Raymond O. Faulkner

Religión egipcia · Traductor

«THE Pyramid Texts of Ancient Egypt were carved on the walls of the pyramids of King Wenis of the end of the Fifth Dynasty and of the rulers of the Sixth Dynasty, and constitute the oldest corpus of Egyptian religious and funerary literature now extant.» — abre el prefacio que firma en su traducción de los Textos de las Pirámides situando el corpus: el más antiguo de la literatura religiosa y funeraria egipcia conservada; el escaneo imprime BRERAGE por PREFACE y el THE inicial en versalitas

«Furthermore, they are the least corrupt of all such collections of funerary texts, and are of fundamental importance to the student of Egyptian religion.» — y el valor que les adjudica: los menos corruptos de esas colecciones y de importancia fundamental para quien estudia la religión egipcia

«Despite the comparative rarity of corruptions, however, the Pyramid Texts provide problems and difficulties of their own.» — la salvedad que pone en seguida

«They include very ancient texts among those which were nearly contemporary with the pyramids in which they were inscribed, imposing on the modern reader problems of grammar and vocabulary; the orthography is apt to be unusual; and there are many mythological and other allusions of which the purport is obscure to the translator of today.» — y en qué consisten esas dificultades, según él: gramática, vocabulario, ortografía inusual y alusiones cuyo sentido se le escapa al traductor de hoy

«In these circumstances it might well be asked why a fresh translation should be foisted on the public when several versions using Sethe’s text already exist. The answer is that in the last half-century great advances have been made in our knowledge of Ancient Egyptian, thanks largely to the labours of Gunn, Gardiner, and Edel; a second reason is the bulk and cost of the more recent publications.» — la objeción que se plantea a sí mismo antes que nadie —por qué otra traducción más— y las dos razones con que la responde

«In preparing the present translation I have attempted not only to bring to bear on the Egyptian text our current knowledge of grammar and lexicography, but also to produce a work which will be usable by both philologists and students of ancient religion, which will be of modest bulk, and, above all, which will cost as little as circumstances permit.» — el propósito que declara para el volumen: utilizable a la vez por filólogos y por estudiantes de religión antigua, de tamaño modesto y lo más barato posible

«The notes on the translations have therefore been reduced to the bare minimum; when in doubt the scholar in Ancient Egyptian will in most cases be able to consult Sethe’s books, while the student of religion will not be interested in lengthy philological discussion. For similar reasons I have refrained from dilating on the literary or religious aspects of the texts.» — la consecuencia que saca de ese propósito y la abstención que declara: no extenderse sobre los aspectos literarios ni religiosos de los textos

«The idiom in which the present translation is couched is on the whole that of modern English. 'To a generation of students and scholars not brought up on the Book of Common Prayer and the Authorized Version of the Bible, an idiom based on Tudor or Jacobean English is alien and conveys a sense of unreality and artificiality.» — el registro que elige y por qué; el escaneo pega una comilla suelta delante de To (sic)

«I have therefore dispensed with the pronouns ‘thou’, ‘thy’, ‘thee’, ‘ye’ and have employed the current ‘you’, ‘your’, and have dropped such verbal inflexions» — la decisión de traducción que saca de ahí; el tramo se corta antes de la lista de formas verbales

«On the other hand, I have retained a very few archaisms suchas, for example, ‘behold’, which to my mind is more expressive of the original than ‘see’, ‘look’, and which should not disturb the modern reader, even if the linguistic purist does not approve.» — y la excepción que se permite, dicha con su razón y con su reserva

«Confining myself to the simple title has the advantage of stressing the fact that these texts have in origin no personal application to one particular king, but are chosen out of an existing corpus.» — lo que gana, según él, al traducir los cartuchos reales simplemente como King: que esos textos no tienen en origen aplicación personal a un rey particular

«Whether my judgement has always been sound in these matters is for the critics to decide.» — cómo somete su propio criterio al juicio ajeno

«Rather than follow the custom usual among translators of simply transcribing the word as ka and thus avoiding committal, I have ventured to translate it into English as ‘double’ in those cases, much in the majority, where it appears to be an entity in its own right in association with the dead king, but I have not hesitated to use the terms ‘spirit’, ‘essence’, or ‘power’ where these seem to be the real sense.» — la decisión que toma sobre el término k3, que otros transcriben como ka para no comprometerse, y el margen que se deja

