Does the NSW-BITY Mean “Exalted” and “Mighty”?: A Verbal Theory with Possible Confirmation from Animal Naming Practices, Including with B3

The following has been written to gather feedback, in preparation for an article to be written and submitted to peer review. Part of this thinking was presented at the North Atlantic Conference for Afro-Asiatic Linguistics (Mihalyfy 2025), as well as circulated in a December 2025 conference proposal.

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Careful attention to verb forms supports interpreting the Egyptian royal title transliterated as nsw-bity as two verbal nouns meaning “Exalted” and “Mighty” – that is,

 “Exalted” as an N + S-stem of ‘3 “be great”; and

 “Mighty” as a geminated C(V?)CV(:)C adjectival formation related to b3 “be powerful.”

Quite interestingly, animal naming practices appear to support the latter half of this interpretation, and these practices could also shed light on why b3 is applied to not only the word for “soul,” but also multiple animals (e.g. stork, ram, leopard).

 

Pathways of Interpretation are Constrained by Phonetic and Orthographic Evidence.

Phonetically, the Pyramid Text rendering nsw (PT 814c, as emphasized by Kahl 2008: 309) and the cuneiform rendering transliterated in-si-ib-ja (Ranke 1910: 10) strongly resemble the Coptic words ⲤⲰ “mat of reeds” (Černý 1976: 146) and [Ⲉ]ⲂⲒⲰ “honey” (Černý 1976: 32).

(Here, note the oddly similar word for “honey” and “bee” in Egyptian, as noted for example by Meeks 2010: 281 for the later Demotic – a puzzling but separate issue).

Thus, this evidence presents two plausible options for interpretation:

First, even if provided a metaphorical overlay, the sound-sequences are the objects themselves – that is, an actual reed and an actual bee; or

Second, the objects represent something “soundalike” – that is, things that sound like “reed” or “bee.”

For paths within  the latter option, the Pyramid Texts and the cuneiform indicate that the first t was probably not originally present, and the cuneiform indicates that the second t either was not originally present or had dropped out by the time of that text’s writing.

Orthographically, writings where the initial n is deleted or placed to the lower corner also deserve explanation (e.g. honorific transposition or to form attractive groups).

 

Problems with the Dominant “The King of Upper and Lower Egypt” Interpretation.

The dominant interpretation of the nsw-bity as “The King of Upper and Lower Egypt” (Leprohon 2013: 17) falls within the plausible interpretative options, at least initially. It works with the sound-sequences of the objects themselves – that is, the sound-sequences represent the actual “reed” and “bee” words – but these have metaphorical resonance, so when Egyptians heard “…of the reed and bee,” they automatically understood “…of Upper and Lower Egypt” (perhaps a bit like how people nowadays can refer to New York City’s nickname of “The Big Apple” without even thinking about that phrase’s literal meaning?).

However, despite this decent amount of initial plausibility, the explanation has a number of problems, including:

First, it would imply a little bit oddly that *two* different forms of genitive constructions ended up in the royal titulary, one in a peculiar abbreviation (i.e., the direct genitive constructions of “Horus [of] gold” and “Son [of] Re” versus the particle construction of “…of the reed and the bee,” the latter in strangely truncated form without any initial commanding noun);

Second, it would imply a somewhat unlikely historical claim that this strange truncated particle construction “…of the reed” somehow was able to eventually form nouns and a related verb (e.g. etymological forms nsyw “of-reeds” as “kings,” nsyt “of-reed-ness” as “kingship,” nsy “of-reed-ize” as “be king,” per Faulkner 1962: 139); and

Third, it causes an interpretative mess if you take Kushite use of Egyptian titles seriously; although they could make nuanced historical and territorial claims through their versions of the royal titulary (Török 1997: 153-154), the sheer prevalence of the “…of the reed” words in different royal phrasings (Török 1997: 587-588) would mean that all of these powerful people down in Nubia took pride over generations in naming things after something immediately intelligible through at least Ptolemaic times as the very faraway “Lower Egypt” (per the alleged nsw-bity translation on the Rosetta Stone as claimed by Gardiner 1957: 73),  and all without any harm to the continuing authority of the elites.

Although none of these problems are fatal, they are all very strange, cumulatively.

Thus, it seems like a better answer should exist, and one indeed does seem to emerge, through attention to verb forms that could match the nsw-bity.

