Nominal Sentences

• Types
• “A B” sentences
• “A pw” sentences
• “A pw B” sentences
• “nj A B” sentences
• Subject versus predicate

Nominal sentences are sentences asserting the identity of the subject as some other noun or pronoun:

“He is the king.”
“This is it.”
“His name is Niankhkhnum.”
“Her father is Yuya.”

The nominal sentence structure in Egyptian can also express another sort of relationship: that of “belonging” to something (via ownership or adherence). For example, consider “He belongs to Amun” and think about it as “He is a ‘one-who-belongs-to’ of Amun.”

Types

Nominal sentences in Middle Egyptian can be classified into four types:

• “A pw B”: says that B is A.
  Example: “The sky is her house.”
• “A pw“: says that “this/she/he/it/that” is A.
  Example: “She is my wife.”
• “A B”: says that A is B, or that B is A.
  Example: “He is the king.”
• “nj A B” says that A belongs to B, or that B belongs to A.
  Example: “She belongs to the Lady of the Asheru.”

The first three all say that a particular thing is the same as some other thing, but as you might guess, they cannot all be used interchangeably; there are rules which govern which construction to use, based upon whether the things are nouns (and if so, what sort) or pronouns, and even based upon which half of the sentence you wish to emphasize: “He is the king” or “He is the king.” The sections below will cover these rules in detail, and show how to decide which belongs to which in the “nj A B” sentence.

Likewise, there are rules which distinguish “A belongs to B” from “B belongs to A” in the “nj A B” sentence type.

“A B” sentences (“A is B” and/or “B is A”)

The simplest structure is “A B”, and it can be used when certain conditions are met.

• If “A” is an independent pronoun, then “B” can be any noun or noun phrase. This is the most common use of the “A B” structure.
  jnk jtj jqr “I am an excellent father”
• If “B” is a neutral demonstrative pronoun like nn “this, that”, then “A” can be a noun or noun phrase.
  ḥwt ptḥ nn “this is the enclosure of Ptah”

However, if both “A” and “B” are nouns or noun phrases, the “A B” structure can only be used in a few cases:

• If one of them (usually “A”) has a noun of kinship, such as “My father is a priest”, or if either one of them is 𓂋𓈖 rn “name”, such as “His sister’s name is Isis”.
• If the two nouns are actually identical, but are in two different noun phrases, such as “your life is Ra’s life“. This is called a “balanced” sentence.

mjwt.j ḥjmt nswt wrt “my mother is the Great Royal Wife”
rn n sn.s nḫt “the name of her brother is Nakht”
pr.j pr.ṯn “my house is your house”

If both “A” and “B” are nouns or noun phrases and the above conditions are not met, then an “A pw B” sentence, described in a later section, must be used.

“A pw” sentences (“he/she/it/that/this is A”)

The “A pw” sentence means that some suitable pronoun is “A”. By “some suitable pronoun”, we mean that this sentence structure is best for answering simple questions where the topic is clear, like “Who’s that guy?” or “What’s this?” The exact pronoun that one would use in English will depend on context.

The sentence is formed by giving the predicate as “A”, followed by the demonstrative 𓊪𓅱 pw (which in this function, as a sentence marker, is always in the masculine singular form, regardless of the gender or number of “A” or the pronoun pw might be implying. Here “A” can be any noun or noun phrase, or an independent pronoun, or a demonstrative pronoun.

snt.j pw “it is my sister”, “she is my sister”, “this is my sister”, etc.
ntf pw “It is he”, “that is he”, “this is he”, etc.
pꜣ pw “It is this”, “that is this”, etc.

“A pw B” sentences (“B is A”)

Since “A B” sentences can only have nouns for both A and B in a few cases (names, kinship, balanced sentences), the usual way of identifying one noun or noun phrase with another is “A pw B”. “A” is generally the predicate in these, with 𓊪𓅱 pw following it to mark it as such.

nbw pw ꜥnḫ “Life is gold”

This is only speculation by this website’s author, but: perhaps the Egyptians thought about this as if “B” were an afterthought to an “A pw” sentence. nbw pw would mean “It is gold”, so perhaps nbw pw ꜥnḫ would be like saying “It is gold, life (is).”

“nj A B” sentences (“A belongs to B”, “B belongs to A”)

The genitival adjective n used to form indirect genitives is really the nisbe nj, perhaps translatable as “the belonging-to one of.” You can use this at the start of an “A B” sentence to express that one of the pair adheres to or belongs to the other.

If “A” is an independent pronoun, then “A” is the possessor and the predicate:

nj ntk tꜣ “the land belongs to you”, answering “to whom does the land belong”

If “A” is a dependent pronoun, then “B” is the possessor and the predicate. This is common with personal names meaning “s/he belongs to (a deity)”:

nj sw mnṯw “he belongs to Montu”

The mnemonic for this is simple: “independent” is the owner, “dependent” is the owned.

