Scientists recreate sound of Egyptian mummy's voice from 3,000 years ago

Weirdly, more like Kenneth Williams.

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The inscription goes on to read, “and a curse upon the asshole who puts words in my mouth.”

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Do you want locusts? Because this is how you get locusts!

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Excerpt from Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson:

“What we need is a systematic alphabet—made so that the shapes of the characters themselves provide full information as to how they are pronounced.”

These words filled Daniel with a foreboding that turned out to be fully justified: by the time the sun rose, they had fetched the dead man from the gaol, brought him back out to the cottage, and carefully cut his head off. Charles Comstock was rousted from bed and ordered to dissect the corpse, as a lesson in anatomy (and as a way of getting rid of it). Meanwhile, Hooke and Wilkins connected the head’s wind-pipe to a large set of fireplace-bellows, so that they could blow air through his voice-box. Daniel was detailed to saw off the top of the skull and get rid of the brains so that he could reach in through the back and get hold of the soft palate, tongue, and other meaty bits responsible for making sounds. With Daniel thus acting as a sort of meat puppeteer, and Hooke manipulating the lips and nostrils, and Wilkins plying the bellows, they were able to make the head speak. When his speaking-parts were squished into one configuration he made a very clear “O” sound, which Daniel (very tired now) found just a bit unsettling. Wilkins wrote down an O-shaped character, reflecting the shape of the man’s lips. This experiment went on all day, Wilkins reminding the others, when they showed signs of tiredness, that this rare head wouldn’t keep forever—as if that weren’t already obvious. They made the head utter thirty-four different sounds. For each one of them, Wilkins drew out a letter that was a sort of quick freehand sketch of the positions of lips, tongue, and other bits responsible for making that noise. Finally they turned the head over to Charles Comstock, to continue his anatomy-lesson, and Daniel went to bed for a series of rich nightmares.

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

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His first words (in fluent German) were “Turn off that bloody light !”

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Given the state of the world would anyone be surprised if a bunch of archaeologists accidentally brought the 10 plagues down upon us right now? Now y’all got me wanting to watch The Mummy (1999) for the bazillionth time.

Why wait?

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There’s no reason for farmers in Africa to deal with plagues, I’ll believe it’s a sign from God when locusts land at Mar a Lago.

Came here for this

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