Lesson 9: Adjectival sentences and dependents

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More biliterals

𓃹 wn
Hare		π“„š αΊ–n
Skin of a goat		π“Œ¨ αΊ–r
Butcher’s block
𓇬 wn
Flower		π“‚™ αΊ–n
Rowing arms		π“ŒΈ or π“Œ» mr
Hoe, mattock
𓇒 nn
Two rush plants		π“Œ’ or π“Œ£ sn
Arrowhead		π“‡₯ ḏr
Bundle of flax
𓆰 αΈ₯n
Herb, flower sprig		𓍲 Ε‘n
Loop of cord, ends down		π“„– pαΈ₯
Lion’s hindquarters

Both 𓃹 and 𓇬 can stand for wn, but the latter is rare. The two glyphs for αΊ–n are more evenly distributed.

The t/αΉ― and z/s sound changes

During Middle Egyptian, the αΉ― sound was gradually being lost and merging with the sound t, so in some words, the glyphs began to become interchangeable. For some time, words still tended to be written with their original glyph, much like the word cat is spelled with a “C” even though it sounds the same as the sound at the beginning of the word kite, spelled with a “K”. But I’m guessing that in “small” words like pronouns, things were more flexible. The same thing began to happen with z and s, so the “folded cloth” and “doorbolt” glyphs eventually became interchangeable in some words as well.

Although we didn’t mention this when we first introduced the suffix pronouns, it’s true of them: .s can be written with the doorbolt, and .αΉ― / .αΉ―n can be written .t / .tn.

Adjectival sentences

An adjectival sentence is one in which the subject is described by an adjective, such as “Bob is happy” or “Michelle is clever”. As we have established, Egyptian does not have “to be”, so adjectival sentences are formed by using the adjective followed by the subject noun.

π“‡‹π“ˆŽπ“°π“‚‹π“œπ“žπ“€€ jqr zαΊ–κœ’w
“The scribe is excellent.”

π“„€π“†‘π“°π“‚‹π“Šƒπ“°π“π“ nfr zt
“The woman is beautiful.”

Note the form nfr in the second example. The predicate adjective in an adjectival sentence is always in the masculine form, no matter the gender of the subject. Here’s another example to illustrate this further:

𓄀𓆑𓐰𓂋𓂧𓐰π“Šͺπ“±π“π“Š›π“Œ‰π“†“π“³π“π“‡³ nfr dpt αΈ₯ḏt
“The white boat is beautiful.”

Here there are two adjectives applicable to the feminine noun dpt “boat”. The adjective αΈ₯ḏt “white” is a modifier; it represents information about the boat that is “given”. It tells the listener I am talking about the white boat. Since it modifies “boat”, it follows it, and it has the -t so that it agrees in gender with it. But the other adjective, nfr “beautiful”, is the predicate; it is the statement I am making about the white boat: namely, that it is beautiful. As the predicate, nfr remains in the default masculine form despite the subject being feminine, and comes at the beginning of the sentence.

One adjective, π“ŽŸ nb “each, every, all”, cannot be used as a predicate, only as a modifier. We’ll learn why in a future lesson.

Dependent pronouns

The second set of pronouns in Egyptian are the dependent pronouns:

PersonSingularPlural
1stπ“…±π“€€ or 𓏲𓀀wjπ“ˆ–π“°π“₯n
2nd masc.𓍿𓅱 or 𓏏𓅱ṯwπ“π“°π“ˆ–π“°π“₯ or π“Ώπ“°π“ˆ–π“°π“₯tn, αΉ―n
2nd fem.π“Ώπ“°π“ˆ– or π“π“°π“ˆ–αΉ―n, tn
3rd masc.𓇓𓅱 or 𓇓𓏲swπ“‹΄π“ˆ–π“°π“₯ or π“Šƒπ“°π“ˆ–π“°π“₯sn
3rd fem.𓋴𓏭 or π“Šƒπ“°π“­ sj
3rd neutral𓋴𓏏 or π“Šƒπ“°π“ st

In the third person, sw, sj, and sn are usually used only when the pronoun represents people (humans or gods). If the pronoun represents anything else, whether singular or plural, the “neutral” pronoun st is typically used. This differs from the situation with the suffix pronouns, where there is no “it”.

You will note that several of the pronouns have multiple spellings or transliterations involving t/αΉ― or s as cloth/doorbolt. This is because of the sound changes described earlier in this lesson.

Like the suffix pronouns, the dependent pronouns are used in a number of different situations in Egyptian. One is as the subject of an adjectival sentence.

π“„€π“†‘π“°π“‚‹π“Šƒπ“°π“­ nfr sj
“She is beautiful.”

This is not usually done for the first person forms, however; “I am excellent” or “we are good” are formed in another way, which we will see in a future lesson.

