Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale <al-Qāhira> [Hrsg.]; Mission Archéologique Française <al-Qāhira> [Hrsg.]: Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes: pour servir de bullletin à la Mission Française du Caire (31.1909)

181

THE FALSE R IN ARCHAIC EGYPTIAX ORTHOGRAPHY

tion ipto aside as perfectly worthless, and consider it as nothing but a hlunder of a
very ignorant Egyptian. He found that Word <=> without déterminative (as it is
written in several late lists) and vocalized it after the analogy of a similar word (the
one for "goose"?). At any rate, everything becomes plain and easy, if we disregard
that witness dating from the time, when Egyptian writing existed only in negloct.

The earliest orthography of that word is <__:>5£$ -T1> Senithe, 198; Tomb. SetiV,
26; Ros. Civ., 30; L., D., III, 113b; in srw, Ebers, 105, 11, we have already the pro-
ccss so fréquent in Egyptian : the plural form of collective nouns takes later the place
of the singular8. The pyramid passages, M.,726 ( F^Û Ir^ù ) — A7., 1329

( ) arG un^or^una^e^y corrupt3 but they witness, nevertheless, that the ear-

liest orthography was the saine as above : sr. The Coptic ecoov cannot be compared
directly, being the plural; still, the helping e- (of *es 'ow) indicates a root s '(w?) with
an Elif hamzatam after the s, i. e. the ( has here been preserved fully in Coptic.
That ecoo-r is nothing but a loan word from the Semitic has been recognized longago;
the Semitic forms rva, At, Assyr. su'u, exhibit the same consonants : xto; the weak
third radical is also in Semitic indistinct''. The (later) Egyptian orthography sry
occurs, Totb., 18, 28; 177, 6 (variants srt/t, sr); Mar., Abyd., II, 14; Rec. Mon., IV,
8, AQ(sryw'). Variants without that r are fréquent; cp. Totb., 17, 77 ( 1 (

etc. Most interesting is the orthography, L., D., II, 148 : 1( ^ jjç (sïc-0> in the

same astronomical sensé as in the pyramids (and as in the Xllth dyn., <=», Ann.
Serv.j I, p. 85, cp. Spiegelberg), which proves that we have not two différent words,
sr and si), but only one : sr = s'. Ail variants confirm that we possess in the Coptic
es (')ow an unusually well preserved old word. L., D., II, 123, the geographical name
'/tt^ rV^1 P^a7s 011 ^'ie sim^arity with the root j^j ^j^"^ slw; quite analog-
ously, Pap. Koller, 4, 5, -^"^^ j "sneeP" is written (with for «?). Sali. IV,
5, rev. 4, seems to mean the same word with 11■ )(?)> an orthography re-
sembling closely the siol of the Ethiopie time (Br., XV.). Brugsch had already pointed
out variants of the astronomical name 1 [ later 1 Thes., p. 140. The archaic
orthography with r seems to have présentée! great difficulties very soon to the hiero-
grammates, nevertheless, that r was carriecl along to the very latest period of hiero-
glyphic writing, probably quite mechanically.

There is no trace of a " Mouillierung" (liquidation) of an r in tins word, conse-

1. i remind the reader that, in order to avoid the endless confusions caused by the prevailing Systems
of translitération, i use a method of transcription of my own, employing 8 (or s) for —h—, s for 1, | (i. e. ts)
for g ■>, .? for =U==|> ' f°r ( where clearly Aleph, y where its value is doubtful. The reasons for the inno-
vations among thèse transcriptions were given in the Orientalistisclie Littaratar.zeitung some time ago.

2. i hope later to illustrate this more fully. Cp. e. g. thip, from the old singular |', originally "the
winds", as the hieroglyphic prototype shows, ujHire, "altar"; singular originally hlyt, etc.

3. Probable original : m sr(wy).

4. Notice « —*— for to! i am, however, not sure, if this is not accidentai; as i have shown in OLZ., g
and s seem to be differentiations of internai Egyptian character.