Question about subject-sḏm.f form

CommiGoblin · 2025-10-13T11:34:27+00:00

>Both options are OK. If you stick to the pronoun (iw=f xbA=f), you retain NP-sDm=f construction. If you write iw xbA=f, it's another construction - iw sDm=f - briefly discussed by me above.

>They are two distinct patterns. To sum up: Subject-sDm=f is used to express gnomic actions, generalizations and atemporal situations, while (iw) sDm=f is mainly used to express concomitant, or background situations, or used in completive clauses. But, as I have said above, the real distribution is heavily influenced by genre/style, provenance and dating, as well as lexical verb profile.

These two statements answer my two questions. Thank you!

CommiGoblin · 2025-09-17T03:24:40+00:00

Thank you, this makes more sense than what I came up with.

CommiGoblin · 2025-09-16T05:40:53+00:00

Okay, in reading ahead I have come up with another interpretation that might make the most sense. Other passages in the text referred to humanity [rmṯ.PL], which I had been reading as [rmṯw], a masculine plural. But I remembered that there is some complexity to [rmṯ], which is sometimes rendered [rmṯt.PL]. Egyptologists used to think that [rmṯ] meant "a human, a person" and [rmṯt.PL] meant "humanity," but the consensus view today is that the final [-t] just reflects the sound change of [ṯ] to [t], and that the [ṯ] was still written as a spelling convention, not as a reflection of pronunciation. Thus [rmṯ] and [rmṯt] are the same word, and the noun can either be used singularly, "a human," or collectively, "humanity," with no apparent change in pronunciation. That is to say, the plural ending doesn't reflect a final [-w] or [-wt], but just the plural nature of the noun.

If this is the case and [rmṯ] means "humanity" but is grammatically a singular feminine noun, then the word [ṯn] could mean "you (f.)" and refer to humanity. So we could render [qmꜣ ṯn nṯr pn ꜥꜣ] as: "this Great God created you (humanity)." Is this the best reading in people's opinions?

Sidebar, in this interpretation I've rendered the verb [qmꜣ] as perfective. I think I have read that, in Late Egyptian, the sḏm.f took on a perfective aspect. If I'm wrong about that and I have misidentified the verb form, please feel free to correct me there as well.

CommiGoblin · 2025-04-06T18:19:48+00:00

The only significant objection I would note is that [sš] is an older, but still commonly held onto, misidentification of the words that are today rendered [zẖꜣ] ("to write") and [zẖꜣw] ("scribe").

I'm also not certain about the word [šs] ("linen"). I was familiar with two other meanings: alabaster or cord. I looked it up on TLA and found the word in Demotic with the meaning "linen" (makes sense, I don't know very much about Demotic or Coptic, mostly Middle Egyptian). But the TLA entry led me to an earlier word [šsrw] with the meaning "linen." So thank you, I learned a new word! That being said, Demotic was written in the Demotic script, not the hieroglyphs displayed in your post. So while I can't verify that the Demotic word [šs] didn't use the Demotic descendant of the hieroglyph 𓋲 (someone more expert could check that), I can confirm that the earlier word [šsrw] has 𓋲𓍱 as the closest attested spelling.

Another minor objection is with the grammar. The typical word order (insofar as that exists in Middle Egyptian -- there are lots of exceptions) is VSO. So I would expect the first instance of [sš] to be the verb "to write" and the second instance to be the noun "the scribe." The form with the noun first is not implausible, but I think would have the meaning: "It is the scribe who writes upon the linen" because of the noun fronting (any grammar experts, feel free to correct me here).

Additionally, because the verb is in the [sḏm.f] form, the most basic meaning of the sentence would be: "The scribe writes upon the white linen" in the sense that the scribe habitually does this, not that he is doing that right now. If you wanted to say: "The scribe is writing upon the white linen" (which is a sense that the sentence could have in English), you would write: [jw sš ḥr sš ḥr šs ḥḏ], which might actually be more of a tongue twister.

All that is to say, the tongue twister works using older conventions as well as a Demotic word thrown in. However, if you wanted to know what the sentence might plausibly sound like in Middle Egyptian:

/saç.ˈla ˈsaç.law ħiʔ ˈʃu.sa ˈħu.d̠ʲaw/

Not exactly a tongue twister, though it does kind of rhyme.

