Determinatives

In Reading Whole Words you learned to stop reading at the determinative. Now we look at what determinatives do and why Egyptian needed them.

Key idea

A determinative is a silent sign at the end of a word. It shows the word’s class of meaning (a man, a woman, a god, motion, writing, a town…) and marks where the word ends. It is never read aloud.

zꜣt “daughter”: the seated woman tells you the word is about a woman.

Because hieroglyphs leave out vowels, many words share the same consonants. The determinative tells them apart at a glance: sn “brother” ends with a seated man, snt “sister” with a seated woman. Words of motion end with walking legs 𓂻, words for eating, speaking or feeling with a man raising his hand to his mouth 𓀁, abstract ideas with the papyrus roll 𓏛.

Words and their determinatives.
Word	Determinative	It shows
𓊪𓏏𓎛𓀭 ptḥ	𓀭	a god
𓅭𓏏𓁐 zꜣt	𓁐	a woman
𓊪𓏏𓇯 pt	𓇯	the sky
𓉺𓏌𓊖 jwnw	𓊖	a town
𓐙𓂝𓏏𓏛 mꜣꜥt	𓏛	an abstract idea

Sound sign or determinative? Sort them.

Why it works

Why put the class sign at the end? Egyptian writing has no spaces. A determinative at the end works like a space with a label: the reader sees that the word has ended and what kind of thing it named. It also rescues the reader when the consonants alone are ambiguous.

Common mistake

Skipping determinatives entirely, or trying to pronounce them. They are silent, but they carry real information: whether the word names a man or a woman, a god, a place, an action. Check your translation against the determinative: a word ending in walking legs should be about going or coming.

Worked example: Which sign?

In 𓂋𓂝𓇳𓏤 rꜥ, which sign is the determinative?

r and ꜥ are sound signs.
The sun disk (with a stroke) shows the meaning.

Answer: the sun disk 𓇳

Worked example: What kind of word?

A word ends with 𓀭. What kind of word is it?

A40 is the seated god.

Answer: the name of a god (or a word for the king)

Determinatives also help you divide a line of text into words. Faced with a long row of signs, look for the determinatives first: each one closes a word, and the signs between two of them belong to the next word. Short words without determinatives (prepositions, pronouns, particles) fill the gaps.

Some words have two determinatives, a specific one and a general one, as rmṯ “people” has a man, a woman and plural strokes. And some words, especially short common ones, have none at all.

Determinatives

Practice

Builds on

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Sources and further reading