mdw

From mdwj (“to speak”).

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /mɛduː/
  • Conventional anglicization: medu

 m

1. spoken word
2. words, speech, things said

   ― sꜥr mdw ― to convey (someone’s) words (+ n: to (a superior))

3. words, text, things written
4. command, order, instruction
5. magic word, spell
6. (law) plea
7. used as a generic object for certain verbs such as wḏ (“to command”) and wḏꜥ (“to judge”)

This word was displaced by mdwt from Late Egyptian on, though in some cases the replacement may have been purely graphic.

Unlike most u-stems, the noun-forming suffix -w was usually written in mdw.

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of mdw  

mdw	mdw	mdw	mdw	mdw	mdw	mdw	mdw	mdwtj
					[Old Kingdom]	[Old Kingdom]	[18th Dynasty]	[18th Dynasty]
					uncommon	uncommon		uncommon

The word may be written without determinatives, or with any of the following:

Determinatives used with mdw  

[Old Kingdom]	[Middle Kingdom]	[New Kingdom]	[New Kingdom]

• Demotic: mdt, md
  • (from the plural) ⇒ Coptic: ⲙⲧⲁⲩ (mtau)

 m

1. staff, rod
2. staff as a weapon
3. staff as a kind of scepter, staff of authority, baton; also given as a grave good
4. sacred staff with the head of a god, revered as a symbol of a particular god or nome [chiefly Greco-Roman Period]
5. used in various titles: custodian, attendant, maintainer

• “mdw (lemma ID 78150)”, in Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae‎, Corpus issue 17, Web app version 2.01 edition, Tonio Sebastian Richter & Daniel A. Werning by order of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert & Peter Dils by order of the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 2004–15 December 2022
• “mdw (lemma ID 78130)”, in Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae‎, Corpus issue 17, Web app version 2.01 edition, Tonio Sebastian Richter & Daniel A. Werning by order of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert & Peter Dils by order of the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 2004–15 December 2022
• Erman, Adolf, Grapow, Hermann (1928) Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache‎, volume 2, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN, pages 178.1–178.14, 180.4–180.12
• Faulkner, Raymond Oliver (1962) A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Oxford: Griffith Institute, →ISBN, page 122
• Černý, Jaroslav (1976) Coptic Etymological Dictionary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 94