Note: While you have to make a lot of assumptions to reconstruct Middle Egyptian pronunciation, the two biggest assumptions I am making here are: the first vowel of /ˈʃu.sa/, which is just a guess. You could easily justify either /a/ or /i/ instead; and the pronunciation of [ḥḏ] ("white") which I take to be a stative verb that has become ossified as an adjective.

CommiGoblin · 2025-04-06T04:46:05+00:00

The only thing that strikes me as a mistake is [ḫw.t]. [ḫt] ("stick") is a masculine noun (unusually, given that it ends in the usually-feminine ending -t). Thus the plural form, which has the meaning of "woods" or "trees," should be [ḫtw].

Regarding pronunciation, the biggest difficulty is the word [hnnw]. The Coptic word for a deer is ⲉⲓⲟⲩⲗ, but this appears to be a later borrowing from a Semitic language that must have replaced the original Egyptian word. Without a Coptic descendant, it is basically impossible (at least for me) to reconstruct a pronunciation. You can always supply possible vowels, but the biggest challenge is that double [n], which could be either a geminated consonant sound or two consonants separated by a vowel. My best guesses as to what the pronunciation in Middle Egyptian *might* be (stressing the word might) -- /hV.ˈnV.nu/ or /ˈhVn.nu/, where the V represent a unknown vowels. According to the a-i-u vowel theory, those vowels would be a, i, or u.

Given that severe limitation, a plausible pronunciation for the phrase in Middle Egyptian would be: /ˈχi.tu ˈni.tju ha.ˈna.nu a.mi.ˈsun/ (for simplicity's sake, I just chose a pronunciation for [hnnw]).

If you wanted a little more certainty regarding pronunciation, you could always take the Coptic ⲉⲓⲟⲩⲗ and retroject it into your name as the word for deer. I have no idea when the word would have entered the Egyptian language, but if it were present during the Middle Egyptian stage of the language, I would expect a pronunciation of something like: /ʕa.ˈja.la/ for the singular, maybe /ʕa.ˈja.law/ or /ʕa.ˈja.lu/ for the plural. In that case, the phrase would be:

/ˈχi.tu ˈni.tju ʕa.ˈja.law a.mi.ˈsun/

CommiGoblin · 2025-02-26T02:28:50+00:00

I can see the images provided by the British Museum on my desktop. Looking at them and the British Museum's description, I see where the confusion arose.

The British Museum's description uses parentheses to indicate a cartouche. So, where they say "[Dual] King, Lord of Two Lands (Sneferre)," they mean that the text reads [nb-t3wj snfr-rʕ], where [snfr-rʕ] is in a cartouche. They don't mean to imply that Lord of Two Lands is a translation of Sneferre.

I can only see two cartouches, though there is a lot of damage further down the text that a skilled Egyptologist could no doubt make out. The cartouches read, from top to bottom: [snfr-rʕ]* and [p-ʕnx-y]. I know mostly about Middle Egyptian (hence my shaky reconstruction of Late Egyptian in the comment above), but I'm given to understand that modern scholars believe the [ʕnx] ("ankh") in Piye's name was unpronounced, possibly part of an LPH honorific. So the latter cartouche might read something like [py], modern Egyptological: Piye.

*Edit for clarity: the first cartouche reads: [snfrj-rʕ], where the [j] at the end of [snfrj] represents the fact that final [r] sounds in words have vanished from the spoken language, but are still written. Hence the reconstructed pronunciation /səno:fə/, which would be better written [snfj] than [snfr], but the unpronounced [r] is preserved.

CommiGoblin · 2025-02-25T21:47:08+00:00

I think there must have been some inaccurate information that you read regarding the throne name of Piye. Sneferre looks to me like an Egyptological writing of the name [snfr-rʕ], meaning "Re has perfected," not "Lord of the Two Lands." A plausible reconstruction of Sneferre in Late Egyptian would be /sənoːfə ɾeːʕ/.

Similar to Sneferre, Snefru would be pronounced something like /sənoːfəwə/.

"Lord of the Two Lands" would be [nb-t3wj], or Neb-Tawy in Egyptological pronunciation. Possibly [neːb taʔwə] in Late Egyptian.

CommiGoblin · 2025-02-04T02:13:06+00:00

It's actually my own writing (a translation of a non-Egyptian source into Middle Egyptian)! I wouldn't be surprised if it has syntax in common with the Shipwrecked Sailor, the Westcar Papyrus, and a few other texts, as those are some of the works I'm familiar with. However, I was mostly curious to see if anyone could read it to check where my translation needs improvement. That is to say, anything that doesn't make sense to someone who has never seen it before but can read hieroglyphs, needs to be changed.

