Hieroglyphs 102 · Chapter 02

His Majesty says

Twice now a verb has walked past wearing suffixes — chapter 01 closed on one telling a whole story — and twice this course asked you to wait. The wait ends here, in the best company Egyptian literature can offer: the tales told at the court of King Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid, in the oldest story collection that survives from Egypt. Three signs first, all three from the court.

Batch three

Draw each five times — club, falcon on its stand, and the basket facing the other way.

Grammar bite — the suffix conjugation

Here is the machine. A Middle Egyptian verb states its subject by wearing it — the same suffix pronounsa mini-pronoun glued to the end of a word — "his", "your", "hers" as a single sign you have known since 101’s birth chapter (≡f “his,” ≡k “your”) attach to a verb stem, and what they mean there is not possession but doing:

sḏm≡f — “he hears.” Stem first, subject as suffix, and the sentence has begun: verb first, subject second, everything else after.

That is the verbal sentencea sentence built on a conjugated verb — in Middle Egyptian the verb comes first, wearing its subject as a suffix: ḏd≡f, "he says", and sḏm≡f — “he hears,” the grammars’ own nickname for the whole pattern — is the workhorse form of Middle Egyptian.¹ The suffixes run through the persons you already know: ḏd≡j “I say,” ḏd≡k “you say,” ḏd≡f “he says,” ḏd≡s “she says,” ḏd≡sn “they say” — and chapter 01’s ≡tw, “one,” makes any of them impersonal. One more piece and you can read a storyteller at work: slide .jn in between stem and suffix — ḏd.jn≡f — and the verb becomes the narrative past the tales run on: “then he said.” Hold .jn as the storyteller’s “then”; its full anatomy is deeper in the grammars than this course goes.

At the court of Khufu

The Westcar Papyrus holds Egypt’s oldest surviving story collection: King Khufu, bored on his throne, commands each of his sons to tell him a tale of wonder — magicians who part lake waters, wax crocodiles that come alive, a prophecy of kings to come. Every turn of the telling pivots on three words:

• ḏd — “say”: the cobra 𓆓I10 · ḏ · cobra at rest and hand 𓂧D46 · d · hand you have read since 101 — the commonest verb in every tale.
• .jn — the storyteller’s “then”: 𓇋M17 · j · flowering reed𓈖N35 · n · ripple of water sliding in right after the stem, exactly where the bite said it would.
• ḥm — “Majesty”: your new club 𓍛U36 · ḥm · fuller's club with the stroke 𓏤Z1 · the word-sign stroke — 'this sign means what it shows' (“the thing itself”), and then the falcon 𓅆G7 · — · falcon on the standard perched over the word — silent, marking whose majesty this is.
• ≡f — “his”: the viper, now doing subject-duty on a verb. Said-then Majesty-his: Egyptian’s word order, verb first.

Four tales survive whole, and this formula opens royal speech in all of them. Learn these three words and you hold the hinge of every story an Egyptian schoolboy copied.

The falcon on the pronoun

The falcon has one more trick, and it is the best detail on this page. In a New Kingdom praise of the king, the god Amun speaks about the king himself — and watch what happens to “you”:

First line, piece by piece:

• ḏd — “says”: the plain sḏm≡f this time, no .jn — a god speaks in the present.
• Jmn — Amun: j-mn-n with 101’s game-board 𓏠Y5 · mn · game board with pieces — mn, and the falcon 𓅆G7 · — · falcon on the standard closing the god’s name.
• r — “of, about”: the mouth-sign as the preposition r.
• ≡k — “you”: your new mirror-basket 𓎢V31A · k · basket with handle (left) — wearing its own falcon 𓅆G7 · — · falcon on the standard. The “you” is the king, the king is divine, and the scribe classified the pronoun. Even “you” bows when it points at a god.

And the second line is chapter 01’s nominal sentencea sentence made of nouns side by side, no verb "to be" at all — Egyptian's mw pw, "it is water", back already: mntk — “you” as an independent pronoun, the second-person twin of chapter 00’s jnk — then zꜣ-Jmn, “son of Amun,” 101’s duckling 𓅭G39 · zꜣ · pintail duck — son beside the god’s name. You are the son of Amun: no verb, two nouns, a coronation in five signs.

Drill before you go on

1. Draw 𓍛U36 · ḥm · fuller's club, 𓅆G7 · — · falcon on the standard, 𓎢V31A · k · basket with handle (left) from memory; say ḥm, nothing, k — and explain why the middle one gets no sound.
2. Conjugate ḏd through ≡j, ≡k, ≡f, ≡s, ≡sn aloud, in transliterationthe sign-by-sign rendering of ancient writing in modern letters, so every sign stays accountable only.
3. Write ḏd.jn ḥm≡f from memory, sign by sign, and name each piece’s job as you go.
4. Find the falcon three times in this chapter’s readings and say what each perch marks — a majesty, a god, a pronoun.

Next: to do, to give, to be — the three verbs that run everything, and the eye that means “make.”