How Stargate Recreated a Dead Egyptian Language for the Alien World of Abydos

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In the early 1990s, while working on the first Stargate film, directors Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) and Dean Devlin (The Ark) understood the importance of paying attention to minute details for science fiction enthusiasts.

They brought Stuart Tyson Smith, an Egyptologist based at the Institute of Archaeology at the Fowler Museum of Cultural History in Los Angeles, on board to assist with creating the ancient Egyptian language used by the alien inhabitants of Abydos in the 1994 film (airing this week on SYFY).

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Initially, the Stargate franchise made its debut on television, with shows like Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate Universe airing for nearly a decade on SYFY. The journey began with the initial trip through the gate to Abydos, and from the start, Devlin and Emmerich were deeply invested in developing this universe.

How Stargate recreated an Egyptian language for Abydos

As a gaming enthusiast, I drew upon my knowledge of Egyptology to imagine how the ancient Egyptian tongue could have resonated in the halls of speech, considering its possible evolution across countless centuries on an alien world – a language that filled the movie’s universe with authenticity as characters breathed life into it.

In the narrative, the language played a crucial role, for Dr. Daniel Jackson (portrayed by James Spader) found himself in a predicament where he had to quickly grasp its nuances in order to converse with the residents of Abydos upon their sudden arrival through the ‘gate, catapulting them across the cosmos.

In a conversation with the Orlando Sentinel shortly after the movie’s premiere in 1994, Smith shared that he “took an educated shot” when constructing the language from hieroglyphics, as “there isn’t much information about vowels because they weren’t written down.

As a gamer, I found myself immersed in a world where much of the foundation was laid using Coptic, an offspring of ancient Egyptian and part of the Afro-Asiatic liturgical family. However, even when we strive to breathe life into a language long gone, some elements can feel oddly familiar – such as one line in the final cut that had to be tweaked post-production because it seemed too close to English. Smith clarified that the phrase “Yawa meton-i” echoed the phrase “You want me tonight,” so at the last moment, they re-recorded it to give it a more alien, less recognizable tone.

In the movie, when Daniel points out an issue with the Stargate directions early on, that was actually a subtle wink to some fellow Egyptologists by the character Smith. He inserted this error since the translations were based on the work of Ernest A. Wallis Budge, whom he humorously joked about because he felt Budge’s books were outdated by the 1920s when they were published. As a fictional Egyptologist, Daniel would have recognized this immediately as an inside joke among scholars in the field.

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2025-05-19 23:31