(Old Egyptian,Middle Egyptian)asserts the reality of a following statement with a verb in the perfect, perfect passive, or imperfective, or else with an adverbial or adjectival predicate, probably serving as a realis modal particle; see usage notes
In Old and Middle Egyptian, this particle can stand at the beginning of adjectival, adverbial, and verbal sentences; it is followed by a nominal subject, a demonstrative pronoun, or an attached suffix pronoun. There is significant debate over what exactly it indicates in these stages of the language:
According to Allen, it indicates that the statement in the sentence is presented as true at the time of the statement, in contrast to false statements and statements which are always or generally true. It occurs at the start of independent clauses, but never those verbal clauses beginning with an imperative, bare stative, perfective, prospective, subjunctive, biliteral suffixed (contingent), or emphatic form. It also occurs at the start of subordinate adverbial clauses if their subject is pronominal, but never if it is nominal.
According to Loprieno, it is a ‘particle of initiality’ indicating that its sentence opens a new segment of discourse, with the semantic scope of an overt assertion of truth, and pragmatically relating the sentence to the speaker’s situation without necessarily implying direct involvement. However, in simple adverbial clauses with a pronominal subject, it can also serve as a semantically and syntactically neutral morpheme that only serves to carry an attached subject pronoun. In extremely rare cases, it can introduce the subject of an existential sentence consisting of just one element, an apparently archaic usage.
According to Hoch, it indicates that the statement is one that the speaker wishes to present as a fact, and it only occurs in main clauses.
It has frequently been characterized as an assertion particle, sometimes noting its apparent modal role marking realis statements.
In the so-called Standard Theory, its role was often considered purely syntactic, marking independent clauses; this view is no longer common. Some scholars working in the frame of the Standard Theory have suggested that bare (proclitic-less) sentences following one introduced by jw are main clauses that become hypotactically linked to the initial sentence in a chain of discourse, with the particle conveying the syntactic or pragmatic ‘theme’ of the whole and functioning as a nominal element.
In late writings this word becomes confused with jꜣt(“mound, lands, regions”) and is often written identically. Furthermore, in late usage this word comes to be used and written chiefly in the plural form.
Archaic or greatly restricted in usage by Middle Egyptian. The perfect has mostly taken over the functions of the perfective, and the subjunctive and periphrastic prospective have mostly replaced the prospective.
Declines using third-person suffix pronouns instead of adjectival endings: masculine .f/.fj, feminine .s/.sj, dual .sn/.snj, plural .sn.
From Middle Egyptian, this feminine singular form was generally used for the plural. In Late Egyptian, the masculine singular form was used with all nouns.
Archaic or greatly restricted in usage by Middle Egyptian. The perfect has mostly taken over the functions of the perfective, and the subjunctive and periphrastic prospective have mostly replaced the prospective.
Declines using third-person suffix pronouns instead of adjectival endings: masculine .f/.fj, feminine .s/.sj, dual .sn/.snj, plural .sn.
Loprieno, Antonio (1995) Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, pages 162–168
Junge, Friedrich (2005) Late Egyptian Grammar: An Introduction, second English edition, Oxford: Griffith Institute, pages 110, 122
Uljas, Sami (2007) The Modal System of Earlier Egyptian Complement Clauses: A Study in Pragmatics in a Dead Language, page 23–24
Oréal, Elsa (2022) “The negative existential cycle in Ancient Egyptian” in Ljuba Veselinova & Arja Hamari (eds.), The Negative Existential Cycle, Berlin: Language Science Press, pages 197–230
