Volume 148, Issue 1

This paper investigates the orthographies of the word rmṯ in the Old Kingdom and the factors impacting them. It is based on a survey of texts that include this word. It aims to identify features of spelling originality and means of dissemination of orthographical forms. The study also urged with its pronunciation, its plurality and singularity, the nature and significance of its determinatives. Finally, the study concluded that there is an obvious orthography-system of this word which could be geographically, and chronology traced.

The meaning and the reference of the obscure term Σαλμεσχ(ο)ινιακά has been on debate more than a century among the scholars. In this article we try to unroll the thread of the research regarding the term, to detect and explain the context in which is referred, to solve the mystery of its etymology and to propose a brand new semantic core, which characterizes a whole stream of esoteric traditions, indicating the anthropomorphical representation of the deity, by giving the ecstatic description of its astral body and the measurement of its enormous and cosmic dimensions.

This paper studies royal inscriptions of the Eighteenth Dynasty—a period of extensive military activity in Nubia and the Levant—to examine the prevailing assumption that earthly wars were conceived as mirroring a cosmic struggle between order and chaos. Instead, the sources suggest a more intricate picture, in which royal prerogative and divine will are at play, often ambiguously intertwined.

The interdisciplinary research (philology, typology, morphology, phonology) presented here explores the role of gender in the meaning and morphology of Coptic nouns. Coptic has a predominantly grammatical gender system, albeit with a niche for semantically based gender assignment. The gender system marks a three-way semantic contrast between a [male] versus a [female] versus an [unspecified] gender value, even where the morphology draws only a two-way distinction between grammatical masculine and feminine gender. By integrating quantitative data and morphophonological analysis, we shall argue that masculine gender is morphologically unmarked. Although no discrete morpheme can be identified, feminine gender is always morphologically marked on nouns. Masculine and feminine nouns are distinguished in terms of their templatic structure, which interacts in complex ways with vowel distributions, stress assignment, and noun class.

This study is part of a diptych. It is conceived as a general theoretical introduction to a forthcoming substantial case study describing the economy of the classifiers system in the Late Period tomb of Menekhibnekau in Abusir. In the first part of the present paper, I shall first go through an overview of the functioning of the classifier system and some suggestions about its evolutive dynamics in diachrony. In the second part, I will introduce five classification strategies that can be encountered in the texts from the end of the Ramesside period down to the Late Period. These strategies will be explained and illustrated by means of two case studies: the manuscript L of the Teaching of Amenemope and the texts from the tomb of Menekhibnekau.

The face ( ḥr ) is one of the most documented body parts in ancient Egyptian texts and its semantics covers a wide range of meanings. The face is especially involved in bodily perception linked with the facial senses (eyes, ears, nose and mouth). In this paper concepts of the face in connection with perception and communication will be examined. The first part focuses on prototypical considerations about the composition of the face and Egyptian iconographic characteristics. The second part explores textual sources to illustrate the usages of the word ḥr in connection with perception, attention and communication.

This paper presents an analysis of the dates found on ostraca containing the literary composition The Teaching of Khety , also known as The Satire of the Trades . Various aspects of these dates are discussed, for example the palaeography and the placement of the dates on the ostracon, for the purpose of outlining some scribal practices in ancient Egypt. From the dates themselves can be deduced that scribes conducted their literary activities all year round, both during the working week and at the weekend. Finally, the presumed educational context of the ostraca is discussed. The high percentage of dates on ostraca with Khety , in comparison to other literary compositions, suggests Khety was the most popular text used in the training of scribes.

There exists a group of texts among the autobiographical inscriptions of the Old Kingdom that, due to their close phraseological relationship, must go back to a common source, and which can be described as “Saqqara group” according to their place of origin. It dates back to the turn from the 5 th to the 6 th dynasty. This group can now be extended by additional autobiographies and furthermore differentiated. The classical creation of a stemma cannot be used, but instead different significant text sequences, which are called “clusters” here, are examined. The texts of this autobiographical cluster, starting from Saqqara, find their prolongation at the beginning of the 6th dynasty in El-Hawawish and it can be observed that they are transferred from higher-ranking officials at the end of the Old Kingdom to lower-ranking officials in the First Intermediate Period.

The aim of this research is to use experimental archaeology and comparative studies in order to obtain a potential answer to the theory that UC 7790 is a set of tattooing implements. Comparing the tools, methods, and inks of other cultures that practice tattooing is a way to offer some guidance regarding the identification of tattooing tools in the archaeological record. The experiment reproduced the original points using the closest modern metal and tested each one with an organic mixture of charcoal and water, and Indian ink as a control ink. The reproduced needles are tested on pigskin and human skin to test efficacy and healing. The experiment proves that UC 7790 may have been tattoo needles as they successfully tattoo human skin and were probably hafted implements.