In Egyptian the water hieroglyph is pronounced by Egyptologists as /n/ but...?

Question

Hieroglyph [water] symbol is pronounced /n/ by Egyptologists from I believe the Hadrian cartouch, but everything I see leads to the conclusion that it was an /m/ and only later became /n/ during the Greco Roman period.

1.Coptic Egyptian word for [water] is 'moou' or 'mo', indicating by the acrophonic principle /m/.

2. In Hamito Semitic languages in general 'water' begins with the letter m and Egyptian is such a language. In Ancient Hebrew it is 'mym', 'ma' in Arabic, (see above for Cotpic).

3. The Early semitic letter for M is derived from the Egyptian hieroglyph for [water], as is the Greek and Roman (mistakenly thought to be strictly from Phoenician).

4. Also I have been able to show that three consecutive identical symbols in Egyptian mask a medial U (vav) or Y (yod), so for instance [water] [water] [water] is MMM which is MYM which is the word for "water". Another provable example is the Isis crown which is [horn] [sun] [horn] which is SSS which is SYS as in Isis.

Answer 1

The hieroglyph you refer to - N 35 in Gardiner's sign list is more specifically a "ripple of water" and is occasionally used to write one of the words for water n.t - but is always accompanied by the proper determinative for water, which is three water ripples - in Gardiner's sign-list it is a subsection of M 35 given as M (35). The more common word for water is mw, as preserved in Coptic (written with the Greek letters Mu and Upsilon), and is written with just the 3 ripples sign as an ideogram. The 3 ripples sign also serves as a determinative for a number of constructions having to do with water and occasionally serves as a phonogram. The phonetic /mw/ comes in probably as a function of the 3 ripples of water forming a masculine plural, as 3 (or more) of something constitutes the plural (as opposed to the dual, something shared with Semitic languages) for which the ending is typically /w/ and the pronunciation is supported by later Coptic, as well as the use of the 3 water signs in writing place names outside of Egypt.

In any case, the rendering of the single ripple of water as /n/ is supported by the use of that sign as a phonetic complement in words such as nfr, or as part of the formal spelling of words such as rn, pn, tn, as a substitute for sign D 35 in the word for "not", and is used twice to form a negative construction. The single ripple is, to my knowledge, never used alone as an ideogram for water. Rather, the /n/ sound is based on the rebus principle of what was probably an early word for water, n.t; in other words, it serves as an uniliteral phonogram. The sign is most frequently used alone as a preposition to/for (in the dative) or to (in reference to direction, but only when refering to persons).
Gardiner does comment that the sign corresponds to Hebrew nun, but also lamedh. And there is probably a link between the single sign and the /m/ in the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, but that's hardly a new suggestion. The pronunciation for sign N 35 is based not only on later correspondences in Coptic, (and it appears that by the late period in some places the /n/ came to be pronounced as an /l/), but also on correspondences for terms, especially proper names, that occur in other, contemporaneous languages for which pronunciation is better established, such as Akkadian (see the Amarna letters, for example), well before the Greco-Roman period.
I'd add that the famous "Egyptologists don't know how to pronounce ancient Egyptian" refers not so much to the consonants, but rather to what vowels are supposed to appear between consonants. There are a few sounds that are still debated back and forth, but we're not nearly so clueless as we are frequently made out to be. We'd have precisely the same problem with Biblical Hebrew were it not for the handly addition of nikud.


I'd add that the Middle Egyptian for "Isis" is As.t, probably a feminine form of Asir - the Middle Egyptian for "Osiris" - both "Isis" and "Osiris" are later Hellenized pronunciations, popularized as the Isis cult spread throughout much of the Western world what can broadly be termed the "Classical" period of Western history. I assume the "Isis" crown you are talking about is the disk between cattle horns, often the sun, but occasionally the moon. It is not limited to Isis, nor is it exclusively associated with her. In fact, the writing of As.t (Isis) is typically determined by a simple seated-woman determinitive, while the seated goddess with horned disk crown (sign C 9) is frequently used for Hwt-Hrw (Hathor), either as a determinitive or an ideogram. Isis is often shown in reliefs *wearing* the crown, as are other goddesses, but that is distinct from use as a formal hieroglyph.
I don't believe I've ever seen the horned-disk crown used as a hieroglyph on its own.

Answer 2

Egyptian Symbol For Water

Answer 3

i've always noticed a tendency among scholarly presentations, especially on public TV, to insinuate their own private pronunciations of certain key terms. This affectation is, in my opinion an attempt to appear to be more learned, They pronounce the word differently, hence theirs must be the correct pronunciation, and everyone else is incorrect. This is especially annoying when they cite an expert, and show a film clip, in which the expert pronounces the word traditionally. no comment on the egyptology, i'm not qualified.