ꜣyt

Egyptian

Pronunciation

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /ɑiːt/
  • Conventional anglicization: ayt

Verb

1. (intransitive, of the face) to blanch, to turn pale with fear^? [Middle Kingdom literature]
   • c. 2000 BCE – 1900 BCE, Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor (pHermitage/pPetersburg 1115) lines 111–113:

     ḏd.jn.f n.j m snḏ m zpwj snwj nḏs m ꜣ(y)tw ḥr.k pḥ.n.k wj

     So then he said to me: Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, little man. Don’t make your face blanch, as you have reached me.

   • c. 1859 BCE – 1840 BCE, The Story of Sinuhe, version B (pBerlin 3022 and pAmherst n-q) line 278:

     nn ꜣyt ḥr n(j) mꜣ ḥr.k

     The face of the one seeing your face will not blanch.

Usage notes

Erman and Grapow tentatively defined this word (as used in the Story of Sinuhe) as meaning ‘shy’ (‘scheu’), but a later identification of it with the alternative form given below, used as a verb in the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, brought about a reinterpretation as ‘to blanch’.

Alternative forms

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of ꜣyt  

ꜣt

References

• Faulkner, Raymond Oliver (1962) A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Oxford: Griffith Institute, →ISBN, pages 1, 6
• Erman, Adolf, Grapow, Hermann (1926) Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache‎^[1], volume 1, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN, pages 2.9, 23.1
• Gardiner, Alan (1948) “The First Two Pages of the Wörterbuch” in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 34, p. 16