There is one abiding interest everybody – from children which have just recently acquired theory of mind to the most practically minded adults with the most boring jobs imaginable – shares when it comes to antiquity and that is ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.¹ This writing system is, without any sarcasm, always a hit at party’s and other festive events. And today, as kind of an appetizer to at least temporarily satisfy this universal curiosity, I want to introduce one specific hieroglyph: a sign that the ancient Egyptians used to write about the supernatural and the divine. More specifically the hieroglyph that chiefly denoted their word for god – Netjer.²

The way in which I have to talk about this subject in order to properly connect with everyone’s pre-existing knowledge and vocabulary, is interesting and another indication of the abiding fascination everywhere in the world and in almost every age with the legacy of the ancient Nile valley. The word ‘hieroglyph’ itself, is Greek and means ‘holy scripture’.³ And the ancient Egyptian gods, ideas on magic and other convictions about the supernatural have captured outsiders’ imaginations since, well, antiquity itself.⁴ And our own era is not that different.⁵ But it is arguably only in our modern age, that we can once again reconstruct a semblance of how the divine was viewed in ancient Egyptian thought with any certainty. And this is a necessary prelude to talk about the sign Netjer.

This blog is also available in Dutch.

The Divine in Ancient Egypt

The religion of the ancient Egyptians, at least when it came to its fundamental values and themes, was one of the most long-lasting belief systems in the world and impacted everyday life for people living in the Nile valley and beyond during circa three millennia.⁶ Through these beliefs, people back then explained the world in which they lived. And these explanations often involved beings and powers greater than themselves – the supernatural. The realm of the supernatural was, at least according to the sources that have managed to come down to us from ancient Egyptian times, primarily inhabited by the gods – as well as other beings that were conceived as supernatural, but whose godhood is doubted by today’s scholars – and the dead. This realm was fairly difficult to contact by those not divine or deceased, as you can imagine.⁷ But this did not stop people from trying, let me tell you! And these attempts were chiefly fashioned through cultic activities.⁸

These cultic activities most often consisted of exchanges that fostered the connection with the supernatural. Offerings of food and drink could be provided to the dead and divine beings alike.⁹ But in the latter case, this was but one aspect of the influence deities had on daily life – the supernatural was, quite literally, all around the ancient Egyptian world.¹⁰ Precocious life events, such as births, were dependent on the divine for a satisfying resolution. Not only because of the gods’ benign influence, but also through magical practices called heka, that the gods had given to mankind. As such, it is not surprising that “there is hardly any Egyptian text or inscription that does not at least mention one or more gods.”¹¹ Given this importance of the divine within the supernatural realm, one would think that the words for phenomena like ‘religion’ and ‘god’ are omnipresent in our surviving ancient texts.

The Hieroglyph Netjer

But you would be at least partly mistaken. Because famously there is no ancient Egyptian word for religion. Though we can glean the core concepts of what we would call the ancient Egyptian religion from our textual and material evidence. Simply put, the gods had ordered society with a king at its apex with the goal of fostering justice (ma’at) and combating injustice (isfet).¹² Something to which the heka magic of everyday people also contributed.¹³ And these kind of texts, as well as others, did contained a sign with which the concept of the divine had been expressed since time immemorial. And this is indeed the hieroglyph we are interested in today.¹⁴

As you might very well know and which connects elegantly with what we already learned about cuneiform in previous blogs, hieroglyphs in their most famous iteration were a monumental form of writing which could express sounds, words, and concepts, and that was used to write the ancient Egyptian language. And often words, spelled out or expressed with a word sign, were accompanied by a determinative – a sign which indicated the meaning of the relevant word. Not all hieroglyphic texts resemble those we would recognize from documentaries and movies. though. There were also more ephemeral way of using this script, often used for practical purposes, wherein the hieroglyphs descended into a more scribbled (though still elegant!) writing system.¹⁵ And this is all relevant for our undertaking today.

Because the sign that primarily interests us, at the far left in my drawing below, was often accompanied by determinatives that indicated its divine meaning. The falcon perched on a standard, in the middle in my drawing below, was often used that way when the hieroglyphs were scribbled. And towards the end of antiquity, this sign could itself be used to write about gods. And a bearded person, on the far right in my drawing below, could also used as a determinative to indicate that one was writing about a god. It has been suggested that in this way both the animistic and anthropomorphic qualities of the ancient Egyptian gods could be represented in writing.¹⁶

Let us now look at the sign on the left and the primary means to write about gods: the hieroglyph netjer. What does it represent? Though there used to be other interpretations, the sign is now generally viewed as “a pole wrapped in a bandage that ends in a banner perpendicular to the pole.”¹⁷ The sign represents the poles which once adorned ancient Egyptian sanctuaries. Though from a text dating to Roman times, we learn that the word netjer could also denoted something that was buried. Nonetheless, the context in which this sign was used indicates that we deal here with the gods. They could apparently be represented by a buried object, it appeared. But there can be no doubt as to the main meaning of this sign, because the gods were unequivocally called the netjeru, as far as I could ascertain.¹⁸ And goddesses, by the way. Because they could also be described with the same sign, but accompanied by the female marker -t.¹⁹ As such, one could reference in writing – and presumably also while speaking – to one of the most important aspects of ancient Egyptian society.

