Nouns

• Definiteness
• Roots
• Gender
• Number
• Declension
• How to write the Dual and Plural
• Exceptions

Nouns in Egyptian serve much the same role as nouns in European languages: they are the words for persons, places, animals, inanimate objects, abstract concepts, and so forth. Nouns in Egyptian do not inflect for case (what their role in a sentence is); Egyptian uses word order for that. They do however inflect for gender and number.

Definiteness

Middle Egyptian (in its written form) had neither definite nor indefinite articles. It did have demonstrative pronouns, some of which evolved into articles in later Egyptian, but without those or some contextual aid, a noun could be either definite or indefinite. So when you see zꜣ, you might translate it as “son”, “a son”, or “the son” depending on the context.

Roots

The root of a noun is the part of the noun that all other forms are derived from. For example, the root nṯr carries the concept of “divinity” and gives nṯr “god”, nṯr.t “goddess”, nṯr.wj “two gods”, etc.

Gender

Egyptian has two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine. The good news is that remembering the gender of nouns is much easier than in some European languages. With very few exceptions (see Exceptions below), the gender of an Egyptian singular noun is easy to determine: If it ends in a 𓏏t, it’s feminine; if not, it’s masculine.

Usually the masculine form is just the root, like 𓌢𓈖𓀀 sn “brother”, but some masculine nouns have -j or -w added to their root: 𓎛𓆑𓄫𓅱𓆚 ḥfꜣw “snake”. The feminine is always found by adding a -t to the masculine, so the feminine of ḥfꜣw is ḥfꜣ.t.

Number

Egyptian has singular and plural, but it also has dual, for when there are exactly two of the noun. This was already becoming archaic by the Middle Kingdom. Most types of pronouns don’t have a dual form, and the plural does the job for two things as well as for more than two. Some duals were written until the latest periods: 𓇾𓇾 tꜣ.wj “The Two Lands” (Egypt) is perhaps the most common.

Declension

• Masculine nouns form their plural by adding -w to the singular; the dual is formed by adding -wj to the singular.
• Feminine nouns form their plural by adding -w before the feminine ending -t in the singular; the dual is formed by changing the -t of the singular to -tj.

These rules still apply even to singular masculines ending in -w or singular feminines ending in -wt, even though this results in two consecutive w sounds in the plural.

How to write the dual and plural

The -w of plurality is a weak consonant, so it is often omitted in writing, but usually there will be a set of plural strokes after the word, which can be written in several ways, depending on which suits the artist and fits with the other glyphs in the text: 𓏥, 𓏪, 𓏫, 𓏦, 𓏨

An older way to show plurality was to write three of the determinative, in words which had one: 𓌢 𓈖𓏏𓁐𓁐𓁐 sn.wt “sisters”. The only plural that really continues to be written that way in Middle Egyptian (outside of some religious texts) is 𓊹𓊹𓊹 nṯr.w “gods”.

For the dual, 𓏲𓏭 -wj or 𓏏𓏭 -tj were usually used, though tj could use the pestle biliteral as well: 𓍘 or 𓍘𓇋. Using two determinatives for the dual was more common in Middle Egyptian than using three for the plural was: 𓌢 𓈖𓏏𓏭𓁐𓁐 sn.tj “two sisters”.

Exceptions

There are very few nouns which break the normal -t rule for determining masculine and feminine, and only one that I know of with an irregular plural. This is not necessarily an exhaustive list but these are the most common ones.

• 𓆱𓏏𓏤 ḫt “wood, stick, tree, timbers” is masculine; the t is part of the root, so its plural and dual would be ḫt.w, ḫt.wj.
• 𓐍𓏏𓏛 ḫt derives from earlier 𓇋𓐍𓏏 jḫt. It can mean “thing, goods, property” and is feminine (jḫ.t, jḫ.wt, jḫ.tj) when it does, but it can also mean the indefinite “something, anything”, and when it does, it is masculine (jḫt, jḫt.w, jḫt.wj).
• 𓇓 𓏏𓈖 nswt “king” is irregular in several ways:
  • It is masculine, despite the t.
  • Allen says there are no exceptions to the rules for plurals (Allen 2014, p.45), but the plural of nswt appears in the Westcar Papyrus (Westc. 12,11 to 12,12; Blackman 1988, p. 16), in the story about Reddjudet, who is mother to three kings, as 𓇓 𓏏𓈖𓇌𓏲𓅆𓏪 nsyw. As for the dual, I’ve not found a reference to it in the sources I’ve checked, so perhaps it is unattested (but always remember my disclaimer!)
  • Several possible reasons for its irregularity have been suggested: that it comes from a phrase nj sw.t “owner of the sedge” (e.g. Allen 2014, p. 52), since the sedge plant symbolizes Upper Egypt, or that it is related to a Sumerian word ensi(k) for “ruler” (Peust 2007).
  • The sedge sw.t is written before the n presumably as honorific transposition, since it represents Upper Egypt (and the king themselves).