In Middle Egyptian I you used jw before adverbial sentences (jw and mk). It also stands before verb forms, and its most common partner in biographies is the sḏm.n=f.
Key idea
Why it works
Worked example: A line of a biography
- jw introduces a statement; leave it out of the English.
- jj.n=j is the sḏm.n=f of jj "come", with =j "I".
- m njwt=j "from my town" (m also means "from").
Answer: "I came from my town."
Worked example: With a pronoun object
- ḥz.n is the sḏm.n=f of ḥzj "praise" (third-weak).
- wj "me" is a dependent pronoun object; it comes before the noun subject.
- nsw "the king" is the subject.
Answer: "The king praised me."
Worked example: A list of deeds
- rdj.n=j "I gave", t "bread", n ḥqr "to the hungry".
Answer: "I gave bread to the hungry."
In narrative you will also meet other ways of moving a story along, such as ꜥḥꜥ.n + sḏm.n=f "then he did…" and the form sḏm.jn=f "then he heard" (as in ḏd.jn=f "then he said"). They work like jw + sḏm.n=f, with a sense of sequence. You will see them in Sinuhe and the Eloquent Peasant.
Because these lines repeat from tomb to tomb, learn them as phrases. Once you have read jw rdj.n=j t n ḥqr a few times you will see it at a glance, and the less familiar lines around it become easier, since they follow the same pattern: jw, a sḏm.n=f with =j, an object, and a phrase.
Common mistake