1. A Lexicon of
Egyptian Lexical Roots (Project)
Helmut Satzinger
Twelfth International Congress of Egyptologists (ICE XII)
Cairo, Egypt — November 3rd – 8th, 2019

2. Helmut Satzinger: Egyptian Root Lexicon (Project)
The aim of this project is to establish a complete inventory of the
lexical roots of the Egyptian language. This concerns all stages of
the language as attested in hieroglyphic and hieratic texts, citing
also those items that survive into Demotic and Coptic.

3. The Project:
Supported by Wissenschaftsfonds (FWF)
— the Austrian Research Foundation
Duration: 36 months
Personel: 2 additional Persons per 12 months each
Cand. phil. Kristina Hutter M.A., Univ. of Vienna: 2018
Prof. Dr. Danijela Stefanović, Univ. of Belgrade: 2020
Complementary work by cand. phil. Alfred Hutter,
Univ. of Vienna: 2019

4. Egyptian dictionaries do not arrange items by root
(in contrast to dictionaries of Semitic languages):
Often enough, derivatives of a root do not appear in its neighbourhood.
The reason?
•Prefixes:
ˁnḫ ‘to live’ s-ˁnḫ ‘to make live’
šnj ‘to quarrel’ n-šnj ‘to rage’
ẖnj ‘to go by boat’ m-ẖn.t ‘ferry-boat’
•Loss of initial weak consonant:
wsḫ ‘be wide’ sḫ.t ‘width’
jˁr ‘to rise’ ˁr, idem
•Reduplication:
sn ‘to associate’ snsn ‘to fraternize’ (will appear in the dictionary after
snj, snˁj, snˁḥ, ... snḫn, snḫt, snẖꜣ)

5. wAi‘to be on the way’
wAi to come Wb 1, 246.10-12; vgl. Quack, LingAeg 3, 1993, 62 MR; oft Gr
wAi to come up (of the wind) Wb 1, 246.13 Gr
wAi to fall into (a condition); to come to Wb 1, 246.5-9; vgl. CED 209 AR, Näg.
Semantic derivative (1): to plan evil
wAi to fall into (a condition); to conspire Wb 1, 244.7-8; FCD 52; vgl. Gardiner, PSBA 34,
1912, 263, 21 AR
wA to conspire; to brood Wb 1, 244.10-13; vgl. KoptHWb, 265; Wilson, Ptol. Lexikon, 191
Lit. MR
wA conspiracy Wb 1, 246.14-16 MR
wA.w conspirators Meeks, AL 79.0581
wA.wtj conspirator Wb 1, 245.2 Gr
wA-wA to plan (often with neg. connotations) Wb 1, 249.6-15; FCD 53; vgl. Wilson, Ptol.
Lexikon, 192 s. MR
wA-wA to plan Wb 1, 250.1 Sp
wA-wA plot Wb 1, 249.16 Gr
Semantic derivative (2): to be far
wA.t road; way; path; side Wb 1, 246.17-248.13 s. AR
wAi to be far (away from); to remove oneself Wb 1, 245.3-13; KoptHWb 266 s. AR

6. wAi‘to be on the way (2)’
wAi (m Hr) to be unknown to (idiom.) Wb 1, 245.12
wA far; remote Wb 1, 245.13 s. NR
wA.w long ago; far away Wb 1, 245.14-246.4; GEG 559 (Index); ENG § 595 MR
wA.w distance CT VII, 110m MR
wA-wA far Wb 1, 249.17 Gr
s- prefix
s-wA.w passing by Wb 4, 61.21; FCD 216 MR
s-wA.w surrounding; district Wb 4, 62.4-9; Lesko, Dictionary III, 21; Wilson, Ptol.
Lexikon, 809 s. D 19
s-wA.w the Passing (a demon) Meeks, AL 78.3379; Flessa, pWien Aeg 8426, 42
s-wA.w retinue Meeks, AL 79.2464; cf. Rößler-Köhler, Kapitel 17, 114
s-wA.wt the Passing (a female demon) pChester Beatty IX, vs. 18.1
s-wA.w the past Wb 4, 62.1; FCD 216 s, D 18
s-wA.wjw entities who are passing Wb 4, 62.3; LGG VI, 206 Pyr
s-wAi to pass by Wb 4, 60.8-61.20; cf. FCD 216; Allen, Inflection, 584 s. Pyr
s-wAi to keep awayWb 4, 60.5-7; vgl. FCD 216
s-wA-wA to let pass (?) Wb 4, 62.10; vgl. FCD 216 Lit. MR

7. Beta Version of the Root Lexicon Database

8. Excel or FileMaker data bank

10. Further Steps
• Finishing the first phase of the database, with the inclusion of
Demotic and Coptic
• Extracting roots from the lexemes and assigning root IDs
• Organizing the dictionary according to roots (rather than to
lexemes)
• Formatting material for he printed version
• Finishing the second phase of the database with inclusion of
etymologies
• Importing data into digital platform

11. Cooperations
Since the project work exploits, as a first step, the
“Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae” of the Berlin-
Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, it
is intrinsically connected with this project that
builds upon the Ägyptisches Wörterbuch,
connected with the recent project Strukturen und
Transformationen des Wortschatzes der ägyptischen
Sprache. Text- und Wissenskultur im alten Ägypten.

12. In fact, the representatives of this, including
Professors Quack and Richter and Dr. Ingelore
Hafemann, as well as collaborator Dr. Simon
Schweitzer, take great interest in this project. We
are also in contact and cooperation with Professor
Schenkel, creator of a complete data bank of the
vocabulary of the Coffin Texts, including a
grammatical analysis.

13. The Egyptian root lexicon project also cooperates
with Professor Jean Winand, initiator of the Ramses
project, a work that aims at building an annotated
corpus of all Late Egyptian texts.
The Egyptian root lexicon project is furthermore in
connection with Professor Dimitri Meeks,
Montpellier, author inter alia of the supplementary
device L’année lexicographique, initiator of the
seminar Dictionnaires et lexiques de l’égyptien /
bibliographie critique, and author of several basic
articles on the subject.