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2. Contents
Georgia Barker Classification of a Funerary Model: The Rendering of Accounts
Theme 5
Stefan Bojowald Neue Beispiele für die Elision von h im Ägyptischen—ein
Zwischenbericht 15
Peter F. Dorman Compositional Format and Spell Sequencing in Early Versions of
the Book of the Dead 19
Zeinab Hashesh and Dental Prosthesis: Postmortem Treatment of Oral Reconstruction
Jesús Herrerín during the Mummification Process 55
Amgad Joseph An Unpublished Stela of Nedjesankh/Iew and His Family
(CG 20394/JE 15107) 69
Mohamed El-Mezain and Two Unpublished Sphinxes of Amenemhat V and Ramses II 85
Mohamed Mahmoud Kacem
Mohamed A. Nassar Writing Practices in El-Lahun Papyri during the Middle Kingdom 97
Mohamed Gamal Rashed The Block Statue of Djedhor son of Tjanefer (Cairo JE 37200) 117
Hany Rashwan Ancient Egyptian Image-Writing: Between the Unspoken and
Visual Poetics 137
Joshua Aaron Roberson Whose Error Anyway? Epigraphic and Orthographic Variation in
a Book of the Earth as Evidence for Multiple Master Documents
in the Sarcophagus Chamber of Ramesses VI 161
Ana María Rosso Antidotes and Counter-Poisons in the Ancient World: Onions
(HDw) (Allium cepa L.) in Egypt, the Preferred Antitoxic for Snake
Bites 173
Filip Taterka Hatshepsut’s Punt Reliefs: Their Structure and Function 189
* * *
Book Reviews
Virginia Webb, Faience Material from the Samos Heraion Excavations (Robert Steven Bianchi) 205
Ilaria Incordino and Pearce Paul Creasman (eds.), Flora Trade between Egypt and Africa in Antiquity (Arabela Baer) 207
John Coleman Darnell and Colleen Manassa Darnell, The Ancient Egyptian Netherworld Books (Joshua
Aaron Roberson) 210

3. 137
Ancient Egyptian Image-Writing:
Between the Unspoken and Visual Poetics
Hany raSHwan
Abstract
This article highlights the significance of considering the visual mediums of the ancient Egyptian (henceforth AE)
writing system, in reading and translating AE literary texts. Despite their importance for understanding the internal
mechanism of AE literary expressions, modern scholarship has not assimilated these visual mediums into its explo-
ration. A possible theoretical framework for AE morphology structure may identify two input systems,, one visual for
visually presented materials that are more related to visual comprehension, and the other phonological for material
presented using the auditory modality. The studied examples confirm that the AE writers had the opportunity to invite
their receivers to take part in two experiential tasks (visual and phonological) to provoke two different behaviours, to
get the right meaning intended by the resourceful writer.
The article is divided into two parts. The first part is concerned with the role of innovative imagination in form-
ing both the “eloquent content” and its inseparable “poetic vocal form,” with full consideration of the creative rela-
tionship between these two elements. The second part is related to the ancient and modern reader’s reception of such
visual-verbal interactions. The article demonstrates the significance of looking into such visual aesthetics—which
were mainly designed to stimulate the eyes of the indigenous readers—to shape any theory related to the literary nature
of ancient Egyptian writing.
It is crucial to acknowledge from the beginning the fundamental differences between two interrelated terms:
writing and speech. Each of them contains different elements that we need to comprehend first to understand
better the ancient Egyptian (henceforth AE) verbal and visual communication. In the introduction to The World’s
Writing Systems, linguist Peter Daniels conflates “speech” and “language.” He argues that language is “a natural
product of the human mind” that is automatically developed by active communication with one’s society or
the surrounding environment, while writing is a “deliberate product of human intellect and must be studied”
in order to be decoded. He therefore thinks that the “theory of writing must be very different from the theory
of language.”1
Language has to do with the relation between the tongue , ear , and mind , and that is
why it is always considered to comprise oral and aural interactions and to be the primary means of commu-
nication between similar groups of people. In contrast, writing belongs to the relation between the eye ,
hand , and mind . However, we cannot mechanically adopt Daniels’ narrow definition of writing, which
I would like to give my full gratitude to Stephen Quirke (UCL) who offered a close reading of this paper and provided many valuable
suggestions for future research in comparison with Arabic. I am also grateful to several colleagues who offered their constructive criticism on
earlier drafts of this article, including Steven Gregory (University of Birmingham), John Baines (University of Oxford), Federico Contardi
(Université Paul-Valéry), Rune Nyord (Emory University), Filip Taterka (Polish Academy of Sciences), Claus Jurman (University of Birming-
ham) Shih-Wei HSU (Nankai University), Juan Castillos (Instituto Uruguayo de Egiptología), Richard Bussmann (University of Cologne),
Elizabeth Thornton (UCLA), and Fayza Haikal (AUC). I thank the two peer reviewers of JARCE for their careful reading and suggestions.
This article is dedicated to May Trad of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo for her beautiful friendship, which I dearly miss. May her soul rest
in peace. This work has received support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under ERC-2017-
STG Grant Agreement No 759346: “Global Literary Theory: Caucasus Literatures Compared.”
1
Peter Daniels, The World’s Writing Systems (Oxford, 1996), 2.
Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 55 (2019), 137–160
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5913/jarce.55.2019.a009

4. 138 JARCE 55 (2019)
reflects theories that have been coined for modern languages. The AE writing system is outside of this alpha-
betic description which conflates “language” with “speech,” sees writing as secondary to speech, and therefore
excludes pictograms from consideration:
Writing is defined as a system of more or less permanent marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it
can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention of the utterer. By this definition, writing is bound up
with language; consequently, the widespread practice of recording by means of pictures (pictograms) of
ideas that are not couched in a specific linguistic form is excluded. Such pictograms are often designated
forerunners of writing, but in fact writing systems do not develop from them. Pictography is not writing,
because languages include many things that cannot be represented by pictures: not only obvious things
like abstract notions and many verbs, but also grammatical inflections and particles, and names. […] It
is thus necessary for a writing system to represent the sounds of a language.2
This definition stresses the relationship between the mouth and ear to focus on the aural aspects of speech, while
ignoring the eye and its visual memory in interpreting the AE soundless sense-signs. AE writing is not a fully
“pictographic system” that overlooks the importance of sound in verbal communication, but it does include
signs that have sense but no sound. It combines both visual and verbal elements to establish its inimitable way of
delivering the intended meaning for its native readers. It thus goes beyond the purely phonetic structure of the
alphabetic languages, as Frank Kammerzell explains:
In spite of its appearance, the Egyptian hieroglyphic script does not constitute a pictographic system, but
rather what may be called a complex morphographic writing system. The most prominent level of elementary
correspondence between written and spoken signs is the morphological level. In the overwhelming ma-
jority of cases, each morpheme boundary of a written utterance coincides with one in spoken language.
A grammatical or lexical morph can be written either directly with the help of a meaningful sign or
indirectly by means of a sequence of signs that distinguish meaning corresponding to phonological units
in the spoken language, or a combination of both devices may be used.3
The AE language had multiple scripts in operation: one for securing eternity, deployed in writings on the walls
of tombs, temples, and stela, which is the full and formal script (hieroglyphs); the other is more cursive and was
deployed for more day-to-day purposes, such as writing out financial accounts, in letters, in legal, and literary
manuscripts, and in administrative documents. There are two cursive scripts: first hieratic and demotic from
about 700 Bc. There was, therefore, a division between the notions of speech and writing, and this can be traced
back to the text of the Rosetta Stone. The Egyptian writer visually stressed the notion of “writing” in compari-
son to “speech,” by confronting the tongue and writing palette symbols in the native terms of the two
Egyptian scripts: Hieroglyphic ( sS mdw nTr —the writing of God’s speech) and Demotic ( sS
n Say—the writing of correspondence), can be compared to the term used for “language” in Greek which only
stresses the (“γλῶσσα”) “tongue” ( sxAy n HAwy nbwyw).4
The terms that we now use to make this distinction are a later imposition from the Greeks. The term hieroglyph
is derived from the ancient Greek hieros (sacred) plus glypho (carving inscriptions). Hieroglyphs thus can be a bad
translation of the AE term “the writing of god’s speech.” The term hieratic is also borrowed from a Greek word
2
Daniels, The World’s Writing Systems, 3.
3
Frank Kammerzell, “The Sounds of a Dead Language. Reconstructing Egyptian Phonology,” Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 1
(1998), 22.
4
Wilhelm Spiegelberg, Der demotische Text der Priester Dekret von Kanopus und Memphis (Rosettana) mit den hieroglyphischen und
griechischen Fassungen und deutscher Uebersetzung nebst demotischem Glossar (Heidelberg, 1922), 64. This transcription confirms the
tongue’s writing in the last two terms, but it seems that the word Say also used the string determinative to mean written “document”
(Raymond Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian [Oxford, 1962], 262; henceforth FCD). These writing possibilities raise a question:
if the ancient artist/composer of the Rosetta Stone inscription was stimulated by the association of tongue/language with the word sxAy
when denoting a non-Egyptian script to show the interface between the oral and the written media of the notion of “document.” It would
be interesting to explore these phenomena across the corpus of attested interactions between these Egyptian and Greek script worlds in the
fourth through third centuries Bc Egypt.

