Hello eye,

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The language also wasn't really "reverse engineered" as you suggest. The Rosetta stone is the same text, composed in hieroglyphs, hieratic and demotic Greek. It provides an irrefutable way for a cryptologist to "crack a code" of meaning, even though we remain completely and utterly clueless about the actual sound of the language.

From what I've read, the Rosetta stone itself was not the clue to decipherment. For example, here is an excerpt from Simon Singh

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Champollion wondered if the first hieroglyph in the cartouche, the disc, might represent the sun, and then he assumed its sound value to be that of the Coptic word for sun, 'ra'. This gave him the sequence ('ra-?-s-s'). Only one pharaonic name seemed to fit. Allowing for the omission of vowels and the unknown letter, surely this was Rameses. The spell was broken.

There are countless examples in 1800's literature of coptic being the basis for translating hieroglyphs. This is what I meant by reverse engineered.

I know nothing of Chinese history so I'll take your word for their Honorific titles. But I think it unwise to assume the AE's did the same.

I'm not sure what you meant by "But ... the Graeco-Roman period of Egypt spans the entire historical period whose authors you cited in support of your viewpoint: Herodotus et al."

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Hieroglyphs make as much sense as any other language, once you have learned how to read them.

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Osiris in his name of seker tows the earth by means of balance.

Does this really make sense to you ?

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....the "meaning" of what is being read is clear and appropriate to the context in which the expressions were originally produced,

Context is subjective. If operating from a presumption of religious ceremony, interpretation will accommodate such religious ceremony. Just as the premise of a coptic relationship produced 'Rameses', the premise of different titles of respect for a pharaoh, will produce different names for a pharaoh. Eliminate the presumption, and different interpretations will emerge.

So what is there to say that pharaohs had several names, other than because another country did ? Are you saying this is the reasoning of egyptologists?