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 adjectivesjpf andjptf. When used in this way, it precedes the noun, with the genitival adjectiven(j) in between, e.g. "those feet" isnf n(j) rdw (literally "that of feet").
It forms a contrastive pair with the demonstrative pronounnn, in whichnf isdistal.
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.
ꜥḥꜥ.n sbt.n.f jm.j m nn ḏd.n.j mnf 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 at this that I’d said – as beingwrong to his mind, saying to me: Are you abundant in myrrh, turned into a lord of incense?[1]
“nf (lemma ID 851524)” and “nf (lemma ID 83280)”, inThesaurus 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
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, 218.
Loprieno, Antonio (1995),Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,→ISBN,pages68–70
^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.
