Skip to main content

Are any of the hieroglyphs, runes, etc. appearing in Stargate intelligible/meaningful?


The Stargate franchise is built around the notion of extraterrestrial visitors in Earth's ancient past, connecting many ancient Earth cultures with fictional extraterrestrial races such as the Goa'uld, Asgard, etc.. As a result, we often see a lot of Egyptian hieroglyphics, Norse runes, and other writing forms on screen. Where there is supposed to be a correlation with ancient Earth languages (regardless of origin), do the symbols actually make sense? Are they just random/arbitrarily chosen symbols? Do they form intelligible phrases? Do they contain production in-jokes? If so, what do they say?


Examples of alien writing:




  • Stargate symbols. Representations of constellations; non-linguistic and therefore out of the scope of my question.





  • Hieroglyphics. Look like Ancient Egyptian. Stargate mythology associates such writing with the language of the Goa'uld. Do any of the symbols appearing on obviously Goa'uld artifacts (resurrection sarcophagus, walls of Goa'uld ships, etc.) form readable phrases according to modern understanding of Ancient Egyptian?




  • Runes. Looks like ancient Norse writing. Stargate mythology associates such writing with the language of the Asgard. Do any of the runes where they appear in a technological or extra-terrestrial setting (as in episodes "Thor's Hammer", "Thor's Chariot", etc.) actually form readable Runic phrases?




  • Ancient. Looks more like a bar code than any natural language. Although Daniel Jackson associates spoken Ancient (one of the "four races") with Latin, the written form is obviously made-up for the show.





  • Nox and Furling. Writing appears in one or perhaps two episodes in which they are implicitly or explicitly identified as members of the "four races". Their languages are never associated with any human language, so any writings we might see must be made-up and therefore out of the scope of my question.




  • The Goa'uld system lord Yu wears clothing or other artifacts, or appears in settings upon which Asian (specifically Chinese?) symbols sometimes appear. Are these symbols meaningful in the context of their appearance?




I believe there are a few other examples of alien writings which Jackson associates with languages of the ancient Middle East or South Asia - Babylonian, Cuneiform(?) etc.. Does any of this writing which appears on screen actually form readable phrases, either meaningful in context or joke-full for the production staff?




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...