The Nedj Nedj databases 6 SEARCHES 6.1: The five searcher panels

6. SEARCHES

6.1 THE FIVE SEARCHER PANELS

Occupying much of the central part of the Overview layout are the five search panels:

1. Searcher: respelt (brown)

2. Searcher: baseline (light brown)

3. Searcher: glyph sequence (lilac)

4. Searcher: meaning (grey)

5. Searcher: EngJSM (yellow)

Illustration Fig. 6.1 was presented earlier. It shows that below, alongside, or within each ‘searcher panel’ there is a small red-bordered searcher field. It is into this field the user types the word to be searched for.

Fig. 6.11 Analysis of the ‘Overview’ screen (Fig. 2.3 above, repeated)

Searcher: English

Imagine you wanted to search to see what the Ancient Egyptian word for ‘desert’ might be. You would enter this word in the red-bordered yellow searcher field below the EngJSM searcher panel and the following would be the result:

Fig. 6.12 EngJSM search for ‘desert’

Searcher: respelt

‘That’s interesting’, you might say on seeing KHAset. ‘Could that be KHAs-et, with a relative suffix?’ So you would enter KHAs in the red-bordered brown searcher field within the respelt searcher. This would yield the following result:

Fig. 6.13 respelt search for KHAs

‘That’s interesting’, you might say again. ‘Stream . . . fancy that being related in some way to the words for desert. Could there be a connection? Perhaps it’s just a coincidence.’ And as there is no further line of enquiry to follow, you might leave it there.

Or perhaps you might remember that there is an Ancient Egyptian word deseret or something like it, resembling ‘desert’. Why not look that up? So you enter that in the respelt searcher field. Bad luck: nil result. 

You try djeseret. Aha! It brings up:

Fig. 6.14 respelt search for djeseret

Regrettably ‘ale’ does not suggest anything relevant here. 

Searcher: baseline

What about desheret? Nil result again. What about trying it in the baseline searcher? So you enter desheret in the red-bordered baseline searcher field. Bingo! There is a result:

Fig. 6.15 baseline search for desheret

‘Now that’s really interesting,’ you might say. ‘It mean’s “red”. And the desert in Egypt looks quite red. But the baseline searcher only shows two lines? Can I see more?’ So you flick the screen to the right and find a fuller version of the baseline searcher.

Fig. 6.16. Expanded baseline search for desheret

Now you see desher-et also means ‘Crown of Lower Egypt’ (red crown), ‘red land’, ‘red pot’, and ‘wrath’. These are all ‘red’ things. And you might well conclude that desheret must surely be the origin of the English word ‘desert’.

Searcher: respelt

But what might desher on its own mean, without the relative -et suffix? So your enter desher into the red-bordered search field for the respelt panel. Now you get another positive result:

Fig. 6.17 Respelt search for desher

‘Well, that’s really interesting again’, you say. ‘ “blood” and “red” – but what about “flamingo”?’ Perhaps you could look up an image for this on the internet:

Fig. 6.18 Image of a flamingo found on the internet

A red bird. So they are all red things.

You could then go on to check ‘wrath’, ‘blood’, ‘red’, and anything you can think if that is red, using the red-border search field in the grey meaning search panel. This produces:

Fig. 6.19 Meaning panel search for ‘blood’

‘That’s interesting’, you might now say, noticing not only desher but also senef. What can you find out about senef? Is this really senef, or is it se-nef, with a se- causative (make / do) prefix? Why not try this in the baseline and respelt searchers? And indeed there are results for both, but this hunting through the database can go on almost endlessly, one thing so commonly leading to another.