Mastering Hieroglyphs: II. Basic Syntax and Vocabulary of The Prophecy of Neferty
When looking at our first phrases in Ancient Egyptian it is hardly sensible to start with “Where is the bathroom?” or “How much are the oranges?”. Instead, I tried to find simple nominal phrases (consisting of a noun and its modifiers) that still fall into the “le chat est sur la table” category to give us an easy walk around the new terrain of Ancient Egyptian (or Classic Middle Egyptian in this case) without boring us to death while showcasing some of the most important and commonly used vocabulary and sentence structure.
So the text we will be looking at is the so-called Prophecy of Neferty, a prophetic, messianic (and retrospectively apocalyptic) evergreen of Ancient Egyptian literature. Set during the reign of King Snofru/Sneferu but conceptualized and written during the Middle Kingdom, the text deals with Egyptian concepts of collective trauma, chaos, ideal kingship, and political hierarchies.
(If you wonder why there are so many different spellings for this first true/non-crooked pyramid builder from the 4th dynasty, I refer to my article Mastering Hieroglyphs: The Challenges of Learning Ancient Egyptian about the missing vowels in their writing, but we will also be looking at his cartouche and explain further, so you can just keep reading)
Synopsis
The sage Neferti is summoned to the court of King Snefru of the Fourth Dynasty, in order to entertain the king with fine speeches. Asked to speak of the future rather than the past, he prophesies the destruction of the nation by civil war and its eventual redemption through the rise of a great king. He calls the redeemer “Ameny” - the short form of Amenemhet- and thereby provides the clues to the understanding of the work.
Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 1973
Historical Context
The prophecy is preserved on a manuscript from the 18th Dynasty (called P. Leningrad1116B/Petersburg1116B/Hermitage1116B - depending on the publication) and on several Ramesside ostraca but the work was probably composed during the reign of Amenemhat I. and there is much debate about its purpose, (pseudo)-historicity and the apocalyptic themes used to emphasize the return of the great king Ameny after “a period of gloom and doom” as Miriam Lichtheim called it in her fundamental anthology of Ancient Egyptian literature. She also remarks that the prevalent theme of social distress was quite a common literary topos at the time and therefore required no specific historical phenomenon it refers to but instead alludes more to a phenomenon of civic disorders that broke out during his reign.
Some Egyptologists argue that the text unarguably laments the decline of Egypt as a country with the beginning of the Twelfth Dynasty and others interpret the dark prophecies set during the reign of King Snofru as a protomythical metaphor for the forces of chaos that constantly threatened Egypt and were therefore part of the collective psychological & cultural repertoire. Suffice it to say that literature (and texts of the Middle Kingdom in particular) played a decisive role in the political and societal discourse, forming a nexus of exchange between the populace and those with a sacred mandate of deterring eternal darkness and chaos.
EXERCISE
Read along and start to look for recurring Hieroglyphs (those who are familiar with the preceding lesson will already recognize words and signs)… pay special attention to the animal signs.
Disclaimer: I will be using a transliteration by Dr. Gabor Toth (Rutgers University), who gave me the idea to use Middle Egyptian literature as an example, and a translation by Miriam Lichtheim not only because she literally wrote the book on Ancient Egyptian Literature but simply because her prose is the most elegant. (If you do not believe me, here is the clunky word-by-word translation in comparison).
Translation
There was a time when the majesty of King Snefru, the justified, was beneficent king in this whole land. On one of those days /…
You always read in the direction facing the animals, and as you can see in the transliteration, there are barely any vowels, except for the sound W read as U (as in music), the I and two different A sounds written like a disjointed - 3 - or an apostrophe - ‘ - of which the first one (transcribed like a three) is pronounced like the A in apostrophe and the - ‘ - is pronounced like a guttural, throaty A (similar to the Arabic Ajin). When the H has a line underneath, it also means a guttural hissing sound, like the Swiss guttural ch-sound. When a D or a T has a line, you form a dj-sound as in jaguar or joke.
Since there is no certainty about the missing vowels (and the original sounds can only be reconstructed from Ancient Egyptian phonetic remnants in modern Coptic) the rule of thumb is to insert an E where you have a conglomerate of nouns. Which brings us to the first word:
This is a nice recap of the preceding lesson (Breaking the Code): we see the folded cloth (letter S), the heart and lungs (Three-Consonant-Sing: NFR) - which also translates into beauty - and the little horned viper (letter F) with the mouth (Letter R) underneath, while the curl at the end stands for the letter W (or U as in music).
So the obedient linguist will transcribe this as SNEFERU, following the rule to insert an E everywhere. Others, however, will follow the spellings of historical sources (i.e. Herodotus or after the Hellenistic conquest of Egypt), where we find Greek or Roman interpretations of these historical names. This is why there is such a plethora of spellings (even or prophet Neferty/i has two different ones).
Also familiar from previous readings is the Scarab (HPR - “to form /come into being”) and the Bee (BITI - “bee”) as part of the spelling of the title NSW.T BJ.TJ (say Nesut Beetee) - King of Upper & Lower Egypt before the cartouche of SNEFERU.
Please also notice the Hare with the water lines forming the word WNN (speak WENEN - “to be”) which is used here in conjunction with the Scarab word (HPR.N) to build a standard phrase (of which there are many) similar to our once upon a time. But since WNN means to be, it is an essential word to keep in mind.