The dative (indirect object)

The indirect object of a verb, also known as the dative, is the recipient or “beneficiary” of the action. For example:

“Dave bought the tickets for her” or “Dave bought her the tickets.”
“Bill spoke for Andrew at the meeting.”

In Egyptian, the dative is expressed with the preposition n “to, for the benefit of”: n m꜒꜀t “for Maat”, n.sn “for them”. However, the position of the dative phrase within the sentence (before or after the subject) can be complicated, which will lead us into our next lesson.

Evil sparrows?

Several of our vocabulary words for this lesson use the sparrow determinative, notably, π“ƒ€π“‡‹π“ˆ–π“°π“…ͺ bjn “bad, evil”. The sparrow is such a small and harmless bird, it makes sense in words like nḏs “small”, or in words like nḏs “commoner”. (It’s insulting to call a commoner insignificant but it’s at least something that can be understood.) But why evil? Because the Egyptians believed in the magical power of hieroglyphs. It would be a bad idea to carve a word like “evil” in stone which would last forever and give it power, so a word like “evil” could be written with the sparrow to magically make it small and insignificant. Thus words for “evil”, “chaos”, “illness”, and so forth can be written with the sparrow, to minimize the damage the words could do just by being written down.

Summary: Adjectival sentences and dependents

  1. The sound αΉ― merged with t in later Egyptian, as did z with s. The spelling of words can be affected by this.
  2. When used as a predicate, an adjective is placed at the beginning of the sentence, followed by the subject, and is always in masculine form regardless of the gender of the subject.
  3. The second set of pronouns are the dependent pronouns. One of their uses is as the subject of an adjectival sentence, but only in the second and third person.
  4. The indirect object or dative of a sentence is expressed with the preposition n “to, for the benefit of”, but the position of the dative phrase can be complicated.
  5. The sparrow determinative is not only used on words for things which are small or considered unimportant, but also on words for things considered evil, because by using the sparrow, the writer is magically causing the evil thing to be small and unimportant.

Vocabulary

  • π“‰»π“°π“‚Έπ“ƒ˜ ꜀꜒ (j꜀꜒) “donkey”
  • π“ƒ‚π“ˆ— w꜀b “clean, pure”
  • π“ƒ‚π“ˆ—π“€€ w꜀b “priest”
  • 𓄋𓐰π“Šͺ𓐱𓏴 wpj “open”
  • π“ƒ€π“‡‹π“ˆ–π“°π“…ͺ bjn “bad, miserable; evil”
  • π“Ž›π“ˆŽπ“°π“π“‹ αΈ₯nqt “beer”
    • Note the n is usually not written, even though n is not normally a weak consonant.
  • π“Œ‰π“†“π“‡³ αΈ₯ḏ “bright, white, silver”, var. π“ŒŒ
  • 𓆄𓅱π“…ͺ Ε‘wj “empty, free of”
    • To say what one is free of, use the preposition m. In this word, the sparrow probably means “small, unimportant” rather than “evil”, because this can be used in expressions such as “free of wrongdoing.”
  • π“†Žπ“…“π“π“°π“Š– kmt “Egypt” (lit. “Black land”)
  • 𓏏𓐱𓏐𓐰𓏒 t “bread”
    • This is a masculine noun despite ending in t; its root is also t.
  • π“‘π“„Ώπ“Š› ḏ꜒j “cross, ferry over”
  • π“ˆ‹π“…±π“…ͺ ḏw “evil, bad, sinister”
    • Here, unlike in Ε‘wj above, the sparrow is definitely to neutralize the evil of the word.

Exercises

Click here to do the exercises for Lesson 9.

A new transliteration system called the Leiden Unified Transliteration (LUT) was announced in August 2023 by the International Association of Egyptologists. According to the 2023 announcement, there will be more to the system than just the letters: “the use of diacritics (brackets and dots), the possible abandonment of capital letters, the possible systematic inclusion of the final weak radical of verbs, and other matters”. As of October 2025, these have either not been decided, or not published in any location I’ve been able to find.

Once those details are available, I will review them and perhaps update these lessons to conform with them. Until that’s settled, one Egyptologist on Reddit said they showed their students the issue of the webcomic xkcd in which a new standard is created to unify 14 competing standards, but since it fails to catch on, there are now 15 competing standards.

I am not an Egyptologist, but I have some opinions on LUT just from the perspective of someone who uses computers and keyboards a lot. So with that disclaimer: I like some of its decisions. It uses the European q instead of the British αΈ³, and the European z, s instead of the British s, Ε›.

But there are other decisions I dislike, like using the British symbol ꞽ instead of the much simpler European j. The problem with the “i-hook” glyph is that, even many fonts which support the “three” and “hook” symbols (꜒, ꜀) do not yet support ꞽ.

There are perhaps good linguistic and academic reasons to use the ꞽ (i-hook) symbol, but I’m not an Egyptologist and I don’t know what they are. There’s another weirdness of LUT which I will explain in a later lesson and its sidebar.

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