friends, by confusing Tut with his nearly-unknown male sibling Butt. A quick comparison of the images shows that Butt lacks Tut's forehead snakes. An equally dramatic difference lies in the headdress striping, where Tut's top stripes are parallel to his beard and Butt's are parallel to his eyebrows. So please pay closer attention to these seemingly unimportant but immensely critical details so you can tell your Tut from your Butt!