rmṯ

See also: rmt and RMT

Egyptian

Pronunciation

 

• (reconstructed) IPA^(key): /ˈɾaːmac/ → /ˈɾaːmaʔ/ → /ˈɾaːma/ → /ˈɾoːmə/

• (Old Egyptian, c. 2500 BCE) IPA^(key): /ˈɾaːmac/
• (Middle Egyptian, c. 1700 BCE) IPA^(key): /ˈɾaːmaʔ/
• (Amarna-period Late Egyptian, c. 1350 BCE) IPA^(key): /ˈɾaːma/
• (latest Late Egyptian, c. 800 BCE) IPA^(key): /ˈɾoːmə/

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /rɛmɛt͡ʃ/
  • Conventional anglicization: remetj

Noun

 m f

1. human, human being, person
2. someone, anyone
3. (with following genitive) person in (someone’s) service, commissioner, agent (of someone)
4. (with following genitive) member (of a group or organization)
5. (in the plural) people, humans
6. (in the plural) the people, the masses
7. (in the plural, with following genitive) household; housemates or relatives (of someone)
8. (in the plural, with following genitive) population, dwellers, inhabitants (of a particular place)
9. (in the plural) Egyptians in contrast to Libyans, Nubians, Asiatics, etc.

Usage notes

In the Old Kingdom, this word was consistently masculine and usually distinct in its singular and plural forms. By the Middle Kingdom, its final consonant changed to t, with the consequence that the word changed genders to become feminine, and the singular was no longer typically distinguished in writing from its plural form. The written form from this time on occasionally included both the old and new consonants as rmṯt. Before the beginning of the New Kingdom, syllable-final t was lost throughout Egyptian, and in Late Egyptian the word returned to being masculine.

For many years Egyptologists distinguished this word as a masculine noun in its sense of ‘person’, etc., from a supposedly separate feminine collective term rmṯt (“people, humanity”); it is now clear the two words are one and the same, with the different written forms resulting from attempts to render the changing pronunciation (and gender) of the word as the final consonant first became t and then was elided entirely.

Inflection

Declension of rmṯ (masculine)

singular	rmṯ
dual	rmṯwj
plural	rmṯw

Declension of rmt (feminine)

singular	rmt
dual	rmtj
plural	rmwt

Alternative forms

In the Old Kingdom, singular and plural forms are usually distinct, but seemingly plural forms are occasionally used as singulars, with most examples of this phenomenon found in the Pyramid Texts:

Old Kingdom hieroglyphic writings of singular rmṯ  

rmṯ	rmṯ	rmṯ	rmṯ	rmṯ
[Pyramid Texts]	[Pyramid Texts]	[Old Kingdom]	[Old Kingdom]	[Old Kingdom]
		usual singular outside the Pyramid Texts. Reading disputed; may also be read as z	attested only once, Urk. I 71, 3	attested only once as singular, Urk. I 150, 9

Old Kingdom hieroglyphic writings of plural rmṯw  

rmṯw	rmṯw	rmṯw	rmṯw	rmṯw	rmṯw	rmṯw	rmṯw	rmṯw	rmṯw
[Pyramid Texts]	[Pyramid Texts]	[Pyramid Texts]	[Old Kingdom]	[Old Kingdom]	[Old Kingdom]	[Old Kingdom]	[Old Kingdom]	[Old Kingdom]	[Old Kingdom]
			most common form outside Pyramid Texts

Inscriptions of the First Intermediate Period and Coffin Texts show a comprehensive collapse of the singular and plural written forms; from this point on they are no longer differentiated. By the start of the Middle Kingdom, the final consonant sound has changed from ṯ to t, and occasional writings reflecting this sound change begin to appear from the 12th Dynasty onward:

Post-Old Kingdom hieroglyphic writings of singular/plural rmṯ  

rmṯ	rmṯ	rmṯ	rmṯ	rmwt	rmt	rmṯt
[since the First Intermediate Period]	[since the First Intermediate Period]	[since the First Intermediate Period]	[since the First Intermediate Period]	[Coffin Texts]	[since the 12th Dynasty]	[since the 12th Dynasty]
most common form after the Old Kingdom				attested only once, CT I 76i B4C

By Late Egyptian, the final t is no longer pronounced in most circumstances; in situations where it is retained, such as when the word has an attached suffix pronoun, an additional t or tw is sometimes written at the end of the word to mark its retention.

Descendants

• Demotic: (rmt) (see there for further descendants)

References

• “rmṯ (lemma ID 94530)” and “rmṯ.t (lemma ID 94550)”, 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 421.9–424.18
• Faulkner, Raymond Oliver (1962) A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Oxford: Griffith Institute, →ISBN, pages 149–150