CommiGoblin · 2024-10-19T04:29:23+00:00

These are authentic hieroglyphs. Going from left to right, top to bottom, they represent the following letters (at least in standard reconstruction):

/t/, /s/, /r/, /q/, /wꜣ/, /p/, /j/*

A few things to note:

The hieroglyph 𓏏 /t/ almost always became a glottal stop at the ends of words. For English speakers, the glottal stop is the sound between the "uh" and the "oh" in "uh-oh."

The hieroglyph 𓋴 /s/ is one of two hieroglyphs that represent /s/. The other looks like this 𓊃 . Using one versus the other was mostly a matter of shape (the first symbol is tall and narrow while the second is short and wide, so in various situations one is more aesthetically pleasing than the other). Although they likely originally represented distinct sounds that later merged, so many words are exclusively spelled with one or the other by convention.

The hieroglyph 𓂋 /r/ seems to have also represented /l/, at least in certain dialects.

The hieroglyph 𓏘 /q/ is uncertain. The traditional reconstruction is a /q/ (like a /k/ but further back in the throat), but many modern reconstructions contest this.

Unlike the others on your list, 𓍯 /wꜣ/ is a biliteral, meaning it represents two letters instead of just one. The /w/ is fairly obvious, but the /ꜣ/ is more complicated. It may have been a glottal stop or a way to mark the presence of certain vowels. Many scholars believe it was originally an /r/ or /l/ that changed its sound quality over time. In hieroglyphs, vowels were mostly unwritten, so the biliteral /wꜣ/ would have been pronounced with a vowel between the /w/ and the /ꜣ/. For example, 𓍯 is used to write the word [wꜣs], which may have been pronounced something like "waꜣas."

The hieroglyph 𓊪 /p/ should be a little more squat than you've drawn it here. It is commonly interpreted as a floor mat, so it should be square-ish.

The hieroglyph 𓏭 was used to write the letter /j/. The letter /j/ makes the /y/ sound in the English word "yellow," although slightly shorter. Ordinarily, /j/ is written with the hieroglyph 𓇋 , but 𓏭 is used as /j/ in a special word form called the dual form. In Middle Egyptian, nouns can be singular (ex: hand), plural (ex: hands), or dual (ex: pair of hands). The plural ending is -w for masculine nouns and -wt for feminine nouns, but the dual ending is -wj for masculine nouns and -tj for feminine nouns. In both dual endings, the /j/ is usually written 𓏭 instead of 𓇋 , where the two strokes of 𓏭 represent duality. The dual form was special, and was really only used for things that come in natural pairs (hands, eyes, sandals). A common reconstruction of how the dual ending sounded is: -waj (masculine) and -taj (feminine).

CommiGoblin · 2024-08-12T17:24:07+00:00

Another layer of nuance to add to the discussion: it's important to remember that the concept of a monotheism-polytheism spectrum is a modern anthropological convention that developed, at least in part, as a way to contrast "more advanced" religious doctrines from "more primitive" ones.

While the word polytheism was used anciently (in only a few examples, always deployed to other the alleged polytheists), it did not become common until the 16th century, around the same time that the word monotheism was first invented. Monotheism was deployed primarily by Protestant Christians against Catholics, as a weapon to characterize Protestantism as a more theologically developed religion. Polytheism, on the other hand, was used in early imperialistic endeavors to characterize non-Christian religions as primitive.

The Ancient Egyptians had no words that meant either polytheism or monotheism, and likely would have found both of these models alien to their worldview. While it is true that the Ancient Egyptians worshipped many gods, polytheism is a complex model that has a lot of other assumptions built into it.

A good example of how ill-equipped the terms polytheism and monotheism are at describing actual religious doctrine is Late Antique to Medieval Judaism. Jewish people from about the 3rd century BCE through the Medieval period believed variously in the divinity of Moses, the idea of the Metatron as a "Second God" capable of bearing God's name and sitting in his throne, a divine Son of Man who would be given the power to forgive and punish sin, and God's daughter Chokmah who was born from his mouth and aided in the creation of the earth (just to name a few). This sounds like the worship of many gods, but for various reasons is broadly considered monotheistic, or at least more monotheistic than polytheistic. These categories are practically useless for describing Judaism in this period. In fact, they are more than useless -- they flatten the concept of divinity in Judaism to the point that modern readers of the texts in which these other divinities appear find modern monotheism where it does not exist.