5. RASHWAN 139
that means “priestly” because the AE priests frequently used it to write on papyrus, but we cannot trace this
Greek term to any AE equivalent;5
the same goes for demotic which means literally “popular.” The early Christian
theologian Clement of Alexandria (d. ad 215) explained clearly how the AE system of learning taught the three
scripts in sequence, and which Egyptians acquired knowledge of which scripts. It confirms how the well-educat-
ed Egyptians possessed knowledge of the three scripts:
Now those instructed among the Egyptians learned first of all that style of the Egyptian letters which is
called Epistolographic; and second, the Hieratic, which the sacred scribes practise; and finally, and last
of all, the Hieroglyphic, of which one kind which is by the first element is literal (Kyriologic), and the
other Symbolic. Of the Symbolic, one kind speaks literally by imitation, and another writes as it were
figuratively; and another is quite allegorical, using certain enigmas. Wishing to express Sun in writing,
they make a circle; and Moon, a figure like the Moon, like its proper shape. But in using the figurative
style, by transposing and transferring, by changing and by transforming in many ways as suits them, they
draw characters.6
There are no textual proofs, extracts from stories, letters, or administrative documents, to suggest that the differ-
ent AE scripts corresponded to two entirely different languages. Moreover, there are no AE terms or scribal titles
that may reflect or support such a division. A writer who used the cursive script is very likely to have been able
to understand the full hieroglyphic form. The “pictorial realism” of AE writing was a vital part of delivering the
intended message and did not disappear from the AE history, as Assmann states:
The Egyptians were convinced of the power of language, not only in spoken but above all in written
form. This is the reason why they never changed or reduced the pictorial realism and the iconic character
of the hieroglyphs. They would rather invent, at first a second and then a third script alongside the hiero-
glyphs than adapt the hieroglyphs to everyday purposes. In their iconity lay their cosmological character
which corresponded to the “grammatological” structure of the cosmos.7
Both hieroglyphic and hieratic are found “among the earliest examples of writing in ancient Egypt during zero
dynasties. The appearance of hieratic so early suggests that it was not a later adaptation of hieroglyphs but was
developed alongside it.”8
In this paper, I use examples written in both hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts without
any discrimination. The modern dismissive attitude towards the hieratic script—as a rapid way of writing that
lacks the full visual details of the hieroglyphic script—has made it easy to overlook or even ignore the fact that
they are both part of the same language and share a unique visual mechanism. There are a fair amount of vi-
sual choices, in both scripts, that confirm such harmony. Such examples strongly reflect the AE writer’s ability
to take advantage of the visual features of their own writing system, regardless of the chosen script. Edmund
Meltzer in his insightful article “Hieratic Is Beautiful” argues for a different approach: he analyzes the overlooked
visual aesthetics of the hieratic script against the automatic judgment that is always attached to using the term
“cursive” in the alphabetic writings.9
There are many AE examples of transcribing hieroglyphic texts into the
5
Herodotus (2.36) refers to Egyptian writing as being of two kinds: (1) sacred or related to the divine and (2) of the people or related
to the human or social. He does not use a special term for hieroglyphs, instead identifying the writing or “letters” (grammata) by the regular
Greek adjective hiera meaning “sacred,” while for the cursive script in use in the first century Bc he gives the word demotika meaning “of the
matters of people.” Similarly, Diodorus Siculus (3.3–4), who also uses the Greek adjective hiera meaning “sacred”; for the nonsacred script
he uses the word demode. He does not use the words hieroglyphic or hieratic or demotic in his immediate comparison of scripts, but he does
acknowledge the dual aspect of the AE script, with one form for sacred and another for human matters, along the same lines as Herodotus.
6
Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata 5.4. The full translated text can be found on this website: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/
text/clement-stromata-book5.html.
7
Jan Assmann, “Creation through Hieroglyphs: The Cosmic Grammatology of Ancient Egypt,” in Sergio La Porta and David D.
Shulman (eds.), The Poetics of Grammar and the Metaphysics of Sound and Sign (Boston, 2007), 33.
8
Kathryn Bandy, “Hieratic,” and “83: Hieratic Text: Papyrus Gardiner III,” in Christopher Woods (ed.), Visible Language: Inventions of
Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond (Chicago, 2010), 159.
9
Edmund Meltzer, “Hieratic Is Beautiful: Ancient Egyptian Calligraphy Revisited,” in W. Watt (ed.), Writing Systems and Cognition: Perspec-
tives from Psychology, Physiology, Linguistics, and Semiotics (Boston, 1994), 297.

6. 140 JARCE 55 (2019)
hieratic script, which in turn support the learning knowledge of the two scripts, as they both belong to the same
language.10
The triumph stela of King Kamose, which was originally written in hieroglyphs to perpetuate the
kingship of his reign, was copied within a century in hieratic script on writing boards apparently as examples
of elegant compositions. The kingship eulogy that celebrates the escape of Ramses II at the Battle of Qadesh
was copied on papyrus at both Memphis and Thebes later in the Nineteenth Dynasty.11
In this case, the hieratic
version may have been composed in the same generation as the hieroglyphic version as an independent compo-
sition. The practice of copying literary hieroglyphic texts in later times is also confirmed by the introduction of
the hieratic harp song of King Intef: the writer states that he copied the song from the walls of the king’s tomb,
specifying more details about its location:
Hsw nty m Hwt intwf mAa xrw nty m bAH pA Hsy m bnt
The song that exists in the tomb (lit. house) of King Intwf, the justified, which exists in front of the
singer with the harp.12
The AE hieroglyphs constitute multiple sets of graphemes or what Antonio Loprieno convincingly called the
“iconic encyclopedia inherited in the hieroglyphic writing.”13
For example, AE writing created the equivalent
of our alphabetic values by using pictographic symbols consisting of actual images of entities extracted from
the surrounding environment of the AE culture: an owl for the sound m, a snake with two horns for the
sound f, a water wave for the sound n, a human leg for the sound b, etc. However, it seems that this one-
to-one correspondence between sound and grapheme only partially fulfilled their aims in the creation and use of
their script. Therefore, AE writing developed symbols that combine two or three sounds into one picture, usually
with the help of phonetic complements for single sounds to authenticate the combined sounds: a house abstrac-
tion picture for the two sounds pr, a governor’s stick for the three sounds HqA, etc. This is one of the reasons
why AE writing should not be described or compared to alphabetic writing, as it exceeds the straightforward
design of single letters. Many symbols that represent two or three sounds are not restricted to the construction
of vocal forms. On the contrary, they play an effective visual-semantic function to specify the intended meaning
of the word, as seen in this selection of values:
wpt, “horns,” “top,” “brow,” “top-knot,” or “head-dress”
pHwy, “end”
sDm , “to hear”
wni, “hasten,” “hurry,” “pass by,” or “away”
pri, “go” or “come out,” “escape from”
The AE language generated one of the most advanced writing systems to learn because it uses a mixture of
graphical symbols to compose the sound-signs and the sense-signs. These graphics have been used to generate
combinations of phonological and semantic principles creatively. Emily Teeter highlighted how the AE writer/
artist did not feel the need to write the names of the offering table objects, taking advantage of the visual nature
of his writing, which represents the actual images of the described objects as determinatives for the pronounced
words. She stresses the visual aspects of the AE writing and how the modern alphabetic systems still force our
minds to separate the image world from the phonetic signs, which was not the case for the ancient native readers:
10
On writers who used cursive hieroglyphics or hieratic texts as source copies for the hieroglyphic inscriptions, see Ben Haring, “Hieratic
Drafts for Hieroglyphic Texts?,” in Ursula Verhoeven (ed.), Neue Forschungen und Methoden der Hieratistik (Mainz, 2013), 72.
11
Stephen Quirke, Egyptian Literature 1800 BC: Questions and Readings (London, 2004), 25.
12
The Harp Song of Intef, lines 6.2–3, see Michael Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison, 1985), 378.
13
Antonio Loprieno, “Is the Egyptian Hieroglyphic Determinative Chosen or Prescribed?” in Lucia Morra and Carla Bazzanella (eds.),
Philosophers and Hieroglyphs (Turin, 2003), 238.

7. RASHWAN 141
The hieroglyphic writing system could be highly efficient. The images of offerings in front of the man—
a foreleg, ribs and head of a calf, five beer jars in a rack, two baskets, a shallow tray with bread(?), and
two tall wine jars in stands—all have more extended phonetic spellings, but here, only the image of what
is portrayed was used, blurring the line between phonetic writing and picture writing.14
This blurred line between the writing and the image inside the script is reflected in the Egyptian verb sS,
which means to write, inscribe, paint, draw. The word can be loosely used for a scribe and an artist. Sesh is thus
a nest of meanings that is divided between handwritten texts and depicting a scene that includes both texts and
pictures.15
In a large portion of AE words, the sequence of the phonograms16
is followed by “soundless sense-
signs” which reinforce the semantic sphere of the word directly or metaphorically through the figurative content
of the sign and its relation to the whole meaning of the word. They are thus called “sense-signs,” such as:
DnH, “wing”: This word ends with one soundless-sign, the wing.
Am, “burn” or “burn up”: This word ends with one soundless-sign, the flame.
hy, “husband”: This word ends with two soundless-signs, the phallus and the sitting man
to confirm the gender.
war, “flee”: This word ends with two soundless-signs, the full moving leg and moving feet.
txtx, “disorder” or “crumble”: This word ends with one soundless-sign, the hair, which is used
to represent the state of confusion metaphorically.
The AE script could write the name of any concrete entity merely by using its “ending soundless sign.” More-
over, the AE writing could use many triconsonantal phonograms to define the nature of the described object,
without the “ending soundless sense-signs.” The word HAt meaning “forehead, forepart (of animal), prow
(of the ship), vanguard (of the army),” uses the head and shoulders of a lion metaphorically to show the concept
of anything that excels, stands out. The lion’s forehead thus can be considered as a sense-sign and triconsonantal
sign at the same time. The same rule can be applied to many other words such as xAst meaning “hill coun-
try, foreign land”17
or “desert.” Gardiner calls them “pure ideographic writing.” He used the adjective “pure”
because such “ideograms18
stand for the actual objects which they depict, the phonetic signs that would indicate
the names of those objects are often dispensed with. Ideograms so employed are usually followed by the stroke-
determinative; if the noun is feminine, the stroke is preceded by t, the feminine ending:
Masculine: ra “sun”; Hr “face”
Feminine: niwt “town,” “city”; Axt “horizon”19
Nevertheless, a few ideograms can be built by a uniliteral sign, where the stroke-determinative indicates that
this phonetic glyph is standing for its own object or very related concepts. The word
Glyph 30
Glyph 31
Glyph 32
Glyph 33
Glyph 34
Glyph 35
Glyph 36
Glyph 37
Glyph 38
Glyph 39
Glyph 40
Glyph 41
-
Glyph 42
Glyph 43
r is written with a
14
Teeter, “80. Funerary Stela,” in Woods (ed.), Visible Language, 152.
15
Sergei Ignatov, “Word and Image in Ancient Egypt,” The Journal of Egyptological Studies 1 (2004), 9–10.
16
This term combines two Greek words: phōnē (“sound”) and gramma (“writing”), to mean literally the sound of writing. Gardiner defines
the AE phonograms or sound-signs as “signs used for spelling, which although originally ideograms and in many cases still also employed
elsewhere as such, have secondarily acquired sound-values.” See Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs,
3rd ed. (London, 1957), 8.
17
In the Roman period, this glyph continued to be used in the names of foreign countries such as Persia, Media, Assyria, and Babylonia.
See Filip Taterka, “The Meaning of the niwt-Hieroglyph: Towards a Definition of a City in Ancient Egypt,” in Lukasz Miszk and Maciej
Waclawick (eds.), The Land of Fertility II: The Southeast Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to the Muslim Conquest (London, 2017), 27.
18
This word combines two Greek words: idea (form) and gramma (writing) to mean literally the form of writing. Some Egyptologists have
often used the term “logograms” for “ideograms” or “pictograms,” but this has given rise to inconsistencies as demonstrated by Roy Harris,
The Origin of Writing (Oxford, 1986), 32.
19
Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 34.

