Introduction and onomatopoeia

Introducing the nedj-nedj blog

Those new to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs will not know anything about the design (picture, hieroglyphs) above, while those familiar with ancient Egyptian writing will know a great deal. But let us assume you are beginner.

Meaning
First, this is a word, and it means 'converse', or 'speak with another person'. It is pronounced like the name of the blog, 'nedj-nedj', although no-one knows today what the vowel sound really was. By and large, vowels were not included in hieroglyphic writing — and are not there in this word. So it could have been 'nudj-nudj','nodj-nodj', but possibly not 'nidj-nidj', as it would probably have been written differently. So too and for the same reason, 'not 'nadj-nadj'. In the absence of any vowel sound indication, I and probably most others just use the 'e' sound. Hence nedj-nedj.

Direction
Second, the word is read from the left. But it could equally have been written:

when it would have been read in the other, equally valid, direction. How do you know which way to read it? You read 'into the faces'. The faces, where they occur, always look towards the start of the word. Usually somewhere in an ancient Egyptian word or piece of text there is a human or animal with a face, and this informs you of the direction to read in.

Order of reading
Third, you read from top to bottom in any sign or 'glyph' group. So the snake is read first, then the wavy line. (But also see the 'apparent contradiction' section below.)

Glyph names — in this blog and officially
I, your blogger (and my name is Jeremy Steele — or Jeremy Macdonald Steele if you want to know the whole truth), have given each of these glyphs separate names, for my own purposes. They are names that will, I hope, spring to mind when I look at the signs. I have given them names so I can fairly easily refer to them, for purposes that will in all probability become clear if I persist with this blog. (And this blog continuation is not certain, as hieroglyphs for me is a hobby interest in retirement. I do not have any connection with Egypt really at all.) But back to the glyph names. The word above, for me, is:

cobra-J water cobra-J water  cross squattermouth

Real hieroglyph experts, and notably Sir Alan Gardiner,
Gardiner, Sir Alan Henderson. 1957 (2007). Egyptian Grammar: being an introduction to the study of hieroglyphs. 3rd ed., rev. ed. Oxford: Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, by Oxford University Press.
have looked at all the glyphs, worked out what they represented, classified them into groups, and given them all individual numbers. And this was wonderful work, and everybody follows this system. And I do too, except for the names I have given them. The names I have used are what come to mind when I look at the glyphs. For many of the glyphs apparently represent things that do not exist in our modern world, or if they do they require a leap of imagination to make the connection. And should you, dear blog reader, come up with a better name than I have done, and tell me, then I might change it. But the new name would have to be obvious, and preferably short. Thus you might improve upon 'squattermouth' because it is long.

Cobra-J

However, to return to the theme, and by way of explanation, there are quite a few different 'cobra' glyphs, and the one that looks like the one used here is pronounced /j/, which I always transcribe as /dj/. (I do this to contrast it with another glyph which we normally think of as being pronounced 'ch' (as in 'chop'), which I respell as /tj/. So 'j', 'ch' — /dj/, /tj/ — you can see and hear the difference.

Water

The wavy line is 'water', for that is what it really was intended to represent. It is pronounced /n/

Cross

The glyph 'cross' looks like a cross. But there are other different 'cross' glyphs, and they have slightly different names, for me.

Squattermouth

The man is squatting, and he has his hand to his mouth. (There is a similar and very common glyph without the hand to the mouth, and this is of course simply 'squatter'.)

Determinatives

Perhaps it was because this word could have been pronounced 'nudj-nudj','nodj-nodj' or 'nedj-nedj' that the ancient scribes decided to give the reader some help. The help comes in the two clues at the end, cross and squattermouth. The second of these is obvious even across the millennia, and tells the reader the word has something to do with the mouth: as indeed 'conversing' does.

As to the first, the cross, well, that is partly what makes much of this fascinating, though it does not really matter. Gardiner says of the cross, which he placed in a small group of 'doubtful' signs with the indicator 'Aa', and numbered Aa27: "The view that the sign depicts a winder for thread ... is not supported by the earlier forms. It has also been thought to represent a porridge-stirrer ..."

Alphabetic signs

So the word 'nedj-nedj' (meaning 'converse') consists of two alphabetic signs, repeated. It is reminiscent of our 'yak-yak'. The Macquarie Dictionary says of 'yak': "to talk or chatter, esp. pointlessly and continuously. [imitative]".

The signs used in the word that give it its sound are n and dj, the latter actually being 'j'. These are two of 24 'alphabetic' signs.

But there are other glyphs we may come to, a large number, representing 2 consonants together, or a group of 3 consonants.

Apparent contradiction in arrangement: pleasing the eye of the beholder

If the signs in:

are read left to right, and top to bottom, then how can the reading be 'nedj' and not 'djen-djen'? Well, the answer lies in the practical matter of producing a pleasing visual result.  Here is the sign sequence in a straight line:

Because the scribes were dealing with signs that were sometimes tall (as the cross), or wide (as water) or other shape (as the cobra-J), it was more visually pleasing to group the signs aesthetically in rectangular segments or areas, and this was done in the case of the word 'nedj-nedj', by sliding the water sign into the space below the cobra-J sign, with the visually pleasing if not strictly correctly spelt result.

And these signs were not rendered by the ancient Egyptian scribes on paper, but often carved in granite, or made out of precious stones, painted on walls, or written on papyrus. This was 'sacred-writing', and was made by the scribes to look good. Much of the writing was done to please the pharaohs.

Onomatopaeic words
The word for 'ram' is:

officially written b3 and pronounced 'ba'.

Likewise the word for 'cat' is:

officially written mỉw and pronounced 'mew'.

From this it can be seen that the names of these animals is actually what they themselves 'say', 'baa' and 'mew'. The same idea occurs in our time in the bird 'cuckoo, and in Australian birds 'mopoke', and 'currawong', From the ancient Egyptian names of the ram and cat, these animals apparently have not altered the sounds they make over the great interval of time, and over the many generations.