12.7: Conclusion
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In this chapter, in order to appreciate the mental processes of a 3rd-century Greco-Egyptian bilingual writer, I have focused on the change of this writer’s script as well as the material practice of his script. Although this physical practice (and the perceptions of such practice) are not, I would argue, the driving factor behind this code-shift (for it would suggest that if the two were in conversation, Ptolemaios would have not taken recourse to using Egyptian for his dream), it is perfectly plausible to add the script-change as an influence upon the language-shift itself. Ptolemaios’ conception of these two languages was not just in their sound, and in their literature, their semantics, syntax and networks of meaning — but his conception of these languages also involved certain material aspects of writing, both visual and experiential. I argued this via three main points: a) that the scripts of each language were bound up in very different material practices (Egyptian rush, Greek reed) even if in this particular instance only the reed was deployed; b) that a logo- graphic language is fundamentally different from an alphabetic language (the former pushing the Greek term ‘ graphein ’ into more artistic, visual terrain); and c) that when two cultures collide (as here Greece and Egypt) each language takes on certain subjective experiences which would not exist were the cultures to remain separate. As with English and Chinese, the logographic script can assume a certain spiritual or natural primacy over the typically more mundane alphabetic script. Taking these three points together then, I suggest that Ptolemaios’ shift was informed not only by the (audible) languages as they were processed in his brain, but very much by the scripts themselves as they were experienced in the motions of his hands, the movement of his eyes, and the material objects he used to interact with these scripts. This case study suggests that code-shifts, although probably not caused by, can at least be informed by the materiality of writing — the way writing is experienced physically, the way it appears on the page, and the images of ‘writing’ that appear in the mind of someone engaged in such practice.