Thematic Glossary

To look up a word by English or transliteration – go to the search page.

1. Nouns
2. Verbs
3. Adjectives
4. Adverbs
5. Prepositions
6. Pronouns
7. Particles
8. Numerals and Measurements

Introduction

This part is a thematic glossary: the basic vocabulary of Middle Egyptian, arranged by semantic field.

Egyptian dictionaries are arranged in transliteration order, and that is their value — but it assumes the reader already knows how to transliterate and has a single word in hand to look up. At the start of study these two conditions are not always met. Moreover, words are not remembered alone but in the company of their neighbors: a verb of motion is remembered with other verbs of motion, an adjective with its opposite. The material here is therefore arranged by subject — motion, action, opening and closing, body and soul, state and change, physical and sensory, quality and character.

Alongside the semantic fields come the closed groups: the common prepositions, the independent pronouns, the proclitic particles and particles of address, the numerals and the measures. These are not vocabulary that keeps accumulating but small, finite systems, and precisely for that reason they are worth knowing in full; mastering them pays off in every line of text.

Each entry gives the hieroglyphic writing, the transliteration and the meaning in English. Remember that the translation is a handle, not a definition: the semantic range of an Egyptian word is set by context, and often does not coincide with any single English word. When the translation does not fit the sentence, suspicion should fall on the translation.

This part is not a complete dictionary and does not aim to be one. It covers the words the student will meet again and again in the texts read at the start. For a word that is not here, and for the full range of meanings, the place to go is a real dictionary.