EGYPTE PHARAONIQUE Remarques sur la particule démotique hmy Lettre de Sir Alan H, Gardiner @ M. C. De Wit, ‘oun recent paper on the demotie particle Amy () interested me greatly, but whilst accepting your view that this isawish-particle in the moratizing papyrus shortly to be published by Glanville feel that there is more which ought to be said on the subject. Up to 4 point you appear to agree with Spiegelberg in attributing the m ing if» to this particle in Petubastis, 7, 25 and Sonnenauge, 16, 26-27, but in your final paragraph you qualify that agreement by stating {that ¢ le sens optatif est ici atténué et trés proche du conditionnel ». For the meaning « if» Spiegelberg had quoted in his edition of the ‘Sonnenauge two well-known examples in the story of Wenamin (1,18 ; 2.28) where) Eh ts or ho) hs i sense but he aed ‘hat the meaning if » probably originated in a wish-particleidentically ‘written, in proof of which he cited a note of my own where T was omens oo oH EAR ITD AB ORY GY #2 te same paryrus 19, 0, Spiogeberg made it quite clear that he regarded Ain? (or hn) as the prototype of the demotic hmy, and he produced evidence for the change of old ‘into later m. You, on the other hand, maintain that the origin of demotic hmy and also of Coptic AALOL utinam is not the simple word ‘hang, but rather the collocation Amrs-my or hi-my found in the two passages of Anast. I referred to above. This explanation of Gasol ‘was, perhaps for the first time, quite explicitly given by Erman in Newig. Gramm, § 689, where the element my was recognized as ig the hortative particle common after imperatives from the Pyrac iid Texts onward, see my Fg. Gramm., § 250 and Faulkner, JEA 16, () ca 90, 15 to. (@) Tho two not cited here are without my and are discussed below 288LA PARTICOLE DEMOTIQUE EBIY © 171. Unfortunately you omit to state that, whereas the demotic particle, having no other determinative than that at the end, is a single word, Ayn and my in the two instances of Anast. I are separate ‘words, of which the second is found identically spelt and as usual after an imperative In the Injunction mér (u)i my re Come teach me about ...s, which oecurs four times in the same text (20, 8 ; 21, 55 22, 17) The ise of this my after the wish-narticle hans (one simply ht. see above) is exceedingly rare, Wb. 11,481, 9 quoting a third example from a still unpublished text of Dyn. XXT in the Moscow Museum () ‘and I having found fourth in the fragmentary Inter duplicate of ‘he sativieal letter contained in Anast. 1, published in part by Fa ina; this scrap of papyrus, which was not identified by him, sons J $y 1) 0 IZ, where Anas 1, 28. 8 hes ONAL SM 4 JAS wa must now accordingly render + Do thou look at them coolly » @. More important however, than this fourth example is a passage ‘where the hortative my follows, not the Late-Egyptian wish-particle hums ov by but its ealer synonym py Zo. This passage ¢) occurs on the rather late (Bubastite?) statue of Djelthotet-onkh, where the pious son speaks the following words 1» his father TAREYR IaH euilehm afac-~AVYUSRTiaAt where I translate, insubstantial reine with the two able French editors: ¢ Pray mayst thow remain (!) for us without leaving (us) until we have attained the eternity of mankind ; pray may I not make any search for thee, thou remaining firm for me like the mountains », At first sight this most interesting pair of sentences (4) Wh. says Peterburg mistakenly; the literary letter fm question Delongs to the same find as Wenamin and the Goléischett Onomasticon. (©) For the spelling in Anast. here see below, p. 292. {@) Banouur and Leetaxr, Karnak Nord, TV, Text, Fig. 43, ith p. 148, (0) Mreag is plawsbly explained by the editors as for mo ro, but iis just possible that we have here faulty writing of the frst pes. plu. old pertective, Defore which to. would have o be restored; in that ease we shoald have to render 0 that we may remain 289EOYPTE PHARAONIOUE ‘ight incline us to sock the etymology of your demotie particle hmy and of the Coptie gastot in by my rather than in hans my, the more so since neither the Coptic nor the demotie shows any trace of the m which Erman’s proposal seems to desiderate. As against this [have a suggestion to make which will, I fear, appear 0 some wholy fantastic, Whats RLF Ah and FB A ‘were, inultimateanalysis, merely one and the same word? There occurs in the Kadesh poem () a wish in the expression of which these two les appear to be actual variants the one of the other @) ; Ramesses ww Phage dU OREM EIS MM ‘Would that I were in Egypt ike the father of my fathers. the three hieroglyphic texts using {P 4) while the papyrus (Salt 111, 6,7) sobattates oh Ry Ff: So tar as the sata sapnate is concerned, there is searely'adifiulty, since several examples of TB BAA A Be for 01 Kingdon bam have Been noted ©), and Faulkner has quoted a tke variation in py TSP. Brom net Bhind, 28, 24 a8 aguinat JRX Sof Unk WV, 210, 105 pose sy abo Oe itrcange of 8 and A maybe ttent i J at te angumest pt forward by Sete (sound On the other band he Change of finaly at iat n whieh this ring hypothess seo to Sonata nose to jes even when we take a scot that FW Ah bes covetoped in Late Egypt the parallel, but unac- countable, replacement of its 7 into a consonant akin to our U; the Middle Kingdom writing is practically defunet in New Kingdom hie- ratie, there being regularly superseded by IP BX" —1 Zh ©. (1) Kumwra, La Bateite de Qodeeh, p. 275. (2) So noted also WB, 1, 481, 8. ( JA 25, 28 (cee. (A) Ree. tran, 24, 180, (©) Ero, opel, 600, 1 cannot recall any attempt to explain thie com sonantal change. 