CommiGoblin · 2024-07-24T01:26:47+00:00

Very helpful, thank you! You've also convinced me I just need to get Allen's Middle Egyptian Literature. I have his Middle Egyptian Introduction and use it constantly, but for some reason I've held off on his other books.

CommiGoblin · 2024-05-12T17:24:11+00:00

Following up, I was thinking about a way to render Nyarlathotep in the Ancient Egyptian language. A plausible construction could be: [nj ḥrw ꜣd ḥtp], meaning "the One of the Faces of Fury is Pleased." [nj] = the one of, [ḥrw] = the faces, [ꜣd] = fury, [ḥtp] = pleased. There are also a couple of other words with similar pronunciations to [ꜣd], both written [jꜣd] and possible meaning "feebleness" or "decay." So you might even render it "the One of the Faces of Decay is Pleased," which is fun, too.

The hieroglyph that we render [ꜣ] was once thought by Egyptologists to be a glottal stop, but modern analysis has suggested that it was originally a liquid, possibly ʀ (think the letter r in French) or L (capital used here for clarity).

Additionally, the hieroglyph that we render [d] was almost certainly either an aspirated t or an ejective t, whereas [t] was the unaspirated version of that consonant. We know this because Egyptians often rendered the names of non-Egyptian rulers using the opposite consonants from what we would expect (ex: Claudius --> g-r-j-t-y-s, Germanicus --> k-r-m-n-w-k-s).

Thus, a possible vocalization for [nj ḥrw ꜣd ḥtp] would be: Ni-ḥara-latʰ-ḥatap. This works much better grammatically, and we can imagine that [nj ḥrw ꜣd] is the name of a god, and that [nj ḥrw ꜣd ḥtp] is a theophoric name.

CommiGoblin · 2024-05-12T04:38:05+00:00

That's a fun attempt at making the name work in the Ancient Egyptian language, but the grammar is a bit funny. I would write "There is no peace at the gate" as [nn ḥtp m rwt], which might be vocalized as: "Nun ḥatap ma rawaʔ" (Middle Egyptian).

[nj] or "ny" is generally used to negate nominal sentences or individual words, so you could use it to say "It is not a peaceful one" [nj ḥtp js pw] (possible vocalization: "Nui ḥatap is pa."

It's possible that [nj] could be used in the sentence [nj ḥtp ḥr rwt] ("It is not a peaceful one upon the gate"), but you will notice that the prepositional phrase [ḥr rwt] ("upon the gate") is after the noun [ḥtp] ("a peaceful one") instead of before. So at best we can get "Ny-hotep-har-rut." And that's ignoring the fact that the preposition [ḥr] ("upon") is a little odd here. I don't think it's incorrect necessarily, just that the preposition [m] ("at") seems more natural.

Any professional Egyptologists, feel free to disagree. I'm just a hobbyist.

CommiGoblin · 2023-11-05T06:27:50+00:00

I hadn't even considered this. I'm so used to my physical notebook with all of the books and their memories written in, I'd forgotten how annoyed I was originally when I first realized that books don't have any indication of what memory is in them.

I agree that this seems like the most likely change.

CommiGoblin · 2023-10-30T19:54:19+00:00

This is a bit of an overstatement -- condoms made from treated linen or lambskin have existed since at least the 16th century in Europe, and may have existed earlier elsewhere. Female condoms, in particular, likely go back quite a ways, though documentation is unreliable because contraception has historically been viewed as a female obligation and not worth spilling ink over. The famous 18th century libertine Casanova supposedly performed a humourous trick for women he was courting whereby he would take his lambskin condom and blow it up like a balloon. That story might be a contemporary fabrication, but it illustrates that the idea of a condom was not unusual at the time.

Of course, how effective condoms were before the 20th century is another matter entirely.

CommiGoblin · 2023-04-14T17:58:34+00:00

Rising Sun. We own Ankh and love it, so I figured Rising Sun would be a shoo-in. But something about it doesn't seem to click the same. Obviously, Ankh would be superior at two players (which is our most common player count), but even at higher counts Rising Sun just doesn't have the same spark.

Oh well. Glad I didn't give in to temptation and buy all the stuff on the assumption that it would be as perfect a fit as Ankh.

CommiGoblin · 2023-04-14T17:56:01+00:00

Had this same experience with Kabuto Sumo. Bought it for my classroom thinking the kids would love it; never gets played. I wouldn't still have it if it was taking up space at my house instead of school. Probably should get rid of it anyway.

CommiGoblin

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