honorific transposition

English

Examples

The Egyptian idiom ḥm-nṯr (“priest”, literally “servant of the god”) is written , which would appear to read *nṯr-ḥm. However, this phrase shows honorific transposition of the nṯr glyph. Other examples of this same phenomenon include: The word nswt (“king”) is written instead of the incorrect . The term mdw-nṯr (“hieroglyphs”, literally “god’s speech”) is written instead of the incorrect . The royal name z-n-wsrt (“Senwosret”) is written instead of the incorrect . The royal name mry-rꜥ (“Meryre”) is written instead of the incorrect .

Noun

honorific transposition (countable and uncountable, plural honorific transpositions)

1. (linguistics, Egyptology) A shift in the sign order of a compound word or common phrase, to make certain religiously significant terms (e.g. nswt, nṯr, rꜥ) appear at the front of the word or phrase.

References

• James P[eter] Allen (2010) Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 44.