honorific transposition

English

Noun

honorific transposition (countable and uncountable, plural honorific transpositions)

  1. (linguistics, Egyptology) A shift in the sign order of a compound word or common phrase, to make certain religiously significant terms (e.g. nswt, nṯr, rꜥ) appear at the front of the word or phrase.
    The Egyptian idiom ḥm-nṯr ("servant of a god" = "priest") is written:
    nTrHm

    which would appear to read *nṯr-ḥm. However, this phrase shows honorific transposition of the nṯr glyph.

    Other examples of this same phenomenon include:
    The word nswt ("king") is written
    swt
    n    		 A40
    instead of the incorrect
    nswtA40
    The term mdw-nṯr ("god's speech" = "hieroglyphs") is written
    nTrS43
    instead of the incorrect
    S43nTr
    The royal name z-n-wsrt (Senwosret) is written
    <
    wsrr
    t    		 z
    n
    		>
    instead of the incorrect
    <
    z
    n    		 wsrr
    t
    		>
    The royal name mry-rꜥ (Meryre) is written
    <
    ramri i
    		>
    instead of the incorrect
    <
    mri i ra
    		>

References
  • James P[eter] Allen (2010) Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 44.
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