Over the chasm of time from the ancient Egyptians to the present, when someone tries to work out what they were really saying, many problems arise. Was something deliberate, a stylistic variation, or was it an error in writing by the scribe of the day or by a later transcriber? Here is an example, to do with Hedj. There are plentiful examples, and the following is typical, meaning basically ‘bright’.
Example 1
(ḥd: Hedj)
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"white"
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bright
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Faulkner Concise [181:13.11]
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<streetlight cobra-J sun>
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There are concepts deriving from Hedj which a moment’s reflection allows one readily to accept. Such as: dawn, anything white — such as white linen, or the white crown of southern of Upper Egypt, even silver.
Unexpected meanings for Hedj
Unclear — but not for the moment pursued — meanings for Hedj are such words as: ‘hurt’, ‘mace’ (unless the mace were white or bright), ‘bad’. For example:
Example 2
(ḥd: hedj)
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"hurt"
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destroy
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Gardiner [615.2:18]
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<streetlight cobra-J cross-X>
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though Gardiner, followed by Faulkner, renders the same or similar glyphs as Hedji:
Examples 3a and 3b
(ḥdi: Hedji)
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"damage"
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destroy
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Gardiner [583.2:3.1]
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<streetlight cobra-J cross-X sparrow>
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(ḥdỉ: Hedji)
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"injure"
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destroy
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Faulkner Concise [182:2]
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<streetlight cobra-J cross-X>
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PUZZLE: er Hedj
A puzzle arose with the expression er Hedj. Generally er is one of several prepositions given multiple meaning in English — such as ‘against’, ‘more than’, and especially ‘to’. So Wallace-Budge (EAWB) provides er Hedj in one of his sentences:
Example 4
(er ḥe’t - ta: er Hedj)
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"until the daybreak"
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to bright [to dawn]
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EAWB [161:1.3]
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<mouth streetlight cobra-J sun strip: extras>
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where er is understandable as ‘to’ (until), as is given in the translation ‘until the daybreak’, i.e. to a time when it is ‘bright’ (Hedj), as at dawn.
Complicating the issue is the following er Hedj example that EAWB also offers:
Example 5
(re-ḥe´t: er Hedj)
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"storehouses"
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treasury
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EAWB [120:5.3]
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<mouth stroke streetlight house PLURAL>
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where er Hedj is said to mean ‘storehouses’ (or ‘treasury’). At first sight at least, this example has nothing to do with ‘bright’ or any sense of ‘bad’. Furthermore the er <mouth> glyph has a STROKE after it, which is not likely for the preposition er.
Your amateur Egyptologist searched the Nedj Nedj database by glyph sequence and respelling, and found a possible answer to the riddle. er Hedj might have been an error for per Hedj (i.e. with an initial /p/], as indicated by the next example, supplied by both Gardiner and Faulkner:
Example 6
(pr-ḥd: per Hedj)
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"treasury"
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treasury [house white]
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Gardiner [565.2:6.81]
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<house streetlight house>
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(pr-ḥd: per-hedj)
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"treasury"
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treasury [house white]
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Faulkner Concise [90:3]
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<house streetlight house>
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Gardiner added a helpful additional comment: ‘lit. white house’. So it seems per Hedj really meant ‘house bright (white)’, and for some unknown reason this white house signified a ‘treasury’. So er Hedj might have been a mis-hearing, or mis-rendering, of per Hedj millennia ago.
A combined form of the glyph was also in use for per Hedj:
Example 7
(pr-ḥd: per Hedj)
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"treasury"
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treasury [house white]
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Gardiner [565.2:6.82]
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<house+streetlight>
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(per ḥe´t: per Hedj)
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"white house"
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treasury [house white]
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EAWB [77:7]
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<house+streetlight>
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provided by both Gardiner and EAWB.
The question then arose as to whether EAWB’s er Hedj example meaning ‘treasury’ somehow was a glyph mis-spelling of per ‘house’ that for some reason lacked the initial /p/ <stool> . From the database at least this seems unlikely. While per ‘house’ might have been rendered pr <stool mouth> somewhere, sometime, in ancient Egypt, this form was not found in the database, only the ‘house’ glyph form occurring, as in the following example, where the <house> glyph is seen with a STROKE.
Example 8
(r pr: er perH)
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"to the house"
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house to / for
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Col/Man [10:2]
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<mouth house stroke>
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Conclusion
‘Hedj’ basically means ‘bright’. It appears to have a negative meaning as well (‘destroy’, ‘hurt’, ‘evil’ and so on). And the beginner needs to be aware that instances such as er Hedj are not always what they seem to be at first.
Jeremy Steele
Sunday 19 May 2013
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Sunday 19 May 2013
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