«Another problem is posed by the term D3t, translated in this book as ‘Netherworld’; in this case it must be remembered that to the early Egyptians it embraced not only the world beneath» — el segundo término que declara problemático, D3t, que vierte como Netherworld; el tramo se corta por el cambio de plana

«One of the great difficulties in translating the Pyramid Texts, as in a lesser degree with all but purely formal Egyptian texts, is the ambiguity of the written language and also our imperfect knowledge of it.» — la dificultad que declara mayor: la ambigüedad de la lengua escrita y lo imperfecto del conocimiento que se tiene de ella

«The rules of grammar are well defined so far as they go, but within those rules a doubt must often remain, for example, as to whether a given sentence is to be understood as a statement or as a wish;» — y el ejemplo con que la concreta

«With one exception, all the spells in this book have been translated afresh by the present writer, but due acknowledgement must be paid to P. Barguet, Livre des Morts, Paris, 1967, a valuable work which has been held in constant consultation.» — declara la base de su traducción del Libro de los Muertos dentro del prefacio que T. G. H. James le cita entre comillas; el escaneo imprime Explo- ration partido (sic)

«The one exception is Spell 78; here, by permission of the Egypt Exploration Society, I have used, with only very minor modifications, the admirable translation published by the late Professor A. de Buck in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol.35.» — y la única excepción que declara, con su permiso y su crédito

«It is, of course, clear that in a publication such as the present, which is addressed to the educated layman and not to the professional scholar, the textual and philological commentaries which normally would accompany translations such as these, so as to justify the renderings, would be entirely out of place.» — a quién declara dirigido el volumen y qué deja fuera por eso: el comentario textual y filológico que justificaría las versiones

«Passages printed in italic type represent the use of red ink on the original papyrus; three dots (...) signify that words have been lost or omitted or are untranslatable;» — las convenciones tipográficas que declara para su traducción; el tramo se corta antes del cambio de plana

«THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PYRAMID TEXTS TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY R.O. FAULKNER D.LIT., F.S.A. ersity College Oxford wii INI CANCE! LLED OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS» — la portada del Clarendon le adjudica la traducción y le imprime los títulos D. Litt. y F. S. A.; el escaneo mete ruido de biblioteca entre las líneas (sic)

«TRANSLATED BY UNIVERSITY OF RAYMOND O. FAULKNER EDITED BY CAROL ANDREWS» — la portada del Libro de los Muertos de la University of Texas Press lo da por traductor y a Carol Andrews por editora; el escaneo entrevera las líneas del pie de imprenta (sic)

«Dr R.O. Faulkner, the translator of this English version, was the leading modern British authority on the progressive stages of funerary texts developed in antiquity for use successively by kings, nobles and less highly placed Egyptians.» — T. G. H. James, Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities del British Museum, lo llama en su prólogo la primera autoridad británica moderna sobre las fases de los textos funerarios

«His translations of the Pyramid Texts appeared in 1969 and of the Coffin Texts between 1973 and 1978.» — y le fecha las dos traducciones anteriores

«The sumptuous publication of 1972 has since been acknowledged as containing the most reliable translation of this fascinating, but perplexing, compilation of spells, prayers and incantations.» — James dice de la edición de 1972 que ha sido reconocida como la traducción más fiable de esa compilación

«Dr Faulkner explained in his Foreword that the great majority of spells making up the ancient compilation were represented in his translation. He omitted a few spells at the request of his original publisher because» — y consigna lo que él declaraba en su prólogo sobre lo que dejó fuera; el tramo se corta por el cambio de plana

«As in Faulkner’s original edition, four texts, two of them quite short, have been left out because, as he rightly said, ‘they lack interest except to the professional scholar” Faulkner also pointed out ‘that a few spells were numbered twice over by the scholars of the nineteenth century, and in such cases the texts in question have been allotted here the numbers by which they are generally known.» — James cita entre comillas dos decisiones suyas: los cuatro textos omitidos porque, dice él, carecen de interés salvo para el especialista, y la doble numeración decimonónica de algunos conjuros