Conclusion: Exploring Ancient Egypt Together

You might have noticed that this is my first blog that is solely about ancient Egypt. I have long hesitated to visit this corner of the ancient world, as I assumed there were so many online sources that my efforts would have little added value. But when I could not escape my own nature and investigated that last assumption, I found that much of the freely available online material is not properly annotated – or at least not to the desire of my pedantic heart. And this material, for the most part, also lacked my specific sense of humor. So eventually I realized that I did not have a choice but to throw my Pschent – the double crown of ancient Egypt – in the proverbial ring.²⁰

Though I dabbled in Egyptology when at university, it was not my primary specialization. But I did already learn hieroglyphs as a young pup! (To impress girls, obviously. Did anybody ever make such an effort at that age for different reasons?) And I followed enough courses on the subject, I think, to know my way around the sources and secondary literature. So I am full of confidence that this is a fairly good idea and it is in addition exciting to undertake this journey to deepen my knowledge of the Land of the Nile together with you all, here on Bildungblocks.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Subscribe and never miss a blog!

Submit

References

1. Christina Riggs, “Ancient Egypt in the Museum: Concepts and Constructions”, in: Alan B. Lloyd (ed.) A Companion to Ancient Egypt (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2010). p.1152.
2. This is a modern vocalization, the sign is presumed by modern scholars to represent three consonants, nṯr, see: James P. Allen, Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs (2^nd‑ Revised Edition) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 442. There is still much debate which vowels, if any, could be spelled with the hieroglyphic writing system. Though the latter phases of the ancient Egyptian language were written with an alphabetic writing system, so we have some idea, see: Matthias Müller, “Egyptian”, in: Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2020), p. 107-108.
3. Allen, Middle Egyptian, p. 2.
4. Alan B. Lloyd, “The Reception of Pharaonic Egypt in Classical Antiquity”, in: Alan B. Lloyd (ed.) A Companion to Ancient Egypt (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2010). p. 1069; Ian Rutherford, “Mythology of the Black Land: Greek Myths and Egyptian Origins”, in: Ken Dowden & Niall Livingstone (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Greek Mythology (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), p. 459-460.
5. Marc van de Mieroop, A History of Ancient Egypt (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 146; Kasia Szpakowska, “Religion in Society”, in: Alan B. Lloyd, A Companion to Ancient Egypt (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2010), p. 507.
6. Jan Assmann & David Frankfurter, “Egypt”, in: Sarah Iles Johnston (ed.), Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 155; Szpakowska, “Religion in Society”, p. 507; Van de Mieroop, A History of Ancient Egypt, p. 146. Notwithstanding brief breaks, most famously the short-lived reforms that started under king Amenhotep IV, see: Allen, Middle Egyptian, p. 200.
7. Kasia Szpakowska, “The Open Portal: Dreams and Divine Power in Pharaonic Egypt”, in: Scott Noegel, Joel Walker & Brandon Wheeler (eds.) Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), p. 111; Allen, Middle Egyptian, p. 45-46. For those supernatural beings and the scholarly debate on their godhood, see: Christian Leitz, “Deities and Demons – Egypt”, in: Sarah Iles Johnston (ed.), Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 393
8. Assmann & Frankfurter, “Egypt”, p. 155.
9. Allen, Middle Egyptian, p. 45; Szpakowska, “Religion in Society”, p. 508.
10. James P. Allen, “The Egyptian Concept of the World”, in: David O’Connor & Stephen Quirke (eds.), Mysterious Lands (London: UCL Press, 2003), p. 23-30.
11. Allen, Middle Egyptian, p. 45; Szpakowska, “Religion in Society”, p. 508.
12. Assmann & Frankfurter, “Egypt”, p. 155; Boyo G. Ockinga, “Morality and Ethics”, in: Toby A. H. Wilkinson (ed.), The Egyptian World (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2013), p. 255. For ancient Egyptian religious texts as a source, see: Allen, Middle Egyptian, p. 321.
13. Szpakowska, “Religion in Society”, p. 508.
14. Françoise Dunand & Christiane Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE, Translated by David Lorton (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), p. 8-9.
15. Van de Mieroop, A History of Ancient Egypt, p. 45-46; Mark Collier & Bill Manley, Hiërogliefen Ontcijferen en Lezen: Een Stap-voor-Stap Leerboek voor Zelfstudie, Translated by Olaf Kaper and Illustrated by Richard Parkinson (Amsterdam: Bulaaq. 2008), p. 1-6. Naturally, there was much variation in the Egyptian language and writing system, both through time and locally. As such, it is perhaps disingenuous to speak about the Egyptian language and the hieroglyphic writing, see: Van de Mieroop, A History of Ancient Egypt, p. 45.
16. Dunand & Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, p. 8-9. On these anthropomorphic and animistic aspects, see: Szpakowska, “Religion in Society”, p. 510.
17. Dunand & Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, p. 8.
18. Szpakowska, “Religion in Society”, p. 509.
19. Though there were, at least locally, also other hieroglyphs which could be used to specifically write about goddesses, see: Dunand & Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, p. 9.
20. Kathryn A. Bard, An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt (Malden: Blackwell, 2009), p. 123.