EGPZ Word List

The EGPZ Word List project aims to compile a list of about 25,000 Ancient Egyptian words and make the material freely available in an easy to use format. Each item in the list will contain an Egyptological transliteration, an English translation and hieroglyphic representations in Unicode (using EGPZ coding only at present) and MdC (Manuel de Codage) format. An Egyptian word list is not an Egyptian dictionary but useful nevertheless.

Rather than wait until the material is accurate and comprehensive, draft samples are provided to illustrate an application of Ancient Egyptian in Unicode and demonstrate how the word list is built up. Currently all 29000 entries from the primary sources are given in web pages, linked below. Over 70% of these entries now have hieroglyphs and MdC. The main sources are the Vygus word list (based on Faulkner's Dictionary of Middle Egyptian) and the Beinlich word list (largely based on Wörterbuch der Ägyptischen Sprache). There are also editorial changes from these sources. The Vygus/Faulkner treatment is virtually complete but the partial drafts only give transliterations and translations (no hieroglyphs) for Beinlich/Wörterbuch data.

Feedback is appreciated and I would be delighted to hear from anyone willing to contribute material for the list. In particular, about 16% of the German to English translations from Beinlich remain to be done.

May 2008.

A (egyptological alef) - ꜣ, Ꜣ - (draft data)
i (egyptological yod) - i, I; j, J - (draft data)
a (egyptological ayin) - ꜥ, Ꜥ - (draft data)
w - w, W - (draft data)
b - b, B - (draft data)
p - p, P - (draft data)
f - f, F - (draft data)
m - m, M - (draft data)
n - n, N - (partial draft data)
r - r, R - (draft data)
h - h, H - (draft data)
H - ḥ, Ḥ - (partial draft data)
x - ḫ, Ḫ - (partial draft data)
X - ẖ, H̱ - (draft data)
s (part 1) - s, S - (s-smḏ) - (partial draft data)
s (part 2) - s, S - (sn-sḏḏ) - (partial draft data)
S - š, Š - (partial draft data)
q - ḳ, Ḳ - (draft data)
k - k, K - (draft data)
g - g, G - (draft data)
t - t, T - (draft data)
T - ṯ, Ṯ - (draft data)
d - d, D - (draft data)
D - ḏ, Ḏ - (draft data - many examples of ligatures)

Development

The first phase of development aims to get rough drafts (as in the samples) built from all the Vygus and Beinlich source material and increase the proportion of German to English translations to beyond 95%. Updates will be added to www.egpz.com bit by bit as available. This phase is likely to complete in the Summer but in the meantime partial data should be useful to support standards work as well as being of value for users of hieroglyphs and transliteration. The second phase will be concerned with filling gaps, improving the accuracy of the data, and reorganising the material, for instance by combining the two sub-lists. Timescales are uncertain and the notion of a word list intrinsically open ended but it is desirable to identify a specific release version sometime before the end of 2008.

Credits

Many thanks to Prof. Horst Beinlich and Mark Vygus for permission to use their lists as a starting point for the EGPZ Word List Project. Thank you to InScribe customers for helping to support the development of standards and resources for Egyptology.

Related resources

EGPZ 1.0 Specifications contains the EGPZ 1.0 sign list.
www.unicode.org is the central reference for the Unicode Standard.
www.saqqara.org is the Saqqara Technology web site.
Unicode and Egyptian. describes the current state of Ancient Egyptian support in the formal Unicode Standard.
The Beinlich Word List is published on Egyptology Resources (Nigel Strudwick site).