Spoken Egyptian in Age of Mythology

A Partial Answer to a Decades Old Mystery, and a Call for Help

Anubis, Zeus, and Thor

Age of Mythology is a fantastic game. Made by the same studio responsible for the much more popular Age of Empires series (Ensemble Studios), Age of Mythology is a real-time strategy game where you take control of one of three ancient civilizations, the Greeks, Norse, or Egyptians (or the Atlanteans with the Titans expansion, and we won’t count Tale of the Dragon). Each of these factions has a rich mythology, and the normal playstyle of real-time strategy games is modified by god powers and myth units, which are fantastical creatures like a Chimaera or a Troll.

This game is incredibly fun to play, especially when I found the infinite god powers cheat code as a kid (it’s “WRATH OF THE GODS”). I loved playing the campaign, using the cheat, and spamming the Meteor god power until I won.

Hands down best god power.

But one of the other interesting aspects of the game was that whenever you clicked on a unit, like a Villager, it would say something in the language of the ancient civilization you were playing. If you were playing the Greeks, the Villager would speak Ancient Greek, if you were playing the Norse, it would speak Old Norse. If you played AoM for any length of time, I’m entirely certain you remember hearing Prostagma! Voulome! alllll the time from the Greek villagers.

Some Greek and Norse Unit Sounds, Translated

The great thing about the Greek and the Norse unit sounds is that enough people speak these languages to basically recognize the words and translate what they’re saying!

For example, this stackexchange answer gives translations (which I have not verified) for the Greek and Norse units. Here’s some Norse unit sounds:

Veiðimaður (vey-thee-mathur) - Hunter.
Fjósamaður (fyoh-sa-mathur) - Farmer. (literally "Barn man")
Timbursveinn (timber-svait-n) - Woodcutter. (literally "timber-lad")
Grjótsveinn (groht-svait-n) - Miner. (literally "rock-lad")
Satt (saht) - Right. (literally "truly")
Hver er þar? (kwer-air-thar) - Who is there?

A Greek guy on aom.heavengames gives some translations of the Greek unit sounds:

Maista - Μάλιστα - Yes sir/as you command
Prostagma? - Πρόσταγμα - Command? (what's your command)
Etimos - Eτοιμος - Ready
Voulome - Βούλομαι - I want (stupid btw :P)
Hesvole - Εισβολή - Invasion
Esto - Eστω -Allright

What about the Egyptians?

That Atlantean titan is very out of place, and this is an obviously staged photo, but very cool nonetheless.

Since no one speaks Egyptian, I have never been able to find an equivalent list of the Egyptian unit sounds, with translations.

The problem, of course, is that no one knows exactly how Ancient Egyptian sounded, so finding random people to translate AoM’s interpretation of Ancient Egyptian is very hard.

However, we do have some idea of what Egyptian sounded like, through some cross-referencing with contemporary Akkadian texts, and phonological reconstruction via its daughter language Coptic. Since Egyptian, like many Semitic languages today, only wrote down consonants, reconstruction of the vowel sounds is particularly difficult.

Because of this, most Egyptologists today use the so-called “Egyptological Pronunciation,” which consists of adding an “e” sound between all written consonants. Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that (we treat some of the pseudo-vowels as true vowels for pronunciation), but that’s the essentials. Thus, nfr becomes “ne-fer.”

I’m fairly certain that the makers of Age of Mythology used this simplified Egyptological pronunciation for the Egyptian units, and I’m pretty sure I can understand some of the words. I’m also pretty sure that some of the phrases are just nonsense, but maybe it’s the pronunciation.

Here’s an example of Egyptian gameplay, with plenty of unit sounds:

Decoding the Egyptian Unit Sounds

Combing through the (scant) online resources about the Greeks and the Norse unit sounds, I find that the three major factions have basically the same vocabulary in use for their units.

Following the stackexchange categorization¹, there are four categories that are present in both the Norse and the Greek unit sounds:

1. Expressing Readiness

2. Agreeing

3. Job Descriptions

4. Battle Commands

It stands to reason that the Egyptian units should have the same commands, probably with something approaching the Egyptological pronunciation.

Since I have Age of Mythology: Extended Edition on Steam, I was able to log in and test out the Egyptian faction, and see which actions triggered specific sounds. Below, I will give the phrases that I think I understand, and if I think it’s incorrect grammar, I’ll mark it in red.

However, since I doubt the developers/voice actors spoke Ancient Egyptian, I am going to have to try to guess what they were going for with each pronunciation. In other words, take all this with a grain of salt, because there is a lot of room for error.

My Translations

Note: I’ll put a phonetic transcription in quotes, followed by the context in which that sound is played. Underneath, I’ll write the hieroglyphs, transliteration, and translation. Like so:

The format I will use for my translations

Readiness/Agreeing

First up, we have the “readiness” and “agreeing” words that units say when you order them to move somewhere or build something.

I’m nearly certain of “grg” and “tiw,” but the others are speculative. A lot of the units also say “akh” when ordered to do anything, but that doesn’t seem to map onto anything sensible. This is the best I can come up with:

Job Descriptions

Next up, we have the Job Descriptions/Resource Gathering sounds.

I’m almost 100% sure of the first two, the last one is probably pure speculation on my part. That’s a Late Egyptian possessive construction, and I do not see how the AoM devs would have known that. And I can’t understand at all what the units say when you make them gather wood.

Battle Commands

And this is the only battle command I could confidently translate (and the grammar is wrong).

The word “attack” here is a noun. Egyptian writing is pretty ambiguous about nouns and verbs, so this could also be a verb of some kind, but my dictionary says it’s a noun. So this exclamation would be like if your commander ordered you into battle, and your war cry was “Battle!”

A Call for Help

In this article, I’ve translated maybe half of the common phrases you hear in-game. But there are still a lot of these phrases that I just can’t make heads or tails of. For example, what the hell is the pharaoh saying?

If anyone wants to take a crack at further translations, please let me know, this has been bothering me for nigh on fifteen years at this point.

The ageofempires.fandom.com website gives phonetic transcriptions of the common Egyptian unit sounds, which may or may not be helpful, and here’s a video containing all the Egyptian unit sounds, some of which aren’t even used in the game:

An Update from George Wing

Update: April 27, 2024.

An exciting new discovery has been made in the field of forensic video game transcription (archaeoludophonology?).

An interested reader, George Wing, has confidently identified the ubiquitous “ee-ned-djer-ek” sound that the pharaoh makes at 0:07 in the Egyptian gameplay video, as well as several others (that appear to be unused in game), but that appear in the Voice Clips & Sounds.

For the remaining identifications, George points out that since these voice files appear to be unused, they lack the relevant context to make the identifications certain — you can’t see what the units are doing when you click on them. Nevertheless, they fit well into the “job descriptions” schema.

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1. https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/94141/what-are-the-units-in-age-of-mythology-saying#:~:text=Battle%20Commands%3A,eisvoli%3A%20Invasion!