ḏd-mdw

See also: Dd-mdw

Egyptian

FWOTD – 26 June 2013

Etymology

ḏd (“to say”) +‎ mdw (“speech, words”), with ḏd in the infinitive.

Pronunciation

 

• (reconstructed) IPA^(key): /ˌcʼaːtʼ maˈtʼuww/ → /ˌt͡ʃʼaːʔ maˈtʼuww/ → /t͡ʃʼəməˈtʼuww/ → /t͡ʃʼəməˈtʼøww/

• (Old Egyptian, c. 2500 BCE) IPA^(key): /ˌcʼaːtʼ maˈtʼuww/
• (Middle Egyptian, c. 1700 BCE) IPA^(key): /ˌt͡ʃʼaːʔ maˈtʼuww/
• (Amarna-period Late Egyptian, c. 1350 BCE) IPA^(key): /t͡ʃʼəməˈtʼuww/
• (latest Late Egyptian, c. 800 BCE) IPA^(key): /t͡ʃʼəməˈtʼøww/

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /d͡ʒɛd mɛduː/
  • Conventional anglicization: djed-medu

Noun

 m

1. (singular only) recitation (+ jn or (since the 19th Dynasty) n: by; + ḥr: about; + ḫft: when doing); used as a title to introduce various kinds of text to be recited [since the Pyramid Texts]
   1. introduces the words spoken by a particular god in temple inscriptions, monuments, and old religious texts
      • c. 1450 BCE, The Poetical Stela of Thutmose III: Part I, Cairo Museum 34010:

        ḏd-mdw jn jmn-rꜥ nb-nswt-tꜣwj

        A recitation by Amun-Ra, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands.

   2. introduces the main bulk of a religious spell or utterance, after any prologues
   3. introduces a line of text in general in some collections of religious utterances
2. introduces the name of a god, without any following text to be recited [Late Period]
3. (uncommon) written in place of omitted text; ‘the usual (words to recite)’
4. (rare, only attested in a single manuscript) introduces explanatory glosses to a text [Book of the Dead]
5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see ḏd,‎ mdw.

Usage notes

This term may be followed immediately by ḏd to indicate that the following text is to be recited without interruption after the preceding one, or by zp and a number to indicate how many times the following text is to be recited.

Alternative forms

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of ḏd-mdw  

ḏd-mdw	ḏd-mdw	ḏd-mdw	ḏd-mdw	ḏd-mdw
[since the Pyramid Texts]	[Pyramid Texts]	[since the Medical papyri]	[since the Book of the Dead]	[since the Book of the Dead]
usual form	rare

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of ḏd-mdw  

ḏd-mdw	ḏd-mdwt	ḏd-mdwt	ḏd-mdw	ḏd-mdw
[since the Book of the Dead]	[since the Book of the Dead]	[since the Book of the Dead]	[Greco-Roman Period]	[Greco-Roman Period]

Descendants

• Demotic: ḏd-mdt, ḏd-md
  • Bohairic Coptic: ϫⲉⲙⲧⲁⲩ (čemtau)

References

• “ḏd-mdw (lemma ID 186050)” and “ḏd (mdw) (lemma ID 852969)”, in Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae‎^[1], Corpus issue 18, Web app version 2.1.5, Tonio Sebastian Richter & Daniel A. Werning by order of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert & Peter Dils by order of the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 2004–26 July 2023
• Erman, Adolf, Grapow, Hermann (1928) Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache‎^[2], volume 2, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN, pages 180.8–180.10
• Erman, Adolf, Grapow, Hermann (1931) Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache‎^[3], volume 5, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN, pages 625.3–626.5
• Faulkner, Raymond Oliver (1962) A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Oxford: Griffith Institute, →ISBN, page 325
• James P[eter] Allen (2010) Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 169.