1. (tiny) Grammar Lesson: Non-verbal Sentences & Ancient Egyptian Syntax
Another important Hieroglyph and our first excursion into Ancient Egyptian grammar is the Owl.
Ancient Egyptian uses no punctuation, commata, declension (to denote Nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, or other cases) and not even spaces between words to let you know where one thing ends and a new one begins.
Therefore, prepositions are your best friends and the Owl-M is one of them, denoting the purpose or use of or the location of an object. Here it stands for the “in” of in this land, or in the last line in the text above, it is the “of” in on one of these days (say: UA M NEN HERU CHEPER.U).
However, it has another function that is rather important in the Ancient Egyptian language: it sometimes marks the place where usually a verb would be in a so-called nonverbal sentence (a clause that lacks a verb as its core element, instead relying on nouns, adjectives, or other parts of speech to convey meaning). Prepositions like the M-Owl establish relationships between words in a sentence, indicating where, when, how, or why something is happening. It can also mark an Adverbial Sentence where the predicate is not a verb but a prepositional phrase starting with an M-Owl.
Like in the second line where it says “the justified, was beneficent king in this whole land.” and the first owl is part of an adverbial sentence while the second one is a preposition (word by word the Hieroglyphs read: justified was Adverbial-M-Owl = was/is King Beneficient Preposition-M-Owl = of this whole land). Another interesting detail about Egyptian nonverbal sentences is, that they are unmarked for tense, so they are suspended in time. They can be used either without reference to a particular time or with more limited reference to the past, presence, or future and are ideal therefore ideal to express meaning timelessly, like “Life is good” or as an Egyptian would say “LIFE GOOD”.
Mastering Hieroglyphs is highly dependent on gleaning sense from a seemingly endless stream of signs and this is where we start to see the importance of syntax (set of rules a language uses to combine words into phrases) in Ancient Egyptian and it is important to keep in mind that the order in which the words are combined is the most significant give away of their function within a sentence.
Story/Framing Device
The story continues with Snofru asking for the daily report of his magistrates (customary at an Ancient Egyptian court):
Translation:
/the magistrates of the residence entered the palace to offer greetings. And they went out having offered greetings in accordance with their daily custom. Then his majesty said to the seal-bearer at his side: “Go, bring me the magistrates of the residence who have gone from here after today’s greetings.”
They were ushered in to him (5) straightway and were on their bellies before his majesty a second time.
VOCABULARY
as a recap from the first article on Mastering Hieroglyphs, you will recognize the Djet-Cobra forming the word “to say” in the text.
LPH - The Memphite Formula - which is abbreviated in the transcript as LPH and appears after every mention of the Pharaoh, is short for Life, Prosperity, Health and a standardized blessing saying "may he live, be prosperous, be healthy".
If you see a seal-bearer Hieroglyph like the one below, it means there is a magistrate involved (there will be a whole lesson on titles and names coming up) and once you start looking for this, you will find that most texts you see have a seal-bearer like this in them, which not only attests to the enormous bureaucracy in Ancient Egypt, it also shows who was able to afford proper burial, rituals, statues or inscriptions.
Interlude (Neferty is being fetched and urged to oracle away at the king’s behest)
His majesty said to them: “Comrades, I have had you summoned in order that you seek out for me a son of yours who is wise, or a brother of yours who excels, or a friend of yours who has done a noble deed, so that he may speak to me some fine words, choice phrases at the hearing of which my majesty may be entertained.”
They were on their bellies before his majesty once more. Then they spoke before his majesty: “There is a great lector-priest of Bastet, O king, our lord, Neferti (10) by name. He is a citizen with valiant arm, a scribe excellent with his fingers, a gentleman of greater wealth than any peer of his. May he be brought for your majesty to see!” Said his majesty: “Go, bring him to me!” He was ushered in to him straightway, and he was on his belly before his majesty.
His majesty said: “Come, Neferti, my friend, speak to me some fine words, choice phrases at the hearing of which my majesty may be entertained!” Said the lector-priest Neferti: “Of what has happened or of what will happen, O king, my lord ?” (15) Said his majesty: “Of what will happen. As soon as today is here, it is passed over.” He stretched out his hand to a box of writing equipment, took scroll and palette and began to put into writing the words of the lector-priest Neferti, that wise man of the East, servant of Bastet in her East, and native of the nome of On.
As he deplored what had happened in the land, evoked the state of the East, with Asiatics roaming in their strength, frightening those about to harvest and seizing cattle from the plough, (20) he said:
The Prophecy
Stir, my heart,
Bewail this land, from which you have sprung!
When there is silence before evil,
And when what should be chided is feared,
Then the great man is overthrown in the land of your birth.
Tire not while this is before you,
Rise against what is before you!
(…)
I show you the land in turmoil,
What should not be has come to pass.
Men will seize weapons of warfare,
The land will live in (40) uproar.
Men will make arrows of copper,
Will crave blood for bread,
Will laugh aloud at distress.
None will weep over death,
None will wake fasting for death,
Each man’s heart is for himself.
Mourning is not done today,
Hearts have quite abandoned it.
A man sits with his back turned,
While one slays another.
I show you the son as enemy, the brother as foe,
A man (45) slaying his father.
(…)
Men will live in the graveyard.
The beggar will gain, riches,
The great [will rob] to live.
The poor will eat bread,
The slaves will be exalted.
(…)