Hi all,
I just gotten a copy of “The Yellow Sign and Other Stories”, authoured by Robert W. Chambers, published by Chaoisum. There’s a portion of “The Tracer of Lost Persons”, and I believe it is part XVII, about an Egyptian girl (little Samaris) who was kidnapped by King Memeris and was held in suspended animation.
What was the girl really saying when she woke up? “Ari un aha, O Entuk sen!” I only know that “Entuk” means you, but the rest of the words evade me…
Er, anyone?
So I’m a lost person now? Dang it, now I’ll never get home tonight.
I can’t answer your question, LostCause, but I bet you’d have better luck by posting in General Questions with a thread title like “What does this Egyptian phrase mean?”
Btw, I’ve been meaning to read his “King in Yellow” for several years, having read only excerpts of it.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Click on the Robert W. Chambers web page, www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/5582/chambers.html . Should be able to answer any question.
I see no useful information in archived versions of that webpage Brain Glutton linked.
“Ari un āhā, O Entuk sen!”
You’ll notice the author gives a translation for O just before: “‘O Ket Samaris, Nehes!’—‘O Little Samaris, awake!’" in which O is literally just the English word O (of formal/respectful direct address such as: O Lord).
Unfortunately I can’t really translate with much certainty since these 1900s translations read more like wishful-thinking quackery from people reading-in whatever meaning they want for 50% of it and pretending like they’ve translated Egyptian hieroglyphics (they’d only just started really deciphering texts a few decades prior and it was yet quite unrefined), and I’m not some Egyptologist who can give an expert translation or comment on whether translations have gotten much better since then or if that wildly open to interpretation aspect is just an actual part of the language. (allegedly this guy had an expert translate it for him and presumably that translation could be found in his annotations in his book for sale but I couldn’t find it online).
Now, gathering some translations for these words from the literature of the time (R W Chambers was fluent in French as well but I couldn’t find much worthwhile outside English anyway, and the above bibliophage commenter’s linked text has every word in it anyway and I put those in [brackets]):
Ari = [to do, was made/done, maketh/do, I have], title of respect(divinity), lord, an attendant/guardian
un = [to be, there is, is, opened], open(er/ed), shrine, shaved, hair-pulling, walk/run/rise
āhā = [to stand, standing, duration]/stand up, withstand, stability, time, period/duration of life
Entuk = [singular pronoun], (entek)you(masc.)
sen = [plural pronoun, pass, give/take/exchange] they/their/them, pair/2, smell/breathe, house, brother, die/depart/walk, to cut
So what does “Ari un āhā, O Entuk sen!” mean?
From the “!” and direct address “O” it is almost certainly a command she is giving to the guy she just met upon waking up after millennia asleep, even without any translation, given the details/context provided by the story, the obvious things she might say would be to either comment on her surroundings being different, ask what is going on?, or assume that she is still being held captive and demand to be let go. Given that she utters a command it seems the last one is very likely.
Now interpreting the extremely loose translations is very difficult (even the examples translated by the author involve extreme leaps lacking logic for 50% of it since there’s almost no grammar and most of it just inferred from nothing) so here are some examples of translations one might force given the above translations:
”Guard standing there, O you will let (me) pass!”
”Make open this time, O you brother/dead/taker/lot!”
”(I) have endured, O you who pass/die!” [unlikely in context given the speakers unawareness of what happened to her]
”(I) passed existing for a time, O you _ !”
”Make open (I) arise, O you _ !”
As presumed before translation, something like ”Guard standing there, O you will let (me) pass!” seems likely what the author was going for, as the girl trying to flee her captors is central to her kidnapped/hypnotized role in the narrative and mentioned multiple times.
Mr. Keen can help.
Or Bob & Ray’s skit, “Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons.”
If you’re not one of the six persons who got Chuck’s reference, a long-lived radio show was called “Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons.” I never knew about the origin of the title until now. Thanks, OP.