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Roots
The root of an Egyptian verb consists of a set of consonants, which are referred to as radicals, much as they are in Egyptian’s cousins, Hebrew and Arabic. Many typical Egyptian verbs have three radicals, but some have only two, and there are classes of verbs that have as many as six. Here are a few important Egyptian verbs, with their lists of radicals. We will use these as examples as we explain forms below.
๐ ๐๐ mn “remain; be set, established” (m, n)๐น jrj “do, make” (j, r, j)๐นโ๐๐ ๊ฅnแธซ “live” (๊ฅ, n, แธซ)๐โ๐ฟโ๐ป h๊ฃj “descend, fall” (h, ๊ฃ, j)
๐โ๐งโ๐
ฑ๐ mdwj (m, d, w, j)
The root traditionally used by Egyptologists as an example to show verb forms is ๐โ๐
sแธm “hear”, which has three radicals (s, แธ, m). In Egyptian, this means it mainly serves as a shorthand for naming various forms. You will encounter a form called the “sแธm.f”, and the “sแธmtj.fj”, and others.
Weak radicals
The consonants j and w are considered weak as they frequently are left unwritten when they’re at the end of a word. You will have seen this in other “chapters” of this website as well. When the last radical of a verb is a weak consonant, that usually means the verb behaves differently than verbs whose final radical is not weak, even if they have the same number of radicals.
Base stem
From a verb’s root, we derive one or more stems. The simplest and most essential for using the verb correctly is called the base stem. For most verbs, the base stem is the same as the root. Every verb has a base stem, although it may not have the other kinds.
However, if the root ends in a weak radical, the base stem of the verb (with a very few exceptions) is what remains of the root when that final radical is dropped. For example, the base stems of the five example verbs above are: mn, jr, ๊ฅnแธซ, h๊ฃ, and mdw. Note that jrj, h๊ฃj, and mdwj lost their final -j to form their base stems. But also note, mdwj only lost its final -j; it does not then also lose the -w, even though that is also a weak consonant.
The base stem carries a the basic “dictionary” meaning of the verb. mdwj means “speak, say”, and that’s what its base stem mdw conveys . We care about the base stem because there are verb forms which build on the base stem rather than the root.
Geminated stem
The astrological sign of Gemini, “the twins”, is the mnemonic for the next stem. (The term comes from the same Latin root.) If you double the last radical of the base stem, you get the geminated stem. For our four example verbs, you would expect these to be mnn, jrr, ๊ฅnแธซแธซ, h๊ฃ๊ฃ, and mdww. That is correct for mnn, jrr, ๊ฅnแธซแธซ, and h๊ฃ๊ฃ.
But it turns out that not every verb can form a geminated stem. mdwj, with base stem mdw, is one that does not. Although you would predict it to be mdww, no form that would use that stem exists. In fact, when you see how verbs are classified, there are more categories which cannot form geminated stems than there are which can.
The geminated stem expresses the idea of doing the action continually, repetitively, normatively, etc. For example, the geminated stem of mrj “want, desire” is mrr, since the third radical of mrj is weak and dropped before geminating. mrr typically means a more lasting “love”, because it is a desire that continues.
Geminated stems of geminated roots
Suppose we have a verb with tmm for a root. Its geminated stem, in theory, would then be tmmm. The form tmmm appears in our grammatical writing, and we believe it existed in the Egyptian pronunciation (and their minds!) but it did not exist in what they wrote, because of the “two consonants together” rule: in hieroglyphs, if two instances of a consonant happen together with no vowel between them, they were only written as one copy of the consonant.
So for the base and geminated stems tmm and tmmm, the following are possibilities for how they were written:
| Stem | Example pronunciation1 | Written | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base (tmm) | “tamma” | tm | No vowel separates the two “m”s, so they are written as one. |
| Base (tmm) | “tamam” | tmm | The “m”s are separated by a vowel, so they are each written. |
| Geminated (tmmm) | “tamamma”, “tammama” | tmm | Two of the “m”s are not separated, so they are written as one, but the third is separate, so it is written as another. |
A form actually written tmmm does not appear, so there probably wasn’t a form pronounced something like “tamamama”.
Causative stem
The causative stem conveys the meaning of causing the action of the verb: the causative of “live” means “bring to life, revive”.
The causative is formed simply by adding a prefix s- to the front of the root, not the base stem. This is true even for roots with weak final radicals. You would therefore expect the causative stems of our four examples to be smn, sjrj, s๊ฅnแธซ, sh๊ฃj, and smdwj. However, sjrj and smdwj do not exist; as we said, not every verb has a causative stem. sm, s๊ฅnแธซ, and sh๊ฃj do indeed exist.
All causatives begin with s, but not every verb beginning with s is a causative; sแธm is an example of a non-causative verb that begins with s.
It is traditional to consider causative stems as being separate roots entirely, although they are formed in a predictable way. So generally a dictionary would list s๊ฅnแธซ as a separate entry from ๊ฅnแธซ. This is not the case with geminated stems, however; ๊ฅnแธซแธซ is considered a form of ๊ฅnแธซ.
Irregular Verbs
Some verbs behave differently from other verbs of their class in one or another form, but there are three which are particularly irregular.
| Verb | Base | Geminated |
|---|---|---|
| ๐โ๐ rdj “cause, give, put” | Can be written with the mouth ๐ r followed by either of the biliterals for dj: ๐โ๐ or ๐๐, or infrequently just followed by the arm ๐๐. Irregularly, it has a second base stem which means the same thing: dj, spelled like rdj without the r (๐, ๐, ๐) | dd, spelled as one of the glyphs for the base stem dj twice. (๐โ๐, ๐๐, ๐๐) |
| ๐ jjj “come, return” | Has two different stems, jjj and jwj. The former is spelled with the walking reed ๐ and sometimes a phonetic complement ๐ or ๐ญ and the “legs” determinative; the latter with the legs ๐ป and usually a phonetic complement w, but the final j is rarely written. | The geminated stem is ๐ปโ๐ ฑ jw, rarely jww, apparently derived from the jwj stem rather than jjj. |
| ๐๐
๐ jmj “not to be, not to do” | This verb is “defective”; it only appears in two forms. It appears in the sแธm.f form (the basic conjugated verb form) to negate wishes or commands (“you should not”, “it should not”) or as its own imperative m to negate imperatives. |
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