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Egypt

Mdw nṯr

Ancient Egyptian belongs to the Afroasiatic language family, like Hebrew, Arabic, Hausa and Tuareg. The writing systems used for these languages don't record or even pay much attention to short vowels, so it's very difficult to work out how Egyptian was pronounced at any time over its 4000 year history. 'Mdw n[tʃ]r' - however it was pronounced - meant 'words of god', and is the name the Egyptians gave to their hieroglyphic script.

Like Arabic and Hebrew, hand-written hieroglyphics were usually written right to left, but they could also be written (and - particularly carved) - right to left, or top to bottom, depending on what you were writing them on. Almost everything here is written left to right. You can tell which way to read Egyptian by looking at the animals: you read towards the animals' faces. To make it possible to read vowel-free Egyptian texts without choking on strings of consonants, there's a tradition of transcribing the quail as u, the reed as i and the vulture and arm as a. Then, if the word is still unpronounceable, bung in as many e's as is necessary to stop the choking. It is possible to work out better where and what the vowels were (from Greek and Coptic sources), but hieroglyphics are complicated enough already, so I won't go into how to do that.

Unfortunately, with at least four systems for transcribing hieroglyphs into Roman type, 'Egyptian' spelling is a bit variable, and it's not helped by the fact that for some of the kings, we use the English pronunciation of a Roman transliteration of a Greek version of an Egyptian name. 'Pharaoh Cheops' is a five thousand year old Chinese whisper for something that was probably pronounced something like "Par'o Khuf".

There are two main sorts of Egyptian hieroglyph: phonetic signs (phonograms), and picture signs (ideograms). Phonograms have a particular sound value, and they come in three varieties: single, double and triple sound signs. The single sound signs are the nearest the Egyptians had to an alphabet, and these are the symbols that you'll find you name is spelt in if you go to one of those 'Your Name In Hieroglyphs' sites. The IPA symbols show how they were probably pronounced in Middle Egyptian. These are they:

Hieroglyph	IPA sound	Transcribed	Hieroglyph	IPA sound	Transcribed
	[ʔ]	ɜ or a		[ɣ]	ḫ or kh
	[ɪ]	i̓		[x]	ẖ or ch
	[j]	y		[s]	s
	[ʕ]	ʕ or a		[s]	s
	[w]	w or u		[ʃ]	š or sh
	[b]	b		[qʼ]	ḳ or q
	[pʰ]	p		[kʰ]	k
	[f]	f		[kʼ]	g
	[m]	m		[tʰ]	t
	[n]	n		[tʃ]	ṯ or tj
	[ɾ]	r		[tʼ]	d
	[h]	h		[tʆ]	ḏ or dj
	[ħ]	ḥ or h	See this chart for the IPA symbol sounds.

A few of the hieroglyphs had variant forms, particularly in later texts:

[m] could be [w] could be [n] could be [t] could be [g] could be , and when the Macedonians invaded, [l] was needed to write 'Alexander' and they used .

The problem with just using the phonograms is the same problem that will be found by anyone using a Roman alphabet who tries to learn Hebrew or Arabic. In Afroasiatic languages, most words are formed from three-letter roots, like كتب (k-t-b, right to left) in Arabic, which is found in words to do with writing. Similarly, in Hebrew, the letters ספר (s-f/p-r, right to left) are found in words to do with 'telling', sefer is 'book', m'saper is 'I tell', s'fariym is 'books', sipor is 'story', and so on.

Different grammatical meanings are formed by playing around with the vowels within the word and the letters around it. If your writing system doesn't show the vowels in the word, then how can you tell the difference between soot, east, sit, sat, seats, stew and seat? The word for Egypt is kmt, but it's only guesswork and wishful thinking that allow us to pronounce it as Kemet. Egyptian gets around this by using another sort of sign in addition to the phonograms: the ideograms. Ideograms are pictures of the thing they represent, although, like Pictionary, the pictures aren't always obvious to everyone. So a picture of a beetle can be the word 'scarab', and a picture of a house from above can mean 'house'. Many words are terminated by a special sort of ideogram called a determinative, which shows the general class of thing the word belongs to. So a little picture of two legs walking determines words like 'go' and 'walk', and a picture of the sun determines words like 'sun', 'day' and 'time', from other words that might be written with the same phonograms.

