Life, 1929-08-09 · page 20 of 44
Life — August 9, 1929 — page 20: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is a humorous educational chart depicting Egyptian hieroglyphics alongside modern English translations. Each illustration shows a scene with Egyptian-style artwork paired with phonetic hieroglyph spellings and witty English phrases. The satire mocks both Egyptology (the study of ancient Egypt, popular in early 20th-century America) and modern colloquialisms by pretending ancient Egyptians had phrases like "One who is in no mood to pay shoe-horns" and "A powder-puff for an eel." The joke relies on the absurdity of matching hieroglyphs to contemporary slang, suggesting that ancient Egyptian language is either incomprehensible or that modern interpretation of it is ridiculous. It's essentially satirizing academic pretension around deciphering ancient texts.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
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