Chapter 3

The Noun and the Noun Phrase

Noun

A noun is a word denoting an entity, concept, place, quality or phenomenon, conceived as something that can be referred to linguistically. Syntactically, a noun can serve as subject, object or complement within the sentence.

Everyday examples:

English: dog, house, truth

In Middle Egyptian:

The Egyptian noun carries gender (masculine / feminine) and number (singular / dual / plural), and can take a suffix pronoun indicating possession (pr=f “his house”). Within the sentence it can serve as subject, object, predicate or part of a prepositional phrase.

Examples:

Hieroglyphs	Transliteration	English
	sꜣ	“Son”
	nṯr	“God”
	Km.t	“Egypt” (The Black land)
	ꜥnḫ	“Life”

Noun Phrase

Often the noun does not stand alone but appears together with other words: an adjective, a nisba, another noun or a pronoun. Such a group is called a noun phrase. Its head is a noun, and it functions in the sentence as a single unit, but it is not a sentence.

When two nouns stand side by side, they can express three kinds of relation:

Apposition: both nouns denote the same thing: “the scribe, Ramose”.
Conjunction / disjunction: two different things, “and” or “or”: “bread and beer”.
Genitive: two different things, one belonging to the other: “the sister’s house”.

Middle Egyptian examples:

Hieroglyphs	Transliteration	English
	pr ꜥꜣ	“Large house”
	pr n(.jj) sš	“[The] house of [the] scribe”
	s nḥs.jj	“Nubian man”

The adjective and the nisba are discussed in the chapter “The Adjective”. Here we deal with combinations of noun with noun.

Left side: nṯr nfr Jmn-m-ḥꜣ.t dj(.w) ꜥnḫ mj Rꜥ “the good god, Amenemhat, given [him] life like Re”

Right side: Ḥr.w-nbw [ꜥnḫ]-mswt nb ꜣw.t-jb Ḫpr-kꜣ-Rꜥ “the Golden Horus Ankh-mesut (Senusret I), lord of joy, Kheper-ka-Re”

Genitive

The genitive is a combination of two nouns in which the second noun denotes the owner of the first, or what the first is connected to: an “of” relation. The first noun is called the possessed noun (the thing owned), and the second the possessor (the owner).

Everyday examples:

English: the king’s house, the daughter of the teacher

All the examples contain:

something owned (the house, the daughter)
an owner (the king, the teacher)

Most languages have two main ways of expressing possession:

Direct juxtaposition (no linking word) → direct genitive
Linking with the preposition “of” → indirect genitive

Middle Egyptian has both of these ways as well.

A preliminary comparison:

Feature	Direct genitive	Indirect genitive
Structure	possessed + possessor	possessed + n(.jj)+ possessor
Example	ḥw.t-nṯr	pr n(.jj) sš
Translation	“house of [the] god” (= temple)	“[the] house of [the] scribe”
Nature of the link	Fixed and institutional, tends to become set	Occasional and free, formed as needed

The difference from English:

English marks possession on the possessor (the king’s house) or with “of”. In Egyptian nothing in either noun changes: pr remains pr. The only marker of the direct genitive is word order and context, whereas in the indirect genitive the linking word n(.jj) is added before the possessor. Identifying a direct genitive therefore requires an interpretive decision, not just formal recognition.

Direct Genitive

The direct genitive places two nouns side by side, with no word between them.

Examples:

English: city center rather than center of the city

The direct genitive in Middle Egyptian:

The possessed noun comes first and the possessor (the owner) right after it. No word separates them, and the form of the words does not change. Both nouns can be of any gender and number, definite or not.

Examples (the thing owned in blue, the owner in red):

pr sn.t

“[The] sister[’s] house”

ḥm-nṯr

(honorific transposition)

“God[’s] servant” (priest)

When is the direct genitive used? Mainly in official titles, names of offices, and set expressions.

Because the direct genitive is so tight, an adjective describing the possessed noun comes after the whole phrase, not between the two nouns: “efficient overseer-of-hunters”, not “overseer efficient-of-hunters”.

In phrases such as ḥm-nṯr “priest” or sꜣ-nsw.t “prince”, nṯr or nsw.t is written first in hieroglyphs, purely out of respect. The reading follows the grammatical order: possessed noun, then possessor.

Indirect Genitive

The indirect genitive uses a linking word, like “of”

Everyday examples:

English: the house of the father

In Middle Egyptian:

Egyptian uses the genitival adjective n(.jj) “of, belonging to”. It is a nisba adjective derived from the preposition n, and therefore it agrees in gender and number with the possessed noun, not with the owner. Middle Egyptian uses three forms:

Form	Transliteration	When
Masculine singular	n(.jj)	The possessed noun is masculine singular
Masculine plural / dual	n.w	The possessed noun is masculine plural or dual
Feminine	n.t	The possessed noun is feminine (any number)

Already in Middle Egyptian the form n sometimes appears after plurals and feminines too, and later it became the only form. In full spellings the forms are also written n.jj, n.jjt, n.jjw. In the dual, two forms occasionally appear:

Masculine dual: n.wjj

Feminine dual: n.tjj

Examples (the thing owned in blue, the genitival adjective in black, the owner in red):

Hieroglyphs	Transliteration	English
	šꜥj n dšr.t	“[The] sand of [the] desert”
	mrj.t n.t* jtrw*	“[The] bank of [the] river”
	pr.w n.w* nṯr.w*	“[The] houses of [the] gods”

Apposition

Apposition is when two nouns (or two noun phrases) stand side by side and refer to the same thing. There is no linking word between them: their juxtaposition itself creates the link.

Apposition can look like a direct genitive. The difference: in a direct genitive the two nouns denote different things linked by possession; in apposition both denote the same thing.