8. 142 JARCE 55 (2019)
mouth and single stroke glyph to mean mouth, speech, language, utterance. The story of Sinuhe offers a good
example of using this word in referring to the Egyptian language, or literarily, “the mouth of Egypt.”
nfr tw Hna.i sDm.k r n kmt
You will be happy with me (in my company) when you hear the mouth of Egypt.20
In other words, these “ideograms” do not merely stand for the sound they evoke, but they also share with
the ending “sense-sign” the function of clarifying the meaning that the word represents for the native reader,
visually and semantically. This suggestion can be illustrated with the AE powerful scepter sign sxm. This glyph
has been used to rebuild many other words, by using different ending soundless sense-signs: - sxm,
“power,” “grimness”; sxm, “mighty one,” “powerful”; sxm, “have power (over),” “give power (to),”
“prevail (over),” “be grim (of face)”; – – – – sxmt, “the goddess Sekhmet,”
– – sxmty, “the double-crown.” Both the “opening phonograms” and the “ending
soundless signs” visually define the nature of the described meaning.
Gardiner defines the “ending soundless sense-signs” as determinatives because their primary function ap-
pears to “determine the meaning of forgoing sound-signs and to define that meaning in a general way.”21
How-
ever, to think that only the ending soundless sense-signs are what can be called determinatives is a misleading
generalization. Gardiner himself acknowledges the weakness of the term “determinative” in dealing precisely
with the AE sound-signs and their visual complexity, saying:
The name “determinative” is in many cases historically inaccurate, the ideogram having been the origi-
nal sign with which the word was first written, and the phonograms having been prefixed to it subse-
quently for the sake of clearness. In such cases it might be more truly said that the phonograms deter-
mine the sound of the ideogram, than that the ideogram determines the sense of the phonograms.22
However, Gardiner defines ideograms in a similar way to determinatives, which in turn reflects the modern
confusion about the precise concepts of the adopted terms. He thinks of ideograms as:
Signs that convey their meaning pictorially. More often they are accompanied by sound-signs indicat-
ing the precise word to be understood. Thus , a picture of the sun, immediately suggests to the mind,
besides the notion of the sun itself, also the notions of light and time; the addition of sound-signs is indis-
pensable to define the exact meaning and the exact word intended in a particular context. Hence enters
into the words ra, “sun,” “day” (also written ); hrw, “day,” “daytime” (also written );
rk, “time,” “period”; wbn, “rise,” “shine” (also written ).23
The soundless ending determinative inside some words can also become voiced when they stand out for the
whole word after abbreviating its phonetic structure, such as:
qd, “build.” It can also be abbreviated to .
qbbwt, “cold water,” It can also be abbreviated to .
Hwi, “beat,” “strike,” “smite.” It can be also abbreviated to .
afty, “brewer.” It can also be abbreviated to .
20
Berlin 3022, lines 31–32. See Roland Koch, Die Erzählung des Sinuhe (Brussels, 1990), 24.
21
Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 31.
22
Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 31, OBS §23.
23
Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 30, §22.

9. RASHWAN 143
Gardiner calls such writing technique “abbreviations.” He considers them as the “commonest in monumental
inscriptions, stereotyped phrases, formulae, titles, and the like.” He gave some other examples, such as:
The expression anx wDA snb, can be written fully as to mean may he live, be
prosperous, be healthy.
The expression mAa xrw, can be written fully as to mean true of voice.
The epithet kA nxt, can be written fully as to mean victorious bull.24
Modern terms can easily be challenged because of the highly graphic nature of AE writing, which blurs
the line between our two modern theoretical sets of sound and sense signs.25
The lack of engagement with any
extant native terms makes the redefinition process more difficult. The most puzzling part for modern scholars
is to capture a correct theoretical account for all soundless hieroglyphic “sense-signs” in comparison with the
“sound-signs.” The exceptional visual features of the AE scripts make it problematic to apply many of the stan-
dard terms we use, especially the ones extracted from cursive alphabetic languages. For educational reasons, the
AE grammar anthologies tried to ease the understanding of such complex pictorial system for the beginners,
ignoring deeper analysis for the interrelated areas between the soundless glyphs and sound signs, as Gardiner
himself stated:
The classification of hieroglyphs into (1) ideograms or sense-signs and (2) phonograms or sound-signs
covers the entire ground, but, […] the line of demarcation between the two classes is often difficult to
draw. Nor must it be imagined that all the signs contained in the sub-divisions of these main groups stand
on an equal footing and conform to identical rules; on the contrary, custom plays a very important part
in deciding what writings are possible and what are not, though variant spellings are very numerous.26
The close marriage between the phonograms and sense-signs can be perfectly represented in some AE symbols
that combine both categories in one glyph, to confirm the visual meaning of the word for native readers. Gar-
diner calls them “monograms.” The moving feet ideogram and its combinations with different phonograms
may illustrate this point:
ii, “come” the first glyph is a monogram because it is a mixture of ( + ).
Sm, “go” the first glyph is a monogram because it is a combination of ( + ).
sSm, “lead” the second glyph is a monogram because the combination of ( + ).
The visual and semantic engagement between these “sound monograms” and the “ending soundless signs”
can be easily noticed in the above verbs. The mechanism of such visual repetition can be better understood in
light of similar AE words that use the same hieroglyphic sign to begin and end the word, to visually stress the
meaning of the word, such as:
Xtyt, “furniture,” This word uses the wood sign to stress the production material of the
furniture.
24
Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 50–51, §55.
25
There are more differentiated sets of terms that have been introduced, such as “Phono-Determinativ,” “Phono-Assoziativ” (see Wolf-
gang Schenkel, Aus der Arbeit an einer Konkordanz zu den altaegyptischen Sargtexten, Bd. 4 (Wiesbaden 1983). On the fuzzy logic of our modern terms
and their conceptual understanding, see Stephane Polis and Serge Rosmorduc, “The Hieroglyphic Sign Functions: Suggestions for a Revised
Taxonomy,” in H. Amstutz, A. Dorn, M. Mueller, M. Ronsdorf (eds.), Fuzzy Boundaries: Festschrift für Antonio Loprieno (2 vols.; Hamburg, 2015),
1:149–74. See also the more updated reference by Stéphane Polis, “The Functions and Toposyntax of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs: Ex-
ploring the Iconicity and Spatiality of Pictorial Graphemes,” Signata 9 (2018), 291–363.
26
Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 49, § 54.

10. 144 JARCE 55 (2019)
mtwt, “semen,” “seed,” or “progeny.”
qA, “hill,” or “high ground.”
The first phonogram is spoken while the ending sense-sign is soundless. There are many AE words in which
the beginning phonograms semantically correspond with the ending soundless determinatives. They both work
strongly to reflect the whole meaning of the word visually and also semantically, such as:
aHAw, “arrows.” The word begins with a tri-consonantal phonogram, which is two
arms holding the shield to battle and ends with an arrow.
st, “seat,” “throne,” “place,” or “position.” The word begins with a high chair and ends with
a house plan.
amaA, “throw a stick.” The word begins with a hand and ends with a stick.
Xnt, “hide,” or “skin.” The word begins with an animal carcass that appears without a head and
ends with an animal hide with its tail.
HAwty, “the foremost.” The word begins with the forehead of a male lion and ends with
two “sense-signs” that confirms the notion of moving faster forward, to be in the front.
Moreover, I would argue that all hieroglyphic signs (phonetic and semantic) carry the potential to reflect and
reinforce the intended meaning visually. The widely used verb Xnt serves to introduce this argument. The visual
and phonetic elements of the verb evoking the possibilities available to AE writers for stretching the potential
of the script to its farthest extent, maybe for the delectation of the observant reader. The modern reader can
plainly see that these signs and their use are all regular, and so the potential semantic resonance that has been
highlighted would then seem to be a regular dimension or potential of the AE script:
- Xni, “row,” or “convey by water.” This word uses two sounding signs and ends with one or
two soundless sense-signs. The first sign is a shoulder with two arms handling an oar ; then there is the river
water sign , the boat sign and the man holding a stick that represents the captain of the rowing . These
three or four hieroglyphic signs here complete each other visually and semantically. Together, they suggest the
rhythmic movement of the oarsmen. In this word, the general action of the verb can be easily determined from
the hieroglyphic pictures that visually describe the word’s meaning by its full details, even for those illiterate peo-
ple who do not know how to write. One sentence from the hieratic story of Khufu and the magicians can per-
fectly illustrate this point. The story is that King Snefru was bored, and he was looking for a cool, relaxing place
st qbt inside his palace, but he could not find such a place. His Chief Lector Priest Yaya-em-ankh
suggested a trip on the river Nile, and he chose twenty beautiful girls (literally, those were not opened from giving
birth,27
nty n wp.tw.sn m mst) to be the crew of the king’s ship. He asked the girls to take off their usual clothes
and wear a transparent net that revealed their beautiful bodies; and he said to the king:
ib n Hm.k r qbb n mAA Xnn.sn Xnt m xd m xnt
The heart of your majesty will be gladdened when you see them rowing, rowing back and forth.28
The writer uses many related determinatives to reinforce the semantic sequence. The verb qbb was
written with two soundless ending determinatives: a vase with water flowing from it and the three water waves
sign ( ). The word originally means cold-chilly water, but it is attached here to the king’s heart to describe the
27
On the concept of virginity in ancient Egypt, see Lyn Green, “In Search of Ancient Egyptian Virgins: A Study in Comparative Val-
ues,” JSSEA 28 (2001), 90–98.
28
Aylward Blackman, The Story of King Kheops and the Magicians: Transcribed from Papyrus Westcar (Berlin Papyrus 3033) (Reading, 1988), lines
5.3–5.5.

