Journal issue

Sometime in the 14th century BC, the widow of an Egyptian king contacted the Hittite Great King Šuppiluliuma I with the request to send a son of his as her future husband and king of Egypt. Like many episodes of the Amarna Period, this one too remains vague as neither Egyptian nor Hittite sources are sufficient to reconstruct the course of events, let alone their background, in desirable detail, but it is certain that the Hittite prince died before this interdynastic Hittite-Egyptian marriage took place. Among many uncertainties, the name of Prince Zannanza stands out, because it has been subject to utterly contradictory interpretations. On the one hand, it has been judged as a Hittite cuneiform rendering of Egyptian s#-njśwt (or hypothetical *s#-n.j-njśwt) “king’s son” to the result that the entire episode is a fable; on the other hand, it has been understood as a proper Anatolian personal name the etymology of which is unknown.
A closer look at the philological and linguistic details shows that Zannanza- cannot be a Hittite cuneiform rendering of Egyptian s#-njśwt (or hypothetical *s#-n.j-njśwt) “king’s son” for reasons of phonology and morphology. Instead Zannanza- belongs to a group of personal names in the Indo-European section of the Anatolian onomasticon with the suffix -anza-. Al­though any attempt at an etymological interpretation remains tentative, the first component of Zannanza may be traced back to a hypothetical Luvian adjective zanna- “sharp, acute, clever”. The name of Prince Zannanza would thus mean “the clever one”.

“Competitive Comparison in Egyptian Statements about Man, King and God, with an Epilogue on the God of Amarna”
This paper lists and discusses competitive statements with comparative and superlative expressions of various kinds. The examples of the subgroups are organised according to the group of persons – man, king and god – to which the statement applies. Finally, singularity and incomparability statements about the god of Amarna are considered in the intertextual and rhetorical context of the analysed competitive statements.

This article critically re-evaluates the traditional classification of Egyptian verbal roots, a foundational concept in Egyptian and Coptic linguistics that has remained largely unchallenged since its introduction over a century ago. Although widely used in grammars, dictionaries, and historical linguistic studies, no systematic reassessment of their definition has ever been undertaken since their adoption. This study addresses this gap by examining the structure of roots, stems, and morphological patterns across Egyptian and Coptic. It introduces a new notational system designed to represent the verbal system more accurately and argues for a redefinition of verbal classes based on greater internal coherence. The analysis demonstrates that several established categories, including III-weak, II-gem, and IV-weak, are not independent classes but rather paradigmatic variants of strong bi- (or 2 strong + 1 weak) and tri-consonantal roots. The revised model provides a simpler and more consistent framework, with broad implications for the study of Egyptian morphology, phonology, and historical linguistics.

Maximizers are expressions denoting large quantities or extents. Some of them function as negation strengtheners. This article aims at giving an overview of negation strengtheners in Egyptian-Coptic, focusing on maximizers.

“On the n-prefix of Demotic statives of verbs of movement, or: On the origin of Coptic nêu ‘come’ ”
The Coptic stative verb ⲛⲏⲩ “to come” cannot derive from the syntagm m |w.t (preposition + infinitive) as generally assumed. While the function and the syntactic category are consistent with this etymology, the morphology of the verb stem is not. Instead, it is proposed that a blending of two different patterns, preposition + infinitive and stative, has occurred. This became possible because speakers of Late Egyptian no longer recognized the element m as a preposition, but reinterpreted it as a particle, which is less selective in terms of its syntactic environment. This circumstance enabled the stative to occupy the position of the infinitive even after m. The replacement was part of a general trend in Later Egyptian to abandon the infinitive in favour of the stative in the Durative Pattern of intransitive verbs.

This study examines the earliest attestations of Maat in Egyptian history. The evidence suggests that the goddess was introduced during the early First Dynasty, and not during the reign of King Sekhemib as previously thought. The orthography of the early references will also be considered, as well as their implications for our understating of Maat’s early history.

It is well known that the Early Egyptian subjunctive sDm-f of ult. -i roots can be found with and without a final written -y. The usual assumption is that this is an optional feature. However, a close investigation into different key diagnostic environments for the form reveals that the variance has a more intricate and systematic distribution. This raises significant challenges for the study and reconstruction of the Earlier Egyptian suffix-conjugation.

The following miscellany discusses the group Aa1:D21:M3 attested in a text from the temple of Philae. We propose that this be included in the list of compound prepositions incorporating the element X(t): Xr-X(t).