You may have guessed that there is a lot of overlap between the two classes, and there is: an ideogram can be used to represent its phonetic sound, and many phonograms can be turned into ideograms by adding a little dash underneath them. So the picture of a scarab can determine the word 'beetle', but it also acts as a phonogram for the three letters [xpr], which is found in words concerning 'change'. The picture of a house from above can mean 'house', or stand for the two consonant cluster [pr].

The names of the King

The names of Egyptian kings give a useful insight into some aspects of Egyptian writing. Egyptian pharaohs had five names for different occasions. Each was used for different purposes and to show a different aspect of the King's (occasionally reigning Queen's) character.

Hor Nebu

The third was the Golden Horus name. This was written under the symbols for Horus and gold and was possibly read 'Hor Nebu'.

Horus was the first dynastic god of the Egyptian monarchy. He was originally a sky god, as befits a falcon, but later he was incorporated in the family of Osiris, the god of the underworld. After Osiris was murdered and dismembered by his brother Set, his wife (and sister) Isis brought him back to life by collecting the parts, mummifying them and having sex with them. From this act of incestuous necrophilia, Horus was born. With the care of his mother and his aunt, Nephthys (Set's wife and sister), he grew old enough to avenge his father. The victory of Horus over Set is probably based on the unification of Egypt, and although Set was the god of turmoil, storms and evil in general, he was worshipped as a power to be tamed.

Sa Re

The fifth and final name was the Son of Re name, again written inside a protective cartouche. The duck is the Egyptian ideogram for son, and the disc above it is the Sun. This showed that the King was the son of Re, the sun god. This is also known as the nomen, or birth name, and is often handed down through dynasties. It is the name you are probably most familiar with, as it is the one that Egyptologists use (with an anachronistic numbering system) to name the Egyptian kings, e.g. Ramesses II, Tutankhamun. Pharaohs were mostly referred to by their praenomen, as in English (Elizabeth, rather than 'Tudor V').

With such a huge official name, there obviously had to be shorthand names for the king too. The most common are 'hem', meaning 'Incarnation', and 'nesu' and 'bity' both meaning 'King'. Later, the words per-aa, which means 'Great House' came to be used for the King, and that's where we get the word Pharaoh from.

"Horus 'Strong bull of Thebes', Two Ladies 'Enduring kingship like Re in heaven', Golden Horus 'Powerful of strength, holy of diadems', King of Upper and Lower Egypt 'The form of Re remains', Son of Re 'Born of Thoth, beautiful of forms', beloved of Hathor, lady of the turquoise". This mouthful was the official name of Tuthmosis III, which is a bit more manageable.

For further reading on hieroglyphs, the definitive tome is Gardiner, A. (1969). Egyptian grammar, being an introduction to the study of hieroglyphs 3^rd edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, which weights about three tonnes.

Egyptian theology

Ancient Egyptian culture survived in some form or another for about 3000 years, but it would be a mistake to assume that it sat there unchanged throughout. The evolution of Egyptian religion over these 3000 years, and the waxing and waning of gods with political institutions meant that by the end of those three millennia, it was all a bit of a mess.

In the beginning, there was Atum, who was basically the sun god Re. Re was also the supreme god, but don't expect that to go uncontested. Atum produced the gods and the world out of Nun, the chaos that preceded (as opposed to the chaos that came after), without recourse to woman, by an act of divine masturbation. The seed he spat forth into the void became Shu, god of wind (as in breezes), and Tefnut, goddess of clouds and moisture. As brother and sister, they copulated and brought forth Geb the earth god and Nut the sky goddess, who in their own time became the parents of Osiris, god of the underworld, Isis, goddess of women and magic, Set the god of evil and storms, and Nephthys, a nondescript goddess of the dead. The generations of gods took turns to rule over the world, until they got bored and left Osiris and Isis to it.

Onward and spirally downward. Although Atum created the universe from his semen according to the priests of Heliopolis, the priests of Hermopolis knew that the moon and wisdom god Thoth created the universe by calling it into being with his wife Ma'at, goddess of order and truth, who must've been having a hard time getting her head round this then, particularly as she and Thoth were supposedly the children of Re, who wasn't created yet. Thoth, variously a baboon or an ibis, was also the father of Amun (not to be confused with Atum, as if you would), the hidden god, whose unhidden aspect was Re: together they were worshipped as the single concept god Amun-Re. Incidentally, Amun, the god of Thebes, also created the universe, as did Re (we've covered this: Atum is Re), so presumably so did Amun-Re. I think this means that Thoth was the son and father of Re. Thoth later became the scribe of the gods, which is something of a demotion from demiurge and creator of all that is, but maybe he got bored with the competition.