11. RASHWAN 145
pleasing effect of this boat’s journey, to mean “refreshing” or “cooling the heart.”29
Three words ending with the
ship determinative follow this word. This chain of related determinatives ( – – – ) forms an
extra visual layer for the reader, as it helps to effectively engage with the verbal context by visualizing the message
of the sentence. The writer here also plays with the determinatives of two contrasted words –
sailing north and south, as both words have the same determinative , which reflects a shared object between
the two opposite directions. The ship has been used to describe the notion of direction. Both verbs seem to rep-
resent the back and forth movements of the ship on the level of iconicity. In other words, they visually depict to
the reader what is being verbally described. This example demonstrates how the AE script itself has a heightened
poetic potential as strong as, and comparable to, the poetic potential of speech (i.e., in the enunciation of any
words in any language).
Furthermore, there is one different determinative in two repeated words that visually creates an additional
semantic layer. The two words are related morphologically ( – ) and share the same ending
determinative of a boat ( ). However, the sDm.f version of the word has an additional determinative (the
man holding a stick as reflecting the rowing practice itself), that the seminaked girls (whom the king has been
advised to use as sailors for his happy boat journey) will do. This man holding a stick glyph signifies the physical
strength of the rowing effort of the girls. In contrast, the infinitive version of the word, with the boat determina-
tive, reflects rowing in general, as it is related to the ship’s activity as a whole rather than that of the sailors. In
other words, because the sDm.f word is more peculiar to the rowing practice of the ship’s crew, this determinative
has been added to indicate that moving the boat requires much efforts by the crew members.30
This example
demonstrates the exceptional poetic potential of hieroglyphs in comparison with other scripts that share visual
potential (e.g., in visual art), as hieroglyphs have more regular continual capacity for activating this poetic po-
tential. In this way, hieroglyphic writing can be more effective in delivering the intended message, visually from
script, than the potential that poets or orators can deliver by oral speech.
On the religious level, this “pictorial realism” was of great importance to the AE priests in designing the
intended meaning. It stimulates the minds of their indigenous readers by inviting both the eye and the ear to
establish a cognitive dialogue to decode the given message easily. For such functional genres a heightened sensi-
tivity to the potential of both script and speech seems especially plausible. One carved hieroglyphic sentence on
Men-kheper-ra-seneb’s tomb can illustrate the interrelation between the verbal and visual layers of AE writing:
xny bA.i Hr aXmw nw mnw.i ir.n.i
May my Ba (soul-bird) alight on the branches of my trees which I have planted.31
In this example, the author uses two “sense signs” that visually portray for the reader what the verse verbally
signifies: first, the verb (meaning “alight (from flight), stop, halt,” or “rest (on)’), which as the Berlin dic-
tionary notes, can be written with an additional determinative of human feet, ; and, second, the noun
(meaning “soul’), which can be written with many different visual forms such as – – . In
both cases, the writer chose not to use any of the possible additional “determinatives” so as not to distract his
readers from the intended visual sequence. These two unencumbered determinatives correspond to two other
29
The metaphorical expression ib n Hm.k r qbb means “more refreshing” or “cooling the cheerless or bored heart.” Colloquial modern
Egyptian uses this metaphorical expression, by saying raṭib ʿalā qalbak, which literally means “cool upon your heart.” The Arabic verb raṭib
literally means to be or become wet or moist or dampened with water. Being dry is related to sadness while being refreshed with chilly water
is related to sensual happiness. The two expressions are literally related to the dry, sunny weather of Egypt. In the AE example, there is a
sense in which the King’s restless roaming through the palace to find a distraction is naturally answered by sitting and feasting his eyes on
the refreshing water.
30
The creative writer repeated the same contrast between the two morphological words in lines 5.14–5.15, which in turn confirm the
intentionality of using such visual aid to alert the readers of the semantic differences; it is not simply related to the available spatial arrange-
ment of the signs within the two words.
31
Kurt Sethe, Urkunden der 18 Dynastie. Abteilung IV, Heft 13–16 (Leipzig,1909), 1193.10

12. 146 JARCE 55 (2019)
related determinatives of the two successive words: ( a plural noun meaning “twigs” or “branches’) and
( a plural noun meaning “trees” or “plantations’).
Here the visual dialogue is between two successive positions of landing birds ( – ) and two other related
ending determinatives, the first depicting a part of the second ( – ), as the reeds are a smaller-scale plant
than the tree. If we just put the “determinatives” beside each other it will shed more light on how the AE writer
displayed creativity in choosing his words to encourage the reader to picture the path and perch of the soul-bird
( – – – ). The first determinative corresponds with the last one semantically, creating a visual thought
couplet in which the first image is the bird still in the air but close to the tree ( – ) and the second image is
of the soul-bird resting on a small tree branch ( – ). This example confirms the creation of a verbal-visual
metaphor that is carried through the sentence at the determinative level to ensure that the deceased would
be provided with the full range of necessary items, by the powerful magic of the used determinatives. Such
examples show how the performance of AE writing is “located halfway between the individual and the social
dimension on the one hand and between the sphere of cognition and the sphere of convention on the other.”32
The AE writers can use the ending sense-signs to distinguish between the words that are written with identical
consonants, but which have different meanings. One sentence in the hieroglyphic hymn dedicated to Osiris and
located on the stela of Amenmes (Louvre C286) can illustrate how the visual nature of AE writing is overlooked
in our alphabetic-spoken languages that stress the relation between the tongue and ear. It helps the modern
reader to deconstruct the illogical divorce between the phonological and symbolic spheres in AE writing:
Isis circled this land as a mourning-bird without taking a rest.
n gmtw.s sw irt Swt m Swt.s
When she found him (her beloved brother Osiris), she made a shade from her feathers.33
The AE writer engages here with the two words ( Swt, a collective feminine plural noun that means
“shadow” or “shade’), and ( Swt, a collective feminine plural noun that means “feathers’). Both words
share the same letters in the same order but with different ending soundless determinatives for the mind’s eye
(the sun disk and the eagle’s wing) and a different vocal movement for the listeners. The determinatives here play
a great role in visually distinguishing between the two identical words, for the reader’s eye.
The word Swt, “shadow” or “shade” is a good example of the mutual exchange between the bil-
iteral signs and the phonograms Sw ( ) to represent the same sound. It shows how the AE writers can
use various phonograms that represent the same sound visually in writing one word; Swt can be written during
the Old Kingdom with the sunshade umbrella “determinative” in the middle or the beginning of the word
. In the Middle Kingdom, it can be written cursively with the sunshade sign as a pure ideo-
graphic writing with the stroke determinative . It also can be written with the ostrich feather at the beginning
instead of the sunshade sign in some examples – with the sun disk or with the sunshine determi-
native as an ending soundless determinative in the New Kingdom. 34
AE writing can also use the same ending soundless determinative in two contrasting words to express the
primary source of the contrasting actions, such as:
wSd, “question” and wSb, “answer.”
Axw, “sunlight, sunshine” and snkt, “darkness, obscurity.”
32
Antonio Loprieno, “Is the Egyptian Hieroglyphic Determinative Chosen or Prescribed?” in Lucia Morra and Carla Bazzanella (eds.),
Philosophers and Hieroglyphs (Turin, 2003), 237.
33
Alexande Moret, “La légende d’Osiris à l’époque thébaine d’après l’hymne à Osiris du Louvre,” BIFAO 30 (1931), 741, line 14.
34
WB 4, 432.

13. RASHWAN 147
One sentence of the eloquent peasant story shows how AE writers could use such contradictory meanings,
with identical sense-signs, to highlight the hypocrisy of the official who did not fairly judge between the farmer
and the person who robbed him of his belonging:
Dd.in sxty pn sA mrw tnm.xr.f Hr.f Sp r mAAt.f sx r sDmt.f
Then this peasant said that: son of Merw turned his face aside to be blind to what he has seen and
deaf to what he has heard.35
The author here uses the same determinative for two contrasted words: Sp, an adjective meaning
“blind,” with an eye as ending soundless determinative, and mAAt.f a sDmt.f form from the verb mAA
which means “to see,” with an eye as a beginning determinative. Similarly, the word sx an adjective mean-
ing “deaf,” with a cow’s ear as an ending determinative, corresponds with sDmt.f, an infinitive form of
the verb sDm meaning to hear, with a cow’s ear as a beginning determinative. The verbs for seeing and
hearing use the eye and ear pictures at the start of the words, while they are placed at the end of words for
deaf and blind . The writer here creates a strong visual interaction because that helps the reader to
see a pair of eyes and ears in a close juxtaposition to illustrate the use of the same determinative in a contrasted
meaning. In other words, the pair of pairs Sp / mAA combined with sx / sDm create
a visual, literary effect that helps the reader to absorb the intended meaning of the composer. The visual nature
of AE writing enabled such creative writers to combine contrasted words, which use the same determinatives,
to draw attention to the sarcastic tone of the farmer who is speaking against the authority of the government. 36
AE writing, like Arabic, can also combine elements of two independent words to generate a new word. It is
linguistically known in Arabic as naHt ‫نحت‬ , “blending.” For example, Arabic uses the word shqḥṭb ‫شقحطب‬ to name
a ram with two or four hideous horns. This word is said to be a blend of a verb shq ّ‫ق‬َ‫ش‬, which means “rifting”
or “splitting” and ḥṭb ‫حطب‬, which means “firewood.”37
The following examples can exemplify similar linguistic
practice: xtTAw, “mast.” Here there are two words combined. The first is xt, “wood,” “timber,”
“tree,” “woodland,” “stick,” “pole,” “rod” and the second is: TAw, “wind,” “air,” which is metaphorically
represented by using the ship’s mast determinative. The AE writing uses the tree branch hieroglyphic signs to
begin and end the word to stress the production material, while the mast picture sign is used as a middle sound-
ing determinative. The three of them ( – – ) work together to reflect the whole meaning of the word:
– mtHnt, “concubine.” This consists of two words: mwt, “mother’38
and Hnn,
“penis,” phallus.” In this word, the AE writing kept the two ending determinatives of both original words in
the beginning and the end of the “blended” word to stress the sexual relation between the man and the woman.
Hmty, “homosexual.” This combined word consists of two words: Hmt, “woman,” “wife” and
hy, “husband.” It refers that the man being described as Hmty can play both roles as wife and husband,
sexually. The AE writing kept the whole pronunciation of the first word Hmt without its ending soundless de-
terminative, while using the erected phallus as a main ending determinative for the blended word, as a creative
metaphorical intimation of changing the traditional sexual desire between the woman and the man to a same
sex relationship visually, phonetically and semantically.
aAt, “female ass,” “female donkey.” This word is a combination of two consonantal roots of two dif-
ferent words: – aA, “ass,” “donkey” and Hmt, “woman.” AE writing combines the phonetic
complements of both words to create this “blended” word.
35
Richard Parkinson, The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant. First edition (Oxford, 1991), 31, line 219.
36
Parody and sarcasm are effective means of elevating readability to highly entertaining literature. On the Eloquent Peasant’s irony, see
Richard Parkinson, “Literary Form and the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant” JEA 78 (1992), 175.
37
Ramzī Baʻlabakkī, The Arabic Lexicographical Tradition: From the 2nd/8th to the 12th/18th Century (Leiden, 2014), 238.
38
FCD 106.

