bw-nb

Egyptian

Etymology

bw (“place, thing, -ness”) +‎ nb (“every”).

Pronunciation

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /buː nɛb/
  • Conventional anglicization: bu-neb

Noun

 m

1. everyone [since the Middle Kingdom]

   Synonym: ḥr-nb

   • c. 1550 BCE – 1295 BCE, Great Hymn to Osiris (Stela of Amenmose, Louvre C 286) line 21:

     bw-nb ḫntš(.w) jbw nḏm(.w) ḥꜣtjw ẖr ršwt

     Everybody is glad, minds are sweet, hearts are in joy.

2. the masses, the common people

Usage notes

This word is sometimes treated as a plural.

Alternative forms

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of bw-nb  

bw-nb	b-nb	b-nb	b-nb	bw-nbw	b-nbw
	[New Kingdom]	[New Kingdom]	[New Kingdom]	[New Kingdom]	[Greco-Roman Period]

References

• “bw-nb (lemma ID 55210)”, in Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae‎^[1], Corpus issue 17, Web app version 2.01 edition, 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, 2004–15 December 2022
• Erman, Adolf, Grapow, Hermann (1926) Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache‎^[2], volume 1, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN, pages 452.6–452.8
• Faulkner, Raymond Oliver (1962) A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Oxford: Griffith Institute, →ISBN, page 81