ꜥḥꜥ.n sbt.n.f jm.j mnn ḏd.n.j m nf m jb.f ḏd.f n.j (j)n wr n.k ꜥntjw ḫpr.t(j) ⟨m⟩ nb sntr
Then he laughed at me – and atthis that I’d said – as being wrong to his mind, saying to me: Are you abundant in myrrh, turned into a lord of incense?[1]
This demonstrative is a pronoun, and so does not directly modify nouns. In Middle Egyptian it becomes used as a demonstrative for plural nouns in place of the old adjectivesjpn andjptn. When used in this way, it precedes the noun, with the genitival adjectiven(j) in between, e.g. "these feet" isnn n(j) rdw (literally "this of feet").
It forms a contrastive pair with the demonstrative pronounnf, in whichnn isproximal.
1 Unmarked for number and gender, but treated syntactically as masculine plurals when used with participles and relative forms, and as feminine singulars when referred to by resumptive pronouns.
Oréal hypothesizes an origin in a contraction ofnj(negative particle) +wn(“exists”), following Vergote and rejecting an earlier hypothesis by Osing and Loprieno that would suggest an origin innj(negative particle) +jn.[2]
When negating an adverbial or adjectival sentence, this particle stands near the beginning of the negated sentence, before the subject, but it can be preceded by other particles. It is followed by a nominal subject, a demonstrative pronoun, or a dependent pronoun as subject.
When (exceptionally) negating a nominal sentence, this particle either pairs with the particlejs like the ordinary negative particle for nominal sentences,nj, or simply stands by itself at the beginning of the sentence.
James P[eter] Allen (2010),Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,→ISBN,pages54–55, 194, 414.
^Or ‘You aren’t abundant in myrrh …’, if the initial particle is read as negativenj instead of interrogativejn. The expected negative particle for such a clause would benn, so an interrogative is more plausible. For a detailed discussion see Scalf, Foy (2009) “Is That a Rhetorical Question? Shipwrecked Sailor (pHermitage 1115) 150 Reconsidered” inZeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, volume 136, issue 2, pages 155–159.
^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
^H. O. Lange and H. Schäfer (1908)Grab- und Denksteine des Mittleren Reichs im Museum von Kairo, volume II, page 149