14. 148 JARCE 55 (2019)
In the last two words ( Hmty, aAt), AE writing avoids the employment of a woman determi-
native and instead uses the phonetic complements . This may indicate that the AE writer considered the
sign as a metaphorical symbol that represents “womanhood” in general. As Griffith assumed:
The IDEOGRAPHIC power is often extended or TRANSFERRED widely, and sometimes in a pecu-
liar and rather unexpected way; e.g., when , a pond, or a vessel containing liquid, is taken as the symbol
of womanhood; or a bone harpoon head is used for polished rods, or reed stems, and for burial, as well
as for bone and ivory. Mythology and religion naturally played their part in this extension.39
However, the AE writer of Tanis sign-list papyrus scheduled the sign under a group of human body parts, and
more specifically alongside male genitalia (the penis and testicles), and that is why Griffith referred to this sign in
his earlier publication as “vulva:”
Fig. 1. Francis Griffith and William Petrie, Two Hieroglyphic Papyri from Tanis (London, 1889), 13.
The shape of this sign does not directly visually represent the female genitalia. It can be considered a meta-
phorical representation of the female reproductive system, perhaps referring to the womb as a vessel or well,
which carries the fetus surrounded by water.40
This suggestion is supported by the word Hmt, which means
“womb, vulva, uterus.”41
“The assimilation of the well with the uterus, and by extension with the reproductive
organ of the woman, is a fundamental archetype of the human mind. It was not exclusive to the Egyptians, but
they clearly expressed this concept through their writing.… From a biological point of view, they clearly under-
stood that all life comes from water.”42
The poetic form of both words ( Hmty, aAt) stress the notion of womanhood but in two differ-
ent ways. The word aAt uses the vessel symbol as a visual or soundless sign and the phonetic form of the word,
together with its ending soundless determinative, stress the donkey meaning; while the word Hmty pressures the
womanhood meaning phonetically, which contradicts the erected phallus visually, as an ending soundless deter-
minative. Some variations of this word – were used as an insult for the enemies of the king or
gods to mean generally: coward or effeminate man.43
This sexist insult can indirectly spell out the sense behind
using the womanhood symbol as a main phonetic sign in the verb Hm, “to retreat, retire or flee.”44
Such examples confirm that this unique connection between the iconic sphere and the reproduction of se-
mantic contents appeals to both eye and ear for the native reader. Unfortunately, research into the AE determi-
39
Francis Griffith, A Collection of Hieroglyphs: A Contribution to the History of Egyptian Writing (London, 1898), 3.
40
This representation might be due to cultural traditions that prefer not to represent the female genitals visually, perhaps reflecting their
notion of polite behavior. There is a similar metaphor used in Arabic literary tradition that portrays women or wombs as a “delicate water
vial” in the Arabic literary expression (rifqān bilqūarīr). The common interpretation of this expression in Arabic is asking men to treat women
with kindness due to their supposed delicate nature. Both cultures offer different interpretation for using a water vessel as a metaphor in
describing women.
41
WB 3, 76.
42
Ruth Schumann Antelme and Stéphane Rossini, Illustrated Hieroglyphics Handbook (New York, 2002), 104.
43
WB 3, 80.
44
These negative connotations of the womanhood symbol can be used in clarifying the semantic differences between other synonymic
verbs that also mean “retreat” but with different roots and beginning signs, such as: xti – Hni. Modern scholars can rediscover
the sharp differences of their meanings, by comparing the textual contexts of the three verbs. There is nothing called “synonyms” in the AE
or Arabic lexicons. The late tenth-century Arabic lexicographer Ibn Khalawayh (d. 980) collected a list of five hundred epithets attributed
to lions. Each epithet is semantically unique because of its etymological root and textual contexts. See Ibn Khalawayh, Names of the Lion,
translated by David Larsen (New York, 2017).

15. RASHWAN 149
native system, regarding its various literary graphic metaphors, is still in its early stages, mainly because of the
definition of “determinatives” as signs that are located at the end of AE words:
The so-called determinatives are pictograms that are placed after the vowelless root in the Egyptian
script, functioning as reading aids but carrying no additional phonetic value. They mark the end of
words and provide semantic information about the preceding word through their iconic meaning alone.45
Goldwasser constructs her whole argument about what she calls the classifier system based on the hypothesis
that “the classifiers (signs carrying no phonetic information, only semantic information about the word) gener-
ally appear in cuneiform writing before the word, whereas in Egyptian they always appear at the end of the
word.”46
If we follow the modern definitions of determinative as a sign typically used to clarify or determine the
general meanings of the word for the indigenous readers, then we will have to reconsider the position and nature
of what we call “determinative” or “classifier.” Edmund Meltzer convincingly confirms that “The phonetic and
ideographic aspects of the script are very closely intertwined; this is basic for an appreciation of the hieroglyphs
in both synchronic and diachronic terms.”47
Understanding of these visual dimensions can help modern readers
to think about the general principles that once governed such visual-semantic interactions of constructing AE
words and how they can be explained in its literary context.
Moreover, AE writing can use the consonantal root of one word and change its usual ending soundless sense-
sign to create a new word. These connections may not have been realized aurally and thus can be called visual
morphology. This new blended concept combines the central meaning of the old word and metaphorically ac-
commodates the additional soundless determinative, to represent a significant semantic shift that precisely fits
the new described meaning, such as:
rx, “to know, be aware of,” “learn.” The verb usually ends with a closed papyrus roll; while another
form was generated by using an erected phallus rx to mean “copulate,” or “knowing a woman
sexually,” and another form can be combined with the original determinative to be used as a transitive
verb rx.
wsx, “broad” or “wide’; , “cup’; , “ornamental collar” wsxt, “broad hall,
court,” “barge.”48
srf, “warm, warmth, temperature” or “inflammation,” and the word
srft, “fever.”
There is also a similar type of connotational expansion that uses the “sounding” biliteral or triliteral signs as
unchanged beginning phonograms to create a new lexical item for the native reader by changing the soundless
ending determinative. It can be considered morphologically as one of the AE ways to construct new related
words, visually and phonetically. Both the beginning and the ending signs are semantically related:
From a verb: The verb aHA, “to fight” was used to generate various related words, such as
– aHAwty, “warrior.” This word uses the armed bow-man or the hand holding a dagger ( – )
as ending soundless determinatives to represent two fighting methods; other related words still use the same
sounding beginning determinative and by simply changing the ending soundless determinative new words
are generated, such as aHAt, “warship,” aHAt, “battleground,” aHAw, “fighting
arrows” or “weapons.”
45
Orly Goldwasser, “A Comparison between Classifier Language and Classifier Script: The Case of Ancient Egyptian” in Gideon
Goldenberg and Ariel Shisha-Halevy (eds.), Egyptian, Semitic and General Grammar: Studies in Memory of H. J. Polotsky (Jerusalem, 2006), 17.
46
Orly Goldwasser, “Cuneiform and Hieroglyphs in the Bronze Age: Script Contact and the Creation of New Scrtipts,” in Pearce Paul
Creasman and Richard H. Wilkinson (eds.), Pharoah’s Land and Beyond: Ancient Egypt and Its Neighbors (Oxford, 2017), 183.
47
Edmund Meltzer, “Remarks on Ancient Egyptian Writing with Emphasis on Its Mnemonic Aspects,” in Paul A. Kolers, Merald E.
Wrolstad and Herman Houma (eds.), Processing of Visible Language 2 (New York, 1980), 45.
48
It is assumed that each similar word would have required different articulation in terms of its internal vocal movements (ḥarkāt) to be
distinguished in the oral speech.

16. 150 JARCE 55 (2019)
From an adjective: The adjective wrt, “great, important” has been used to build many related words,
such as: wrt “sacred barque,” wrt, “sacred cow,” – wrt, “crowns of Upper and
Lower Egypt,” wrt, “military chariot.”49
All these semantic extensions are pregnant with the central
meaning of its original root, the adjective wr.
These examples show that these similar words have one fundamental meaning and other metaphorical exten-
sions. In other words, it can be stated that these words were evaluated or reacted to semantically regarding the
former and confirmed by using the visual mechanism of AE writing. In such words, the beginning phonograms
are the more stable ones while the ending soundless determinative is more variable and is used to specify the
intended meaning of the word. However, both the first part and the soundless ending determinative work to-
gether to reflect the full significance of the blended word visually and semantically. Such examples challenge the
assumptions that only ending soundless determinatives, i.e., the sign pictures that stand at the end of the conso-
nantal sequence, are the pragmatic guide to determine or decipher the meaning of the whole word.
One example extracted from the hieroglyphic praise hymn of Ramses II evidently shows the intersection
between the verbal and visual layers in the process of creating new blended words. The eulogist described the
metaphysical power of his king as a wildfire:
bAw.f sxm im.sn mitt nsrt mH.n.s m kAkA Da Hr sA.s.
His might seizes them like a fire filled with the hay and a violent wind (gale) behind its back.50
mi wsrt dp.n.s m tAw khA nty nb im.f xpr m ssf
Like a fierce-fire nourished with incandescence of the blaze, so that everything inside it becomes as
ashes.51
In this example, both words nsrt and wsrt are used to refer to a different level of a burning fire.
The visual and verbal relation between them helps us to understand how to build new words, using adjectives
and ending determinatives. The Berlin dictionary mentions that the word wsrt was used once in this
text throughout the Nineteenth Dynasty. However, the dictionary gives no precise meaning, only stating that
it is related to fire, as reinforced by its determinative.52
The exact meaning of this word can be extracted via
its original stem wsr, an adjectival word that is always related to powerful and strong meanings. The poet
reused the ending determinative of the fire word to signify another strong kind of fire, beyond the power of
the usual nsrt, to evoke an extreme and dangerous kind of fire with the ability to change everything in
its path to ashes. With the word wsrt, however, the apparent chronological restriction is a good indication that
this may have been an original creation restricted to the time of this inscription and has not been reused again
to be an operative word of the Egyptian lexicon. This process of selecting words in the script is not in line with
regular word formation in speech, here given a particular reinforcement in the expression through the medium
49
Morphologically speaking, it is hard to consider this word as a loanword by accepting the Hurrian etymology that has been suggested
by John Van Seters, The Hyksos: A New Investigation (London 1966), 184. Morkot casted a doubt over its Hurrian Origin “wrrt Perhaps Hurri-
an.” See Robert Morkot, “War and the Economy: The International “Arms Trade” in the Late Bronze Age and After,” in Thomas Schneider
and Kasia Szpakowska (eds.), Egyptian Stories, vol. 347 (Münster, 2007), 180, n. 66. The decision by the AE writers to use the swallow picture
for the start of the word preserves the potential for conveying the flight-power “grandness” of the referent “chariot.”
50
The feminine suffix pronoun here refers back to the word nsrt (“fire”) which indicates that the ancient Egyptians considered the fire’s
gender to be feminine, as in the Arabic for word nār ‫نار‬. The subject of the verb mH was repeated and confirmed twice, as a noun (nsrt) and
as a pronoun in the sDm.n.f pattern. By repeating the subject, the eulogist establishes adequate means to chain the narrative constructions in
praising Ramses II. This phenomenon is still understudied in the realms of literary persuasion and narrative structures. See Friedrich Junge,
“Emphasis” and Sentential Meaning in Middle Egyptian (Wiesbaden, 1989), 14–28.
51
Sergio Donadoni and Jaroslav Černy, Abou Simbel, Stèles de la terrasse (C20 et 22) (Cairo, 1960), lines 18–19.
52
WB 1, 363.

