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22 May 2006

Gender in Egyptian

Egyptian has just two genders: masculine and feminine. (no neuter)
How can you distinguish them?

- feminine words have the ending t (it is added to the root of the word)
- masculine words have no special ending (but some may add w or j to their root)
(some of the masculine words end with t, but it is just a part of their root - not an added ending)

Example:
(in personal nouns the gender is clearly marked by determinative)


nb

lord, ruler



nbt

mistress

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

what abouth hathor,Nephthys, and Qetesh. those are goddesses that dont end in a t

Ana M. said...

Hello!
Every female name in ancient Egyptian is ending in t. Just that some of them we now know by their greek version.

Het-Hert is the Egyptian name for Hathor (Greeks called her Hathor)

The Egyptian name of Nephtys is Nebt-Het ("mistress of the house") - Nephtys is a greek version too

Qetesh was originally a Syrian deity, so this is a foreign name/word!

I hope this helped...

Anonymous said...

Maybe the "t" part is a determinative that you dont have to read it

Anthony Appleyard said...

It may be that Egyptian feminine -t was no longer pronounced as a consonant by Greek times.

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