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The Memphite Formula was a standardized greeting of First Intermediate Period and early Middle Kingdom ancient Egyptian letters, which fell out of use in the early Twelfth Dynasty.
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| Life, Prosperity, Health in hieroglyphs |
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Letters written in the Memphite Formula begin with a greeting from "the servant", the author, to "the lord", the recipient. [1] Use of the third person is strictly observed in the greeting, and can be preserved throughout the entire body of the text, although often in the body of the letter "I" and "you" will be used as well. [2] The symbol for "lord" contains the seated-man hieroglyph, which is often used as the determinative for humans, but can also be used as the possessive pronoun, "my". Accordingly, Alan Gardiner had suggested that greetings from this class of letters be translated "to my lord", in accordance with later Egyptian letters, which often address the recipient in the first person. [2] Battiscombe Gunn countered that if the author of the letter introduced himself in the third person, as "the servant", it would be difficult to switch to the first person in the same sentence, and that the informality of New Kingdom letters should not be read back upon the earlier conventions. [2] Gardiner later accepted this interpretation. [3]
Connected to the word lord is usually found a common exhortation or blessing, "may he live, be prosperous, be healthy", which is commonly abbreviated l.p.h. in translations for convenience. [3] This blessing is usually understood to be an example of the Egyptian old perfective or stative tense, and one of the few remaining instances where a non-first-person stative can be used in an independent clause. [4]
The Memphite Formula blesses the recipient in the name of Ptah and the principal god of the letter's author. [1]
The Memphite formula was common in the First Intermediate Period and the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. Its use was so standard that frequently it would be written in advance on sheets of papyrus intended for use as letters. [1] While the early Middle Kingdom convention has been termed the Memphite Formula, all letters in the Memphite style which have established provenance come only from Thebes. [5] The Memphite Formula did not see use long into the Middle Kingdom, being replaced with the set formula, "a communication to the master, l.p.h." [1]
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The Middle Kingdom of Egypt is the period in the history of ancient Egypt following a period of political division known as the First Intermediate Period. The Middle Kingdom lasted from approximately 2050 to 1710 BC, stretching from the reunification of Egypt under the reign of Mentuhotep II in the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Twelfth Dynasty. The kings of the Eleventh Dynasty ruled from Thebes and the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty ruled from el-Lisht.
The Ipuwer Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian hieratic papyrus made during the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, and now held in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands. It contains the Admonitions of Ipuwer, an incomplete literary work whose original composition is dated no earlier than the late Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt.
Ptahhotep, sometimes known as Ptahhotep I or Ptahhotpe, was an ancient Egyptian vizier during the late 25th century BC and early 24th century BC Fifth Dynasty of Egypt.
Smenkhkare Imyremeshaw was an Egyptian pharaoh of the mid 13th Dynasty during the Second Intermediate Period. Imyremeshaw reigned from Memphis, starting in 1759 BC or 1711 BC. The length of his reign is not known for certain; he may have reigned for five years and certainly less than ten years. Imyremeshaw is attested by two colossal statues now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
The Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu is a painted, wooden offering stele located in Cairo, Egypt. It was discovered in 1858 by François Auguste Ferdinand Mariette at the mortuary temple of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Hatshepsut, located at Dayr al-Bahri. It was originally made for the Montu-priest Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu i, and was discovered near his coffin ensemble of two sarcophagi and two anthropomorphic inner coffins. It dates to circa 680–70 BCE, the period of the late 25th Dynasty/early 26th Dynasty. Originally located in the former Bulaq Museum under inventory number 666, the stele was moved around 1902 to the newly opened Egyptian Museum of Cairo, where it remains today.
The offering formula, also known under transliterated forms of its incipit as the ḥtp-ḏỉ-nsw or ḥtp-ḏj-nswt formula was a conventional dedicatory formula found on ancient Egyptian funerary objects, believed to allow the deceased to partake in offerings presented to the major deities in the name of the king, or in offerings presented directly to the deceased by family members. It is among the most common of all Middle Egyptian texts.
A valediction, or complementary close in American English, is an expression used to say farewell, especially a word or phrase used to end a letter or message, or the act of saying parting words whether brief or extensive.
Battiscombe George "Jack" Gunn, was an English Egyptologist and philologist. He published his first translation from Egyptian in 1906. He translated inscriptions for many important excavations and sites, including Fayum, Saqqara, Amarna, Giza and Luxor. He was curator at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and at the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In 1934 he was appointed Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford, a chair he held until his death in 1950.
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Karduniaš, also transcribed Karduniash, Karaduniyaš, Karaduniše, Kurduniash) is a Kassite term used for the kingdom centered on Babylonia and founded by the Kassite dynasty. It is used in the 1350-1335 BC Amarna letters correspondence, and is also used frequently in Middle-Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian texts to refer to the kingdom of Babylon. The name Karaduniyaš is mainly used in the letters written between Kadashman-Enlil I, or Burna-Buriash, the Kings of Babylon, and the Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt-(called: Mizri), letters EA 1-EA 11, a subcorpus of letters,. Much later, a version of the name was used in the Babylonian Talmud as Kardunya referring to similar locations. In the Assyrian texts its referred to as Kardu.
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