17. RASHWAN 151
of writing. It can thus be argued that each “blended word” was the result of individual creativity that has been
standardized by the community afterwards.
Moreover, the word is written with two sense-signs, the tongue in the beginning and the fire at
the end . The question raised here is: what is the metaphorical relationship that links both signs? The answer
can be illustrated via a similar Arabic metaphorical expression “‫اللهب‬ ‫ألسنة‬,” which literally means “the flame
tongues.” This metaphorical expression creates a fanciful image of the general nature of fire, which is obsessed
with “tasting” and hence destroying any surroundings if it gets the chance without any consideration of the
tasted/destroyed objects. This expression visually recasts the flames as a tongue that the fire firstly sends to
taste the objects, before eating or destroying them. The AE eulogist confirms this metaphorical relation in his
description of the word wsrt. He uses the verb dpw, “to taste,” with a tongue as an ending
soundless determinative to describe the first action of this hungry fire. The most remarkable feature of
this word nsrt is that AE writing could visually capture this metaphorical expression in just one word,
which may, in turn, confirm that the inventive AE pictorial system was more potent regarding its literariness
than the alphabetic systems we are using now.
The question that arises here is, did the visual and phonetic relationship between nsrt and
wsrt play a role in inspiring the eulogist during the first writing process to reconsider the metaphors used in
his verse? In other words, when the writer built up the new word wsrt in comparison with the word nsrt, did
this wordplay process inspire his imagination to think deeply about the metaphorical relationship between the
tongue and the fire that has been used to create the word nsrt? Did the writer use—in his mind—this meta-
phorical relationship to build up the following verse with wsrt? I would argue that the writer has reemployed
an early shared linguistic memory with his indigenous receivers.
Such examples confirm that this unique connection between the iconic sphere and the reproduction of se-
mantic contents appeals to both eye and ear for the native reader. This connection raises many questions about
the visual skills that AE readers must have had for integrating the intended meaning. The richness of the AE
determinative system means that the modern reader should consider the nexus between a word and its many
determinatives, to rediscover the rich tones of meaning each brings to the reading process in the context of
each text. Modern readers should not assume that the intended message of using different determinatives for
one word is rigid and has no additional interpretation for AE readers semantically and visually. The love songs
scribe of Chester Beatty I repeated the word sprw.i in two different expressions in the same stanza, where he
combines two meanings in one word visually:
smi.i n.s sDm.st sprw.i
I reported to her (the goddess Hathor), and she heard (answered) my petitions.53
hrw xmt r sf Dr sprw.i
Three days until yesterday since my petitions.54
According to the Berlin dictionary, the plural word sprw is derived from the verb spr, “appeal to”
or “make a petition,” and the word ends with two determinatives . The dictionary did not mention any
form of this word that combines the hearing ear of the verb sDm as soundless ending determinative.55
The
case of the two words above represent a different visual form that reflects the artistic choices of the AE writer.
In the first example, the scribe used the verb sDm, “to hear” with two determinatives. He begins with
the sounding triliteral sign the animal’s ear and ends the word with a closed papyrus roll as an ending soundless
53
Fox, The Song of Songs, 397, C3,6.
54
Fox, The Song of Songs, 397, C3,9.
55
WB 4, 104.

18. 152 JARCE 55 (2019)
determinative. The unusual papyrus determinative56
could imply that the nature of the beloved boy petition has
been transformed from its oral connotation that is included in the meaning of being heard, to the written sphere.
It could mean that the beloved boy wrote his petitions in a message to the goddess of love in her temple. The AE
writer repeated the animal’s ear as an additional determinative for the word sprw to visually reconfirm that the
goddess of love has already heard his written petition.
In the second example, the writer did not use the verb sDm, but rather just kept the animal’s ear as one of
the ending soundless determinatives of the word sprw to reconfirm the hearing of his own petitions.
We can assume that such visual play with the soundless ending determinative is the main difference between the
written form of the AE language and its spoken counterpart. Therefore, it is misleading to consider AE translit-
eration as a code for producing sounds that represent unchanged meanings, like other alphabetic scripts.
The offered examples refute the traditional impression that determinatives may have been chosen without
value-laden intent.57
The visual properties of AE words should be an inextricable aspect of how they signify
semantically according to each textual context. They show how the AE literary expressions can be highly con-
textualized by mixing the semantic, phonetic, and iconic spheres. An excellent supporting argument for this
suggestion is the existence of a repeated word in one text, with different determinatives that fit each textual
context. Angela MacDonald confirms: “The ability of determinatives to be either alternates or supplements to
each other is another strand of their use that is not sufficiently addressed.”58
The happy father Neb-Ra dedicated
a hieroglyphic praise hymn to the mighty god Amun to demonstrate his gratefulness for Amun’s merciful bless-
ing that cured his son of severe sickness. The text is carved on a granite stela as a personal votive dedication to
Amun in his own temple. The owner of the stela and all his male children worked as professional scribes. That
meant that he could educate and train his children well, and because of this would not allow any mistakes on the
stela. All these factors encourage us to search for the implied messages of these visual-verbal messages, instead of
automatically declaring them as mistakes by the AE writer. The writer changes the determinative of the repeated
word to imply an additional meaning, on top of the original semantics of the word; this additional meaning is
connected with the other determinatives used before or after it. Its literary effect depends on the reader’s ability
to recall initial determinative choices and thereby register changes. In the studied case, it is mainly related to the
internal reading experience within one reading text.
The word dwAw has been repeated three times through the whole text with two main ending soundless deter-
minatives, reflecting the semantic nature of the word in each new textual context. I will begin with the first and
last instances of dwAw and end with the second instance of dwAw.
rdi.(i) iAw n Imn iry.i n.f dwAw Hr rn.f
I am giving adoration (iAw) to the god Amun; I am making to him supplications (dwAw) for the sake of
his name.59
In this sentence, the word dwAw has been written with three related sense-signs ( ): the star
(which may represent the high place of god), the man who raises both his hands to the sky in a happy worship-
ping position (reflecting the relationship between the human or earthly worshiper and god) and the papyrus roll
(representing those worshipful praises that will be raised high to the sky, in order to please the god). The word
dwAw may reflect a chanting ceremony performed in the morning, as this word is morphologi-
cally similar to the word dwAw which means “morning” or “dawn,” with the sun disk as an ending
soundless determinative. AE writing replaced the sun disk determinative with a man raising his hands, to mean
56
WB 3, 384, “Selten.”
57
By saying that, I do not mean that every sign always has the same active contribution to the making of meaning, but the studied ex-
amples show the importance of activating the pictorial impact, in the realm of literariness, which is latent in all hieroglyphic signs.
58
Angela McDonald, review of Orly Goldwasser, Lovers, Prophets and Giraffes: Wor(l)d Classification in Ancient Egypt, Lingua Aegyptia 12 (2004),
237.
59
Kenneth Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, Historical and Biographical, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1980), 653.12, line 1.

19. RASHWAN 153
“spiritual praising words” dedicated to the god. In the studied verse, the word dwAw visually corresponds to the
previous word iAw, which means “adoration” with a papyrus roll and the chanting man who raises his
hands as determinative. This plural word is derived from the verb iAi which means “adore.” The
iAw word can also be written as , which can be phonologically similar to the word iAw, which
means “be aged,” “attain old age,” “old age,” which is derived from the noun iAw that means an old man.
The metaphorical relation between the two words – might imply that the time of practicing
the iAw chanting for the god was during the night or later than the morning chanting practice of the dwAw. The
writer in this verse tried to construct a contrasting visual message between two similar oral religious practices,
which are the chanted praises that were practiced at two contrasting times of the day (morning and night). These
verbal and visual layers imply that the father Neb-Ra was spending the day and night thanking and worshipping
his god for the favor he offered his sick son. Both words – are related visually and semanti-
cally. The use of the closed papyrus roll here can be linked to the reading process and its oral interaction.
In the last record of the word dwAw the writer changed the determinatives:
iw.j r irt wD pn Hr rn.k mtw.j smn.tj n.k pi dwAw m sS Hr Hr.f
I will dedicate this votive stela on your name, establishing for you these supplications in writing for the
sake of his face.60
The writer has repeated the word dwAw but with the string used to tie the unfolded papyrus scroll
as an ending soundless determinative , which corresponds visually and semantically with the word sS
that has two sense-signs (the writing board with its pen and the string used to tie the rolled-up document). By
linking the determinatives of the words sS and dwAw, mainly by replacing the man who raises his hands towards
the sky ( ) with a writing determinative ( ), the writer adds another metaphorical layer to the word dwAw itself
in this sentence for his readers. It metaphorically conveys that the praising words of this earthly human are still
being raised to the god in his high place, but it is no longer part of an oral reading or chanting process since it is
written on a votive granite stela . The writer used this visual technique to stress a change from the praising
words as a vocal performance to a written practice; this is further reinforced by following the word dwAw with
the words “in writing.”
In the second example of the word, the writer alerted his readers by changing the first determinative he used
for the word dwAw:
iw irt n.f dwAw Hr rn.f n aA n tAy.f pHty
I have established for him written supplications on his name because of the greatness of his physical
might.61
The writer records the word dwAw with two different beginning and ending signs, compared
with its first version . Instead of the usual beginning star , he wrote the beginning letters pho-
netically with a fastened hand and knotted rope and, instead of the closed papyrus roll and the man who
raises his hands as determinatives, he used the string of unfolded papyrus . By doing so, the writer puts
more visual stress, to his readers, on the last ending soundless determinative of the word without any distrac-
tions, to alert the reader that this dwAw is no longer part of an oral performance. He confirmed the intended
reading of the word in writing the third version of it . It is also remarkable that the papyrus roll
in this example has been used to convey an oral reading performance in the first example , while
the unfolded papyrus string was used to reinforce the idea of the stable written nature of the god’s praise
60
Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, vol. 3, 655.3–4, lines 13–14.
61
Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, vol. 3, 654.8–9, line 7.