“A” is usually not a noun, except in personal names, where “B” is a god or the king and is the possessor. This is rare after the Old Kingdom: nj ꜥnḫ ẖnmw “life belongs to Khnum”, the personal name Niankhkhnum.

“B” is usually a noun, but it could be a dependent pronoun, or the interrogative adjective wr:

nnk sn “they belong to me”
nj sw wr “how much is it?” (lit. “it belongs to how much?”)

Finally, the nj often forms contractions with pronouns:

• With independent pronouns, the nj can contract with the initial j or n of the pronoun: nj jnk nbw > nnk nbw “Gold belongs to me.” nj ntk tꜣ > ntk tꜣ “The land belongs to you.”
• With dependent pronouns, these combinations often occur: nj wj > nw(j); nj sw > nsw; nj sj > ns(j). A somewhat famous name using this construction is the owner of the Greenfield Papyrus, Nesitanebetashru: ns(j) tꜣ nbt jšrw “she belongs to the lady of the Asheru” (the sacred lake at Karnak).

Subject versus predicate

Why does it matter?

In English, there are two questions you might answer with the words “She is the ruler.” They are: “who is the ruler?” and “who is she?” You might even phrase the answer differently depending on the question. You might answer “who is the ruler?” with “She is.” But you might answer “Who is she?” with “The ruler.” You probably would not answer “Who is she?” with “The ruler is.” The “is” is expected with the pronoun answer, but not with the noun answer.

You might answer by adding stress to the part of the sentence which addresses the question:

“Who is the ruler?” “She is the ruler.”
“Who is she?” “She is the ruler.”

The way Coptic is spoken suggests that Egyptian used that stress as well, but we’re dealing with written Egyptian and don’t have that stress to go by. (And the Egyptians didn’t use italics!) But fortunately, like the difference between the structures of “She is” and “The ruler”, since in Egyptian there may be multiple ways to say “A is B”, the different forms can tell us which question is being answered.

In all these cases, the subject is the half of the sentence taken as given, and the predicate is the “interesting” half, the portion that supplied new information to the reader and would have answered their question. Another way to put it: The subject is the thing I’m telling you about, and the predicate is what I’m telling you about that thing.

Rules for determining subject and predicate

“A” is the predicate in …

• “A pw B” sentences: nbw pw ꜥnḫ “Life is gold”. Talking about life, so “gold” is the predicate.
• “A pw” sentences: ḥqꜣ pw “He/she/it is the ruler”. Talking about “he/she/it/that.”
  • If you wanted to talk about the ruler (“who is the ruler?”) you would use an “A B” sentence with an independent pronoun (see below).
• “A B” sentence where “A” is a third-person independent pronoun: nts ḥqꜣ “she is the ruler”. Talking about the ruler.
  • If you wanted to talk about “he/she/it/this” (“who is this?”) you would use an “A pw” sentence (see above).
• “A B” sentence where “B” is a demonstrative pronoun: ḥm-nṯr nn “this is the priest”. Talking about “this”, like you’re introducing someone. “Who’s this?” “This is the priest.”
  • If you wanted to answer “who is the priest?”, you could say pꜣ pw “It is this one.”

“B” is the predicate in …

• Balanced “A B” sentences: pr.j pr.k “my house is your house”. Talking about my house, telling you that it’s yours.

Contextual cases:

• “nj A B” sentences: nj wj jmn “I belong to Amun”. This is always talking about the adherent, stating to whom they belong. So the adherent is always the subject and the possessor is the predicate.
• “A B” sentences of kinship: snt.j ḥjmt nswt wrt “my sister is the Great Royal Wife”. Talking about my sister, almost certainly not about the Great Royal Wife. The kinship term is usually the subject, and the Egyptians usually put it in “A”, so “B” is usually the predicate.
  • If you wanted to tell someone who the Great Royal Wife is rather than who your sister is, you would add pw after “my sister”, making this an “A pw B” sentence: snt.j pw ḥjmt nswt wrt “my sister is the Great Royal Wife”.
• “A B” sentence with 𓂋𓈖 rn “name”: rn n sn.s jmn-ḥtp “The name of her brother is Amenhotep”. Telling you what the name is, so “name” is itself the subject, and what that name is is the predicate. The Egyptians generally put rn in the “A” term, but even when they don’t, the term without rn is probably the predicate.
  • If you were asked “who is Amenhotep”, you wouldn’t mention the noun “name”; you would simply say sn.s jmn-ḥtp “Amenhotep is her brother”.
• “A B” sentence where “A” is a first-or-second person independent pronoun: Either one could be the subject, since the “A pw” option is only there for third person. Context clues will be your only way to tell. Rarely, Egyptian uses an “A pw B” sentence with an independent pronoun for “A” instead of a noun: jnk pw šw “I am Shu”.