290LA PARTICULE DEMOTIQUE ¢ uMY 6 Th ditty over the m of Ah wl prota be tken as finally disposing of the suggestion here made (2), but Lefore bowing to this verdict it is only fair that we should consider the alternative, TOD BA ER HG awe vienea win 0, 1, 481, 7-9 and Wo. 1, 11, 18~ 12,10 as wholly distinct and unre Jated wordy ne are faced withthe astonishing spectacle of two Sepa rate TateBgyptin parties on one occasion actually occurring ax variants of each other, both of them starting witha chsely kindred asirate, both having the primary mening « would that> but tending to develop the conditional sense «i», and last both eng capable of being reinforced by the hortative partste my. oonfes that T stil n= line to the view of the Wortebuck, bat I do not fee30 thoroughly convinced as to regret having advanced the other more paradoxical hypothesis. Com anything be dogmatically rejected as impossible ia a system of orthography whieh chearfaty accepts J. asthe o- thodox writing of negative m oF m? Here bidding goodbye to this unresolved dilemma, Twish now to comment on the slightly divergent development of meaning in the two cases, That both a By FA amd F BM 1h start with the meaning « would that » is certain and cdmitted, but itis also clear that the former tends much more markedly than the latter to acquire the status of a conditional particle to ke rendered in English by vif. In diseussing this point it has heen found convenient to refer to Till's article Der Irreatis im Newigyptischen, in. ZAS 69, 112, Where a number of the relevant examples are numbered and written ‘out in full ; here I shall indicate them as (T1), (12), ete. Erman (op. Git, § 690) quotes many snstaness ot $P <1 gh aa witha, often flowed by the dstival on’, n at est, three eases, however, this spelling is found ushering in an unfulfilled condition (T11, 12, 13), though in these the sense of a vish, or rather of a regrel, is also unmistakably present. On the other hand, with TO BX ‘RB ter are examples in which not the vestige of @ (2) Lattach no importance tothe waiting hy instead af Anza Ansell (28 above) and Late Eyyptian Storts, 96, 5, 291BOYPTE PHARAONIQUE ‘wish remains, As a pure wish-particle hyn? is very rare except when it is reinforced by my, the only indisputable ease known to me being ‘that in the Kadesh poem, see above. There are instances where translations in both ways are possible, e.g. Anast. IV, 11, 12, which Erman (Literatur, p. 244) renders ¢ Ach, wisstest du doch, dass der ‘Wein ein Greuel ist und tatest einen Eid wegen des Schedentrankes...», clearly as a rather despairing aspiration, white Caminos, translating «if only you knew that wine is an abomination, you would abjure Sdf-drink...», Ieans rather in the direction of assertion embodying an unfulfilled condition. How ambiguous certain examples are is shown by the example from the love-song in P. Chester Beatty I, vs. C4, 3 (TW, were Erman in § 690 teres in (TD > Man occ sional variant of 1) YQ, het Anat. 1,28 8 above: also Anat 1V, 18, 1) a8 a witepatile «Ach dass meine Mutter doch mein Here kennte «, while in § 820 he inadvertently presents the same words as a conditional clause » Wenn meine Mutter mein Herz kennte » Here, however, I wish to emphasize the fact that, whereas “PP. 4h and fF = | Gi never divest themselves entirely of their implication of « wish, there are with hyny numerous examples where there is not the slightest implication of the kind, and where we must simply take the particle asthe sife of an unfulfilled and undesired condi- tion. Such are the two eases in Wenamtin (see above and TI, T4), these too well-known to be quoted in full here, so too the stock reply of the witnesses inthe Tomb-Robberes papyr It (FT) 1 had seen, I would = \ have said 1 2,79); Rh FS Seif fs, —S Horas and Seth, 3, 2 where Ré-Hfarakitcertaily didnot intend to insult Osiris by wishing that he had never been born, but was con- tent to make the sarcastic assertion « If you had never been born the Trey and the ennuer-would have existed all the same». The upshot of this diseusson fs to demonstrate that whether or mo hve and Bie are allimately the same word, there has been gradual divergence and tome degre of specialization in their meanings Both started as wish pavils, but while ft never went more than short distance towards fading the sense of «if», hay went all the way towards becoming an ei!» in some instances of which no trace ofa Wish is lft. 292LA PARTICULE DEMOTIOUR # BMY # ‘This brings me back at last to your demotic partic'e Amy and to ts use in the Pefubastis and Sonnenauge examples. Seeing that its component clement -my belongs essentially to commands, wishes, exhortations and the like, one might expect something of the same Tlavour to remain in the places where fy has approached the posi- tion of a conditional particle, Since, however, in the Pelubastis pas- ‘age the epeatar had evidently no desire that silver and gold should tbe demanded of him, and since the speaker in the Sonnenauge had even less the wish to be caught by a erocodile, it is plain that my has ‘completed precisely the same evolution as hyn and has in some eases become a simple ¢ if» sans arriére-pensée, Alan H. Ganoiven.