Everyday examples:

English: Ramose, the scribe, entered the hall

In Middle Egyptian:

Apposition is very common in:

Official titles and names of offices
Epithets of gods
Personal names accompanied by a title

Examples (each noun in a black frame):

Hieroglyphs	Transliteration	English
	ṯꜣtj Rꜥ-ms	“[The] vizier, Ramose”
	Gb nṯr Ꜥꜣ	“Geb, [the] great god”
	jt n(.jj)sš bꜣk n(.jj)Ꜥḥ	“[The] scribe’s father, [a] servant in [the] palace”

For comparison:

Construction	Example	Translation
Direct genitive	sš nsw.t	“[the] king’s scribe” (possession: two different things)
Apposition	ṯꜣtj Rꜥ-ms	“[the] vizier Ramose” (apposition: the same person)

Conjunction and Disjunction

Conjunction: “and”. Egyptian has no word for “and”. Usually the nouns are simply placed one after the other, and the translator adds “and”.

Example:

“A thousand loaves of bread [and] (jugs of) beer, cattle [and] fowl for the ka of Osiris”	English
	Hieroglyphs
ḫꜣ m t ḥnq.t kꜣ.w ꜣpd.w n kꜣ n(.jj) Wsjr	Transliteration
“[A] thousand loaves [and] (jugs of) beer, beef [and] fowls to [the] soul of Osiris”	English

Sometimes conjunction is marked by the preposition ḥnꜥ “together with”, ḥr “upon” or m “containing”:

Hieroglyphs	Transliteration	English
	ẖrd.w ḥnꜥ sn.w	“Children and siblings”
	grḥ ḥr hrw	“Night and day”
	m mw m snf m šꜥj	“Consisting of water and blood and sand”
	ḏꜥ ḥr ḥwj.t	“Stormwind and rain”

Disjunction: “or”. Disjunction too is usually unmarked, and context decides. Sometimes it is marked by the word r-pw “whichever” after the second noun.

Hieroglyphs	Transliteration	English
	sn sn.t	“[A] brother [or a] sister”
	s s.t r-pw	“[A] man or [a] woman” (lit: “man, woman, whichever”)

The Word k.jj "Other"

To say “other, another”, Egyptian uses the word k.jj. Although in English this is an adjective, in Egyptian it is a noun: it always comes before the noun, and the two stand in apposition: k.jj sn is literally “another, a brother”.

Hieroglyphs	Transliteration	Form
,	k.jj	Masculine singular
	k.t, k.tjj	Feminine singular
,	k.jjwjj	Plural (both genders)

When the plural stands alone (“others”), the phrase k.t-ḫt (lit. “another thing”) is used.

Examples:

Hieroglyphs	Transliteration	English
	k.jj sn	“Another brother”
	k.jjwjj nṯr.w	“Other gods”
	k.t sn.t	“Another sister”
	k.jjwjj sn.wt	“Other sisters”

As a noun, k.jj can stand alone, in a phrase specifying what that “other thing” is.

Examples:

Hieroglyphs	Transliteration	English
	k.jj	“Another man”
	k.t	“Another boat”

Summary: Two Nouns Side by Side

A sequence of two nouns A B can express several different relations. Usually context and the meaning of the words decide:

Relation	Structure	Example	Translation
Apposition	A B (the same thing)	ṯꜣtj Rꜥ-ms	“the vizier, Ramose”
Conjunction	A B, A ḥnꜥ B, A ḥr B	t ḥnq.t	“bread and beer”
Disjunction	A B, A B r-pw	s s.t r-pw	“a man or a woman”
Direct genitive	A B (the second is the owner)	pr sn.t	“[the] sister’s house”
Indirect genitive	A n(.jj) B	pr.w n.w nṯr.w	“houses of [the] gods”

sꜣ-nsw.t Sbk-ḥtp ꜥnḫ(.w) wḏꜣ(.w)

“the king’s son, Sobekhotep, life and prosperity”

Chapter New Vocabulary

Hieroglyphs	Transliteration	Type	English
	ꜣw.t-jb	Noun	Joy, gladness
	ꜣpd	Noun	Bird, fowl
	Jmn-m-ḥꜣ.t	Proper noun	Amenemhat
	jtrw	Noun	River (the Nile)
	ꜥꜣ	Adjective	Great, large
	ꜥnḫ	Noun	Life
	ꜥnḫ-mswt	Proper noun	Ankh-mesut
	ꜥḥ	Noun	Palace
	wḏꜣ	Verb	To be sound, prosper
	mj	Preposition	like, according to, as well as
	mrj.t	Noun	Riverbank, shore
	nḥs.jj	Adjective (nisba)	Nubian
,	Rꜥ	Proper noun	Rē
	Rꜥ-ms	Proper noun	Ramose
	r-pw	Particle	Or
,	hrw	Noun	Day
	ḥwj.t	Noun	Rain
	ḥnꜥ	Preposition	Together with, and
,	ḥnq.t	Noun	Beer
	Ḥr.w-nbw	Noun (royal title)	Golden Horus (royal title)
	ḫꜣ	Numeral	Thousand
	Ḫpr-kꜣ-Rꜥ	Proper noun	Kheperkare
	ẖrd	Noun	Child
	Sbk-ḥtp	Proper noun	Sobekhotep
	snf	Noun	Blood
	šꜥj	Noun	Sand
	kꜣ	Noun	Bull, ox
	kꜣ	Noun	Ka, spirit
,	k.jj	Noun	Other, another
	k.t-ḫt	Noun phrase	Another thing; others
	Gb	Proper noun	Geb (earth god)
	grḥ	Noun	Night
	ṯꜣtj	Noun	Vizier
	dšr.t	Noun	Desert (the Red Land)
	ḏꜥ	Noun	Windstorm