20. 154 JARCE 55 (2019)
– . The intersection between the two writing signs ( – )—which in turn reflects the
intersection of the reading and writing practices—is clearer in the word TAw, which generally means
“book”62
with a roll of papyrus as an ending soundless determinative,63
but can be written ( ) with the
string used to tie the rolled-up document as well.64
The three different forms of the word dwAw – – confirm that every
repeated word had a different connotative meaning in the mind of the AE writer, depending on the visual har-
mony between the context and the written determinatives, and that each determinative plays a significant role in
generating additional verbal and visual messages for indigenous readers. If we think about how many different
sense-signs each AE word can possess and how each determinative is conceptually related to its context, which in
turn enriches the meaning, we will be able to reconsider the richness of AE writing in playing on sameness and
difference to produce meaning. I think it would be reasonable to assert that when using different determinatives,
the scribe was highlighting different aspects or facets of the semantic world of the word. This tendency was
emphasized early by “the father of Arabic prose” al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868) who recorded a statement that differentiates
between the oral and writing spheres. The statement describes how the oral nature of speech can be altered
according to the requirement of the writing process and the literary skills of each writer who transmits the oral
version, in different times and places. He confirms that the writer is always able to modify, improve, clarify, or
correct his ideas and statements while the speaker cannot act similarly with his oral speech:
.‫الكالم‬ ‫تصحيح‬ ‫على‬ ‫سان‬ِّ‫ل‬‫ال‬ ‫استعمال‬ ‫من‬ ،‫الكتاب‬ ‫تصحيح‬ ‫على‬ ‫هن‬ّ‫الذ‬ َّ‫يحض‬ ‫أن‬ ُ‫ر‬َ‫د‬‫أج‬ ‫القلم‬ ‫استعمال‬
،‫الحائن‬ ِ‫للغابر‬ ‫وهو‬ ،‫والغائب‬ ‫الشاهد‬ ‫في‬ ٌ‫ق‬‫مطل‬ ُ‫م‬‫والقل‬ ،‫الحاضر‬ ‫القريب‬ ‫على‬ ٌ‫ر‬‫مقصو‬ ‫اللسان‬ :‫وقالوا‬
‫ه‬ُ‫ز‬‫يتجاو‬ ‫وال‬ ،‫ه‬َ‫ع‬ِ‫م‬‫سا‬ ‫ُو‬‫د‬ْ‫ع‬َ‫ي‬ ‫ال‬ ‫واللسان‬ ‫زمان؛‬ ِّ‫كل‬ ‫في‬ ‫س‬َ‫ر‬‫ُد‬‫ي‬‫و‬ ،‫مكان‬ ِّ‫ل‬‫بك‬ ‫أ‬َ‫ر‬‫ُق‬‫ي‬ ‫والكتاب‬ .‫ّاهن‬‫ر‬‫ال‬ ‫للقائم‬ ‫مثله‬
.‫غيره‬ ‫إلى‬
The usage of the pen is more capable of inducing the senses of the mind to correct what is written than
is the use of the tongue to correct what has been said. They said: the reach of the tongue is restricted to
the person who is attending and near [enough to hear the spoken words], while the pen is limitless and
reaches both the one who witnesses the writing and the absent person. The pen’s reach connects the past
to the present as it connects those in the recent past and present-day people. Written materials can be
read everywhere and can be taught in every time, while the tongue does not go beyond its listener nor
reach over to someone else.65
Similarly, Euro-American scholars produced many insightful studies that explore human consciousness as
related to the oral and written media of language. In writing, the author has time to give full concentration on
molding a succession of related ideas into a more complex, coherent and integrated unity; while the oral con-
versation could be more fragmented in nature and the way that it establishes its cohesion is different, as it can
rely more on nonverbal communication tools, such as modulations of the voice, body, and facial gestures and
the direct reactions of the audience, in addition to depending on a shared situation between the speaker and
the audience. Cohesion in writing is generally attributed to the practical way that the authors use their linguistic
background, mainly the lexical and syntactic, to express the intended message to the reader. As Gisela Redekez
explains:
Typical spoken discourse tends to be unplanned, informal, and directed to a limited number of listeners
who are generally known to an interacting with the speaker, often providing immediate (verbal and/or
nonverbal) feedback. Written texts, on the other hand, tend to be well-planned. Writers can polish their
productions to meet communicative, esthetic and formal standards. The potential readers are generally
62
Sanchez and Meltzer have opted for “compilation” as the translation of TAw. See Gonzalo Sanchez and Edmund Meltzer, The Edwin
Smith Papyrus: Updated Translation of the Trauma Treatise and Modern Medical Commentaries (Atlanta, 2012), 62.
63
WB 5, 349.
64
FCD 303.
65
Al-Jāḥiẓ, Al-bayān wa-l-tabyīn, edited by ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn, vol.1 (Cairo, 1998), 80.

21. RASHWAN 155
not present during the time the text is being composed, and may not even be known to the writer. As a
consequence of the social situation and function, speaking is more likely to be about personal experi-
ences while writing typically conveys more general descriptive and explanatory information.66
The AE examples that I have used show that each different visual form was firmly related to meaning produc-
tion. This raises a problematic question about the oral performance of such visual messages: how could AE
writers transfer these visual messages during oral recitation for their native audience? Were these visual messages
only designed for the reader’s eye?
To answer this difficult question in part, I will use another example of repeating one word through the whole
text, three times with the same unusual determinative, to stimulate the reader’s eye. This example may open a
small window to understand the reaction of AE listeners when the writer uses an unusual ending soundless de-
terminative. The example is extracted from the hieratic teachings of the vizier Kagemni, where he offers moral
advice for handling unbearable daily life situations, saying:
ir Hms.k Hna aSAt msd t mrr.k
If you sit down (suffering in this position like a woman giving birth) with a multitude, (pretend that),
you dislike the food you always love.67
In this example, the writer uses a critical determinative for the main verb of the sentence Hms, a sDm.f
verb meaning “dwell (in)” with a lady giving birth as an ending soundless determinative . This verb can be
considered phonetically as a combination of two different words, the verb Hms with a seated man as a determi-
native , generally meaning sitting down; and the verb ms, meaning “to give birth” or “be born”).
Gardiner has confirmed that the verb Hms was written with the ending determinative of the verb ms (the lady
who gives birth) after he compared the determinative of Hms with ms in the same manuscript. “The scribe of
Prisse consistently assimilates the det. of Hms to that of msi, see 1,8; 2,7; 5,2 for Hms, 5,5.6; 19,1 for msi.”68
The
AE writer created a new visual form of the verb, by borrowing the ending soundless determinative of the verb ms
, to add another metaphorical layer to fit a different literary context: the lady who gives birth may represent, in
this context, being a guest of people whose attitudes, morals, eating behaviors or social traditions are intolerable.
This “giving-birth” determinative reflects the hard time that this person must go through in his/her
stay with those undesirable people. By using this determinative, the AE writer implies that the pain of keeping
company with such people is similar to the pain resulting from giving birth, and the teachings here advise the
reader to deal with such stressful situations wisely if this unlucky person could not escape from their company.
The second repetition of the same verb, with its unusual determinative, is used to serve another context, say-
ing:
ir Hms.k Hna Afa wnm.k Axf.f swA
If you are sitting down (suffering in this position like a pregnant woman) with a glutton, eat after his
gorging has gone.69
The described context confirms the suggested literary technique of using this visual form to represent the suf-
fering that an ordinary person may face eating in the company of an excessively greedy eater Afa. It is
remarkable that this word has been written with a donkey as an ending soundless determinative to represent the
uncivilized eating behavior of such a gluttonous person. Obviously, the two ending determinatives of the words
66
Gisela Redeker, “On Differences between Spoken and Written Language,” Discourse Processes 7 (1984), 44.
67
Alan H. Gardiner, “The Instruction Addressed to Kagemni and His Brethren,” JEA 32 (1946), pl. XIV, I, lines 3–4.
68
Gardiner, “The Instruction Addressed to Kagemni,” pl. XIV, note to I, 3a (at bottom of the plate).
69
Gardiner, “The Instruction Addressed to Kagemni,” pl. XIV, lines 7–8.

