Ankh wedja seneb () is an
Egyptian
''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt.
Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to:
Nations and ethnic groups
* Egyptians, a national group in North Africa
** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...
phrase which often appears
after the names of
pharaoh
Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian language, Egyptian: ''wikt:pr ꜥꜣ, pr ꜥꜣ''; Meroitic language, Meroitic: 𐦲𐦤𐦧, ; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') was the title of the monarch of ancient Egypt from the First Dynasty of Egypt, First Dynasty ( ...
s, in references to their household, or at the ends of letters. The formula consists of three
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined Ideogram, ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct char ...
without clarification of pronunciation, making its exact grammatical form difficult to reconstruct. It may be expressed as "life, prosperity, and health", but
Alan Gardiner
Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner, (29 March 1879 – 19 December 1963) was an English Egyptologist, linguist, philologist, and independent scholar. He is regarded as one of the premier Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century.
Personal li ...
proposed that they represented verbs in the
stative
In linguistics, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are static, or unchanging ...
form: "Be alive, strong, and healthy".
Components
Egyptian hieroglyphs did not record
vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
values, making the exact pronunciation of most words unknowable. The conventional
Egyptological pronunciation
The Egyptian language, or Ancient Egyptian (; ), is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world fo ...
s of the words , , and are ''ankh'', ''wedja'' and ''seneb'' respectively.
*
Ankh
The ankh or key of life is an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol used to represent the word for "life" and, by extension, as a symbol of life itself.
The ankh has a T-shape topped by a droplet-shaped loop. It was used in writing as a tri ...
means "life" and "to have life", "to live", particularly with regard to the longevity and resurrection of the
ancient Egyptian deities
Ancient Egyptian deities are the gods and goddesses worshipped in ancient Egypt. The beliefs and rituals surrounding these gods formed the core of ancient Egyptian religion, which emerged sometime in prehistory. Deities represented natural f ...
and pharaohs
*Wedja means "to be whole" or "intact", with connotations of "prosperity" and "well-being"
*Seneb means "to be sound", "to be well", "to be healthy"
Rosetta Stone
On the
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is a stele of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a Rosetta Stone decree, decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of ancient Egypt, Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts ...
(196 BCE), the gods are said to reward the
Ptolemaic pharaoh
The Ptolemaic dynasty (; , ''Ptolemaioi''), also known as the Lagid dynasty (, ''Lagidai''; after Ptolemy I's father, Lagus), was a Macedonian Greek royal house which ruled the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Ancient Egypt during the Hellenistic period. R ...
Ptolemy V Epiphanes
Ptolemy V Epiphanes Eucharistus (, ''Ptolemaĩos Epiphanḗs Eukháristos'' "Ptolemy the Manifest, the Beneficent"; 9 October 210–September 180 BC) was the Pharaoh, King of Ptolemaic Egypt from July or August 204 BC until his death in 180 BC.
...
:
[Line 35.]
See also
*
Ankh
The ankh or key of life is an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol used to represent the word for "life" and, by extension, as a symbol of life itself.
The ankh has a T-shape topped by a droplet-shaped loop. It was used in writing as a tri ...
References
Citations
Bibliography
*, reprinted at Berlin by Akademie-Verlag GmbH in 1971.
* {{citation , authorlink=E. A. Wallis Budge , last=Budge , first=E.A. Wallis , title=The Rosetta Stone , date=1929 .
Ancient Egyptian words and phrases
Egyptian hieroglyphs