peti, peter: who? what? see

It is probably impossible to resolve now, but did the Ancient Egyptians (AE) say peti or peter for ‘who’, ‘what’?

The fact that peter also was used for ‘see’ is probably just a coincidence of language. Its use for senses of vision is usually marked by an appropriate determinative suggesting ‘eye’. 

We look at the ‘see’ examples first:

Table 1: peter: ‘see’

In this group the basic <stool bun mouth> 

configuration provides the reading ptr: peter, and the vision determinative shows it is to do with seeing. The last two examples have no vision determinative.

Table 2: who, what

In the ‘who / what’ interrogative pronoun group above, the determinative used is not vision but <SQUATTERMOUTH> 

— once again except for the last two. Once again, too, in every case the basic <stool bun mouth> 

configuration provides the reading ptr: peter.

Table 3: peti

There is, however, another group for which the scholars give a different reading, although it might in reality have been the same. Here are the examples:

All of this group has the <SQUATTERMOUTH> 

determinative, and the only difference in the ‘spelling' is in the first example, with < twig> 

instead of < twig: mouth> 

— the <mouth> portion of which does suggest /r/ of ptr: peter. It seems the scholars have decided the < twig: mouth> sign is a determinative and not part of the spelling of the sound of the word, on the basis that it occurs after the <pair> 

sign. But was it correct to assume this? There are many instances when scribes did not follow the strict sign-sound order, and not only for honorific (gods, pharoahs first) or graphic (what looks nicest) reasons. The <pair> 

sign in these examples indicates agency, the do-er of an action or role. Why the scribes chose to put it in front of the <twig> sign is unknown, but it does not really assure that the /r/ in the < twig: mouth> 

sign was NOT to be pronounced. In fact the first two examples in Table 3, repeated below:

Table 4: peter-i

include the alternative agency sign <reed> 

making the form peter-i: ‘who agent’, rather than peti.

Consequently to your amateur student of the hieroglyphs, it would seem that the probable correct reading of the peti examples might be peter-i.

Jeremy Steele

Sunday 28 July 2013

=================