Interpreters and Ambassadors

Sources

Barbarians . The Egyptians had several related words that appear to have referred to speakers of foreign languages and, by extension, to interpreters. The precise significance of these words is not clear, in part because they appear ultimately to be nonsense syllables used in imitation of foreigners’ incomprehensible speech, much like the Greek term “barbarian” is ultimately related to the Greeks’ perception of foreigners as saying nothing but “bar, bar, bar.” Speakers of foreign languages were used in Egyptian expeditions into and beyond border areas, such as into the Sinai or to the Red Sea. In other contexts, interpreters were needed when foreigners visited the court of Pharaoh or conducted other official business. Presumably, Egyptian envoys to foreign lands could either speak the language of

the country to which they were sent or had access to interpreters of their own.

Training? One question that remains unanswerable is how interpreters were trained. Could, and did, people learn foreign languages late in life, or were most bilingual people in the ancient world capable of speaking multiple languages from an early age? Unfortunately, little or no information is available on how the teaching of foreign languages was carried out in ancient Egypt.

Sources

W. Vivian Davies and Louise Schofield, eds., Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant: Interconnections in the Second Millenium B.C. (London: British Museum Press for the Trustees of the British Museum, 1995).

William A. Ward, Egypt and the East Mediterranean World, 2200-1900 B. C.: Studies in Egyptian Foreign Relations during the First Intermediate Period (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1971).