The scribes of Brazil

ANBA - Arab-Brazil News Agency (Isaura Daniel)

To some Brazilians, the hieroglyphs used in Ancient Egypt are no mystery. They are few, less than ten in the country, but they understand the language of the pharaohs. And they use their knowledge to read original documents. They are men like Ciro Flamarion Santana Cardoso and Moacir Elias Santos who are working on keeping alive and spreading the knowledge about the Egyptian language that there is in Brazil.

To a specific group of Brazilians, the signs and drawings on limestone and papyruses of Ancient Egypt are not just signs and drawings. Half a dozen scholars in the country, most connected to the academic world, understand the language of the pharaohs very well. They are researchers and professors like Ciro Flamarion Santana Cardoso, Antonio Brancaglion Junior and Moacir Elias Santos who know and even teach the Egyptian language around Brazil. The knowledge is used by the specialists, and also by their apprentices, to decipher original documents from Ancient Egypt.

Egyptian is considered a dead language as it is no longer spoken. The language is currently only used in rituals in the Coptic Church, explains Ciro. What the church uses is, in reality, the last unfolding of the original Egyptian language, officially called Coptic.

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