THE COFFIN OF ITEF-IB

Offering formulas, like the one we're studying now, often invoke Osiris, the god of the next (under-)world. Other gods can be called upon but Osiris appears very frequently here. The second section of line one spells his name and shows several common Osirian epithets which usually accompany his name.

Section 3 contains the actual items that Itef-ib wants to be offered to him. These are the basic things he will need in the afterlife. In this case it's all food and drink, but many offering formulas also request additional items such as clothing and alabaster.

As long as Itef-ib's funerary cult continues to be practiced by his family, preferably his eldest son, then his eldest son, etc., the offering will be of real food. Itef-ib will come out of his tomb through a 'false door', to partake spiritually of the offerings and then the family, and/or priests, will eat what's left.

But if Itef-ib's cult falls into disuse, he will still be able to survive in the next world on that are painted on the walls of his tomb or just due to the recitation of the inscriptions we're reading now. Because we read them, they come into existence for Itef-ib's nourishment and comfort.

Mousing over and clicking on items in the glyphs for section three will provide you with vocabulary and notes. By now you should be used to reading from right to left.
When you've got a working translation, compare it with the one given above the text with the yellow background above.

Section 4 finally tells us a bit about Itef-ib himself. Often we get a list of titles and honors which the deceased held during lifetime. None appear here. Maybe we'll see some later, maybe Itef-ib never lived long enough to be established in his career. But he had access to disposable wealth, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to have such a nice coffin.

Still reading from right to left, mousing over and clicking on the words will give you the vocabulary and notes you need to finish reading this inscription.
When you're done, compare it with the translation above.

NOTES ON ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SPELLING

When hieroglyphic writing was first developed over 5,000 years ago, it was, like all other writing, picture-writing. But it becomes quickly apparent that pictures cannot handle the complexity of normal human communication, so some methods were developed to use the pictures to "spell" words. Some conventions came into being at that time, all of which are demonstrated on this page.

1) Only consonants were written, no vowels. Some of these consonants do not exist in English and can be approximated, inaccurately, by English vowels. Egyptologists have developed a system for representing the original consonants using the modern alphabet, some of the letters they use are vowels, but it should always be remembered that technically we are dealing only with consonants.

2) Individual signs can stand for individual words, particularly if they were nouns.

3) But signs can also be used to "spell" words using the rebus principle. If we were to use this in English we might draw a bee to mean the insect. And we might draw a figure of a man putting something away to mean 'stow'. But we might then, using the rebus principle, draw a bee and the man putting something away to mean 'bestow', which is at least partly unrelated to the original meaning of the signs.

4) So Egyptian "spelling" was born.

5) Egyptian signs can be divided into three different types:

a) ideograms - the sign stands for item drawn. E.g.: we draw an owl to mean 'owl'.
b) determinatives - the sign helps identify the general class which the word we're spelling belongs to. E.g.: we draw a man after a man's name or some type of typically masculine action and we draw a woman after a woman's name or some type of typically feminine action. We could draw a knife after words like 'knife' (after spelling it out), 'cut', 'slaughter', 'sharp', etc.
c) phonograms - we use the initial sound of the item we draw as a sound in the word we are spelling. Egyptian sounds. Egyptian phonograms can stand for anywhere from one to four consonants, although single, double, and triple consonant phonograms make up the vast majority of inscriptions.
The inscription on this page has several examples of signs which stand for one, two, or three consonants.

6) Individual signs could belong to one or more of the categories or sub-categories listed in the preceeding paragraph.

7) Egyptian hieroglyphs do not use any punctuation or word break indicators. If there's not enough room at the end of the line, whether you're in a word or not, continue on the next line.

8) The animals face to the beginning of the line. This tells you which direction to read in. There are a few cases where this rule is broken, you won't meet any here.

9) Words can be "mispelled" if it makes for a more attractive arrangement of signs.

10) Words referring to gods or kings (and very occasionally fathers) can be written (but not pronounced) out of normal sequence by moving them forward in the sentence to a place of honor.