-wj

Egyptian

Etymology

-w (“masculine plural ending”) + -j (“dual ending”).

Pronunciation

 

• (reconstructed) IPA^(key): /wVj/ → /wVj/ → /wə/ → /w/

• (Old Egyptian, c. 2500 BCE) IPA^(key): /wVj/

  where V represents an unknown short vowel.

• (Middle Egyptian, c. 1700 BCE) IPA^(key): /wVj/

  where V represents an unknown short vowel.

• (Amarna-period Late Egyptian, c. 1350 BCE) IPA^(key): /wə/
• (latest Late Egyptian, c. 800 BCE) IPA^(key): /w/

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /wi/
  • Conventional anglicization: -wi

Suffix

1. Used to form regular masculine dual forms of nouns and adjectives
2. Attaches to the adjective in an adjectival predicate to give its clause admirative exclamatory force: How very… ! How… !
   • c. 1550 BCE – 1295 BCE, Great Hymn to Osiris (Stela of Amenmose, Louvre C 286) line 21:

     bnrwj mr(w)t.f ḫr.n

     How sweet is the love of him among us!

Alternative forms

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of -wj  

-wj	-w

The dual suffix is also often represented by writing the phonetic or determinative glyph twice, e.g. tꜣwj:

References

• Loprieno, Antonio (1995) Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 60
• James P[eter] Allen (2010) Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, pages 39–40, 70–71, 337.