22. 156 JARCE 55 (2019)
Hms and Afa can be metaphorically related in this context, as the donkey was considered to
be a representation of Seth, the god of storms and evil. It thus may imply that being in the company of such a
gluttonous person can generate negative feelings inside any reasonable person, like the process of giving birth
does to a woman, which creates horrible suffering for a time.
However, this suffering can end with a reward for the person who can wisely deal with this undesirable
behavior, which is for him to have his share of the food and to make this greedy person—whom he may need
later—feel happy with his company. This reward can be metaphorically linked to the process of giving birth,
which ends with a newborn as well. It thus implies that this suffering may conclude with a reward if you find the
right way to deal with the increased pain. This verb can also represent an unexpected situation for the
average person to deal with, without any previous planning. In such stressful situations, the writer offers a golden
solution that the reader has to follow: try to enjoy watching this greedy person eating like a donkey, and after his
stomach is filled with food, he will invite you to eat whatever is left from him!
At the end of the teaching, the AE writer repeated the same verb in a context that may reveal how the ancient
Egyptians appreciated the visual intelligence of their writing system. The wise father Kagemni declared that
his teachings had been well received and preserved by his own sons and many other receivers. The attention-
grabbing point is that he declared that the reciters of the text should read his teachings precisely as it was written,
to be able to please the receiver’s heart, saying:
wn.in.sn Hr rdit st Hr Xtw.sn
Then they kept placing it (his teaching) on their bellies.
wn.in.sn Hr Sdt st mi ntt m sS
Then they kept reciting it as it was in writing.
wn.in nfr st Hr ib.sn r xtw nbt nty m tA r Dr.f
Then it was more beautiful on their hearts more than all the things that are in this entire land.
wn.in aHa.sn Hms.sn xft
Then their standing and their sitting70
were accordingly so.71
If we consider the different visual forms that the writer of this text produced, it suggests that the AE reciters
must have used gestures (such as facial expressions and movements of the body, hands, and feet) that encode the
visual nature of the written soundless sense-signs. In our example, the reciter may have acted like a woman giv-
ing birth to represent all the stressful situations that they might face in general. We can also imagine how humor-
ous the reciter’s performance was for the hearts of his receivers, although this may not apply to the additional
determinative of the written hymns (dwAw) mentioned further above.72
This creative change of determinatives may open up another perspective, which is the fixed meanings we
uncritically extract from our modern AE lexicons and how they are indefinite or undetermined, without un-
derstanding the metaphorical relation of the determinatives used and the particular textual context. In other
70
The metaphorical usage of the contrasted verbs aHa.sn (meaning “their standing”) and Hms.sn (meaning “their sitting”) is literally
equivalent to the Arabic metaphorical expression ‫وقعودهم‬ ‫قيامهم‬, where the meaning is extended to express every daily activity, especially in
the Quranic verse: ْ‫م‬ِ‫ه‬ِ‫ب‬‫و‬ُ‫ن‬ُ‫ج‬ ‫ى‬َ‫ل‬َ‫ع‬َ‫و‬ ‫ًا‬‫د‬‫ُو‬‫ع‬ُ‫ق‬َ‫و‬ ‫ا‬ً‫م‬‫ا‬َ‫ي‬ِ‫ق‬ َ‫ه‬َّ‫الل‬ َ‫ُون‬‫ر‬ُ‫ك‬ْ‫ذ‬َ‫ي‬ َ‫ِين‬‫ذ‬َّ‫ال‬- alladhīna yadhqrūna Allah qyāmān wa-qʿūdān wa-ʿalā gnūbihm, which literally reads “Those
who remember the God while standing, sitting and [lying] on their sides” (Qur’ān 3:191).
71
Gardiner, “The Instruction Addressed to Kagemni,” pl. XIV, II, line 7.
72
This question certainly needs further research, especially in relation to the oral performance of written unusual determinatives.

23. RASHWAN 157
words, those AE words in the modern dictionaries are not restricted by the given meanings, but, on the contrary,
have unlimited space for adding more semantic connotations based on the chosen determinative that has been
carefully used to serve its unique textual context. The problems of literal or narrow readings arise not among
dictionary compilers but among dictionary users.
It is evident that the idea of having a fixed form of an AE word is a modern attitude related to our alphabetic
languages and it seems linguistically relevant here to the modern desire to attribute only one transliteration of
a word, which contradicts the AE writing practice with its various forms that also involve different vocal move-
ments/vowels in writing the same word. That is why Gardiner wisely argued that our adopted terminology is far
from being accurate in describing the visual inimitability of the AE writing:
Such facts as these go to show the impossibility of a hard and fast classification of the uses of signs. Ideo-
graphic uses shade off into phonetic, and there are degrees and varieties within the two main groups of
sense-sign (ideogram) and sound-sign (phonogram). We have, on occasion, found it convenient to employ
the terms ‘semi-ideographic’ and ‘semi-phonetic,’ as well as the term ‘phonetic determinative’ [...] The
objection to the term ‘determinative,’ which is nevertheless too convenient to discard, was stated in §23,
OBS. We shall also make frequent use of the term ‘abbreviation,’ though this is open to the objection
that signs so described, ex. HqA, ‘chief,’ often represent the original spelling, later amplified by the ad-
dition of phonetic and other elements, ex. . To sum up, the terminology adopted by us is not
intended to bear too technical or too precise an interpretation.73
Gardiner asks the modern reader to be sensitive in observing how the AE writer had many choices of de-
terminatives, given by his own visual writing, to highlight or specify what he wanted to imply. Such sensitivity
to the metaphorical role of the sense-signs and their intentionality may lead us to new insights into AE literary
techniques. We can push back the modern dismissive attitude towards the visual communication of AE writing;
in doing so, we reveal the text to be using literary techniques that we now associate with visual art. The conven-
tions that govern their visual, literary interaction are not yet fully acknowledged and can easily be overlooked or
dismissed under the hegemonic influence of our alphabetic knowledge. This approach is perfectly illustrated by
Christopher Eyre’s understanding of AE literariness and how he overlooks the “visual communication” of AE
writing:
Visual poetry—concrete poetry, where the visual appearance of the text is a part of the literary com-
munication—is indeed a sub-genre of hieroglyphic writing, exploited because of the very nature of the
hieroglyphic script, but this is a format for display, not for reading; a special game, and display of literate
virtuosity. The games with script show the same love of visual play on meaning that characterizes oral
play in literary creation, but it is not at the core of literary creation.74
By following such hypotheses, we are imposing our prior, alphabetical idea of the expected behavior of AE
readers. Our current alphabetical systems tend to use verbal metaphors and replace pictures with words, and,
because of this, visual space has been reduced to the linear organization of the alphabetic transliteration. Such
AE visual features play a great role in stimulating the imagination of the reader during the reading process, and
enhance enjoyment and comprehension. They are written in a way that is likely to be visually engaging and of-
fer to the readers a new visual-metaphorical sense and an experience of an order that they did not comprehend
before. Like the images, determinatives are discursive symbols that disclose multiple layers of signification which
offered the native readers many levels of visual understanding by stimulating their artistic imagination, as ex-
pressed by Nils Billing:
The relation word/image is thus a mirror of the age-old struggle of human control and abstraction vs.
the self-explanatory essence of nature. Images can certainly be tamed by people and according to their
73
Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 440.
74
Christopher Eyre, “The Practice of Literature: The Relationship between Content, Form, Audience and Performance,” in Roland
Enmarch and Verena Lepper (eds.), Ancient Egyptian Literature: Theory and Practice (Oxford, 2013), 105.

24. 158 JARCE 55 (2019)
priorities and intentions be transformed into linguistic units that can be read. Nevertheless, their origin
in untamed nature might still explain the anxiety often inherent in the interpretation of art. In the field
of Egyptology scholars cannot even rest on the traditional distinction word/image, as the written signi-
fiers of language, the hieroglyphs, are in fact images themselves. Even in the immediate combination
of text and image, the device so common in Egyptian art, the two media might through their mutual
iconic quality merge to an extent that in other linguistic systems, with their arbitrary yet static tokens, is
impossible. Thus, we find cases in Old Kingdom reliefs where the iconographic elements simultaneously
function as large-scale linguistic components of the accompanying text.75
This statement confirms that the “visual communication” of the AE writing played an influential role in creating
and generating the intended message for the native receivers. The visual literariness of the AE writing suffers
from being overlooked or ignored; Egyptologists became more mechanical in adopting old terms without involv-
ing any critical thinking, or they impose new terms that belong to different languages, without fully considering
the AE visual complexity. The close connection between “reading” and “seeing” in the AE language can be
clearly shown in the verb mAA, which mainly means to see, and implies both watching and reading76
the text carefully, for instance in one of the king’s speeches with his vizier:
iw mAA.n Hm(.i) sS pn nfr nfr rdi.n.k in.tw.f m stp m hrw pn nfr n snDm ib n (issi) mAa xrw mAa xrw
My majesty saw this beautiful, beautiful writing that you caused to be brought to the palace on this
beautiful day to make happy the heart of the king Issi, justified justified.
mrr.i Hm(.i) mAA sS.k pn r xt nb
My majesty loved seeing your writing more than anything else.77
Apparently, “seeing” and “reading” the AE text was being applied without any distinctions, which in turn
confirms the importance of the overlooked visual aspects of the hieroglyphs in understanding the literary read-
ing process of any AE text. Furthermore, it is common in the English-speaking world to use the verbs “hear” or
“sound” for written communication. It is frequent in emails to say “It is good to hear from you” or “your ideas
sound logical to me,” which in turn reflects the closeness of alphabetic writing to speech that mostly depends on
the verbal interaction between the mouth and ear. However, the situation in the AE language is different, as the
intended meaning of AE words cannot be fully encapsulated in our alphabetic transliteration, which overlooks
the inimitable visual materiality of AE writing. Gracia Zamacona explains that:
Alphabetic signs are hints that the reader recovers: they come from the writer’s hand, and they belong
to it. In contrast, hieroglyphic signs are entities that the reader must get through: they are in the written
text, and they belong to it. In other words, hieroglyphic signs are entities with a permanent real existence,
which happen also to be readable, while alphabetic signs are elements of reading whose real existence
is momentary, as they merely last the time it takes to read a given sign: their existence is exhausted in its
very function.78
It is clear that AE writers knew well how to visually train and amuse their readers. The pictorial realism of
AE writing offered its writers many options to visually communicate with native readers. Each repeated word
75
Nils Billing, “Writing an Image: The Formulation of the Tree Goddess Motif in the Book of the Dead, Chapter 59,” SAK 32 (2004),
35.
76
Federico Contardi, “Egyptian Terms Used to Indicate the Act of Reading: An Investigation about the Act of Reading in the Egyptian
Society,” in Frederik M. Fales and Giulia F. Grassi (eds.), CAMSEMUD 2007: Proceedings of the 13th Italian Meeting of Afro-Asiatic Linguistics
(Padova, 2010), 266.
77
Kurt Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, Erster Band, Urkunden des Ägyptischen Altertums Abteilung 1, Hft. 1–4 (Leipzig, 1933), 179.
78
Carlos Zamacona, “The Two Inner Directions of the Ancient Egyptian Script,” Birmingham Egyptology Journal 3 (2015), 17.