Thoth had eight children: Amun, Amunet, Heq, Heqet, Nun (who you may remember existed before all the other gods), Naunet, Kau and Kauket. Heqet was married to Heq or to Khnum (don't ask where he came from). Khnum, his other wife Sati and their daughter Anuket were gods of Elephantine. Khnum was also the husband of Neith, a war goddess of Crocodilopolis. Given all this whoring, it is amazing that he also had time to create the world, or perhaps specifically people, out of clay. Sound familiar? Religions don't generally go all out on originality.

Note please that although Re was the god of the sun and Thoth the god of the moon, the sun and moon were also the eyes of the great sky god Horus, who we'll come to later. Khons was also a moon god and we'll come to him later too. On the subject of sun gods, I may as well add that Aten, the solar disc, was also the sun god (and the One supreme god in Akhetaten, but that didn't last long), and that the scarab sun god Kheper, who represented the rebirth of the sun from the underworld and its course across the sky, also created the universe, taking the sun-god-creator-of-all to a new level of insanity by bestowing it on a dung beetle.

Horus the sky god (presumably on a time share with Nut), whose eyes were the sun and moon and who is not to be confused with Horus the son of Osiris, was rapidly confused and amalgamated with Horus the son of Osiris by the Heliopolitan priesthood. The sky god Horus was often worshipped as an aspect of the sun god Re, as Re-Horakhty. Now Re is the father of Shu and Tefnut (remember Re is Atum, kind of), hence Re is both the great grandfather of Horus, and Horus himself. Consequently, Re is his own great-grandfather.

Horus (one of them at least) had a wife, Hathor, who was also a sky goddess from Edfo (getting very crowded up there now), and a goddess of the dead (likewise down there). She is often identified with Isis, Horus's mother. The fact that Hathor appears to be both mother and wife of Horus may be something to do with her patronage of alcoholic beverages. Horus had four sons by her, each protecting a bit of a pickled human body: Imseti (liver), Duamutef (stomach), Qebehsenuef (intestines) and Hapi (lungs). Only the Egyptians would have a divine protector of intestines. Hapi was also the god of the River Nile, although he may have been a goddess. No-one seems altogether sure, least of all him. It's possible this all may have happened by some sort of spelling mistake, and there were two Hapis. The goddess Sothis (the dog star) was Isis or Hathor, or both. Best not to speculate. Osiris was Orion.

Did I mention that the builder god of Memphis, Ptah, was the creator of the universe? Or possibly the contractor that Thoth used. He had a wife (another daughter of Re: wondering who mothered all these children? I expect so is Re). Her name was Sekhmet, and on her better days went by the name, Bast, the protectress of cats. She liked cats so much she insisted on execution for those who chucked them in the Nile in a bin bag with some bricks in. They had a child, Nefertum, who was the god of the rising sun and who sat about on a lotus. They were also the parents of Imhotep, who was a real person, whose less metaphorical parents would have been a bit put out at this had they not been dead. They also had a pet bull called Apis, who was real, although he died a lot: there's a whole mausoleum of pickled bulls in Memphis.

The god of war was Month, who was actually Horus, although the goddess of war was Neith who was also the sister of Selket. Neith was therefore yet another sister of Isis, and the mother of the crocodile god Sobek in Crocodilopolis. For those who have come this far, it will come as no surprise that Sobek was a god incorporating four other gods of the elements: Re, fire; Shu, air; Geb, earth; and Osiris, water. In a similar way, Seker, the god of light was both Osiris and Ptah, and Serapis both Osiris and Apis. Serapis was a Greek import, and Bes and his hippopotamus wife Thoueris were Nubian.

Pharaoh was not strictly speaking a god, although some were worshipped as such, like Ramesses II and Akhenaten. Pharaoh was the embodiment of Horus, protectee of Nekhbet and Wadjet, the son of Re, and called Osiris when he finally died. This probably came as something of a relief.