«In this volume, the text translated by the late Dr R.O. Faulkner is that found in the papyrus prepared for the scribe Ani, which is one of the greatest treasures in the British Museum.» — la contracubierta, levantada como contracubierta y no como voz de la obra, lo da ya por difunto en 1985

«The late Dr R.O. Faulkner, for many years the assistant of the great Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner, was an expert in ancient Egyptian military and nautical matters, and was» — y la misma contracubierta imprime lo único parecido a una biografía suya que el corpus tiene: ayudante durante años de Alan Gardiner y especialista en asuntos militares y náuticos del Egipto antiguo

«In the 1960s he taught Egyptian language at University College London, and after his retirement he produced standard translations of the three principal collections of ancient Egyptian funerary compositions, the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead. His Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian is an essential tool for all who are interested in the Egyptian language.» — con su cátedra, su retiro y las cuatro obras que le adjudica: las traducciones de los Textos de las Pirámides, de los Textos de los Sarcófagos y del Libro de los Muertos, y su Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian

«the full English translation by Samuel A. B. Mercer that appeared in 1952 has since been superseded by that of Raymond O. Faulkner in 1969.» — Erik Hornung sitúa su traducción de 1969 como la que reemplazó a la de Samuel A. B. Mercer de 1952

«In his edition Sethe distinguished 714 spells; Faulkner increased the number to 759 in 1969, though some of these spells are duplicates and should not have been included.» — y le objeta el recuento: subió los conjuros de 714 a 759 y algunos, dice, son duplicados que no debieron entrar

«The first complete translation in English was published by Raymond O. Faulkner (1973-1978), and there is also a complete translation in French by Paul Barguet (1986); Faulkner fol¬ lowed de Buck's sequence of spells, whereas Barguet edited them into thematic groups.» — Hornung le adjudica la primera traducción inglesa completa de los Textos de los Sarcófagos y la deslinda de la de Barguet por el orden de los conjuros; tramo con años entre paréntesis, releído entero

«In his translation volume, Faulkner supplies helpful indexes of deities and localities mentioned in the spells, though we still lack a glossary of the Pyramid Texts.» — y le reconoce los índices de dioses y de lugares, señalando a la vez lo que falta

«R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford, 1969), p. 210, follows him in this. Yet nʿj in its usual meaning “to fare, travel” yields excellent sense.» — Jan Assmann consigna que sigue a Sethe en una acepción y le opone la suya; entrada de nota, releída entera

«R. O. Faulkner also seems to have misunderstood this passage: “I am the great soul of Osiris with whom the gods commanded him to copulate” (The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, vol. 1 [Warminster, 1973], p. 94). “By means of whom/which” would be the correct rendering.» — y en otra nota le objeta una traducción de los Textos de los Sarcófagos, citándola entera; entrada de nota, releída entera

«English translation by R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1969).» — la misma obra lo registra como el traductor inglés de la edición de Sethe; entrada de nota, citada como tal

«Raymond O. Faulkner, trans., The Ancient EBYptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).» — Ioan Petru Couliano lo registra en nota como traductor de los Textos de las Pirámides; la capa de texto corrompe Egyptian en EBYptian (sic); entrada de nota, citada como tal

«Raymond O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 10.» — Thomas E. Bullard lo cita en nota por el Libro de los Muertos y lo data en 1972, que es el año de la edición limitada y no el de esta; la divergencia se consigna sin arbitrar; entrada de nota, citada como tal

«Faulkner, R. O. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. England: Aris & Phillips, 1993.» — Jay Weidner y Vincent Bridges lo registran en su bibliografía con un pie de imprenta distinto del que esta base ficha, Aris & Phillips 1993; entrada bibliográfica, citada como tal

«Faulkner, R. O. (1969). The ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford University Press.» — El Umbral de la Consciencia lo registra en su bibliografía y lo usa de apoyo para datar los escritos funerarios egipcios; entrada bibliográfica, citada como tal

«of R. O. Faulkner in The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day, ed. E. vo» — Hornung remite en otra obra a su Libro de los Muertos en la edición de Eva von Dassow, que no es la que esta base ficha; el tramo se corta en el nombre; entrada de nota, citada como tal

«Faulkner, Raymond, trans. The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth By Day» — Stephen A. Farmer lo registra en su bibliografía con el nombre de pila entero y por la misma edición de von Dassow; entrada bibliográfica, citada como tal