Hieroglyphs Addenda · Signs

𓃭

lion

NameE23
Readsrw
Meansrecumbent lion — rw
Taught in11 · The stone that talked

Where it comes from

A lion lying down, forepaws extended — resting but watching. It writes rw; and because Egyptian had no separate l, the lion was drafted for the L of foreign names — the L in Ptolemy and Cleopatra’s rings is this animal.

How to remember it

The lion at rest still owns the ground — and it owns two alphabets’ worth of sounds: Egyptian rw at home, and the borrowed L whenever Greeks came visiting. Decipherment walked in on its back.

In the wild

From a funerary liturgy against Apophis (aes corpus). urn:nabu:aes:bbawtotenlit:2Z3OHH5EKZEUTAFMAIWR2PXTGE:IBUBdwKURW8Z1EbXp44g88XV2ug · license: attribution.

Piece by piece:

  • ꜥꜣpp ḫr — Apophis is fallen, every dangerous name written with the cautious substitute stroke
  • qrnr — one of the serpent’s ugly by-names, the lion carrying its inner r

A liturgy fells the chaos-snake, and the lion-sign helps spell the monster’s name. The sign is taught in 101’s chapter 11.