 

The nsw as an N + S-Stem of ‘3 “great.”

This first half of the royal title should be interpreted through the “soundalike” option.

Contrary to previous linguistic descriptions, Egyptian contained N + S-stems (Mihalyfy 2022-2023: 119; Mihalyfy, forthcoming), and evidence shows that they could be used as verbal nouns in title-like formations through Demotic (Mihalyfy, forthcoming).

So, the nsw is probably just the root ‘3 “great” as an N + S-stem – that is, “made great,” perhaps best translated as “exalted” (“magnified” not having royal connotations in English). It should be noted that this N + S-stem does have a later descendant as the Coptic ⲚⲈⲤⲰ=, lexicalized as “be beautiful” (Mihalyfy 2022-2023: 119). Thus, in comparison, the cuneiform might indicate that the initial N-stem prefix in the title developed into some sort of syllabic due to its appearance in a two-word formula comprising multiple syllables (cf. the prefix of the N-stem Ⲛ︦ⲔⲞⲦⲔ︦ “sleep”).

Under this interpretation, its other attestations as nouns and a verb (Faulkner 1962: 139) become quickly understandable as permutations of a verb (e.g. masculine versus feminine substantives, the verbal form itself, etc.).

Furthermore, the frequent deletion or transposition of the n could then be understandable as discomfort with the N-stem prefix’s invocation of the object of exaltation before the more-reverenced party performing the exaltation – that is, the frequent deletion or transposition was performed for honorific reasons.

 

The bity as a geminated adjectival formation related to b3 “be powerful.”

As for the part transliterated bity (likely with a deceptive t), it is best interpreted through animal naming conventions where the “mighty (fly)” is used to indicated the “mighty (person),” a bit like how in English a “giant (panda)” could perhaps be used to represent the category “giant (of modern literature).” That is, the same adjective was used both for animals and for a title for humans, but its usage with an animal made the adjective easily depictable as the animal itself. So, that writing-as-animal could then be applied to that same adjective’s more-abstract use for a title for successive humans of high status.

Although this branches out into the larger issue of how Egyptian auxiliary verbs appeared in conjunction with lexical verbs that were a merged paradigm of verbal nouns like infinitives, participles, and substantivized adjectives (Mihalyfy 2025), it seems fairly clear from Coptic evidence that Egyptian had long-standing C(V?)CV(:)C adjectival forms resonant with what has recently been reconstructed for a common ancestor to both Semitic and Berber (van Putten 2024: 64-66).

At times, this included not only intransitive verbs like ⲞⲨϢⲀⲂ “be white” (< wh̬b), ⲀϢⲀⲒ (< ‘š3) “be many,” and ϨⲘⲞⲞⲤ “be standing” (< ḥmsy), but also transitive verbs like ⲤϨⲀⲒ “write” (< sh̬3) and ⲤⲔⲀⲒ “plough” (< sk3), perhaps with blurring of form-and-meaning because of confusion among lexical verbs (cf. dialectal English “I seen” for “I saw”) and/or passive-to-state reinterpretation (e.g. ⲤϨⲀⲒ as something like “in writing,” or ⲤⲔⲀⲒ as something like “in furrows”).

Quite interestingly, adjectival pattern applied to not only triliteral roots, but also biliterals, which were geminated in order to create a third consonant as part of the root and so build a holding place for the distinctive vowel that appears between the root’s second and third consonants. This can be memorably captured in the words ⲞⲨϢⲀⲂ “be white” (< wh̬b) and ⲔⲘⲞⲘ “be black” (< km), which fundamentally pattern together in their distinctive vocalization and in tension with any attempts to categorize them as separate “infinitives” based on the appearance or non-appearance of geminated consonants (e.g. the emphasis in Sethe 1899: 229-233 and 248-252 and Allen 2020b: 44). Once this fundamental pattern is recognized, one can see adjectival doublets everywhere in Coptic – for example, the historic km “black” is found as both ⲔⲀⲘⲈ and ⲔⲘⲞⲘ (Crum 1939: 109) or the historic šw “empty” is found as both ϢⲀⲞⲨⲈ and ϢⲞⲨⲰⲞⲨ (Crum 1939: 601). Historically, this adaptation of gemination to create triliteral roots for state-indicating adjectival categories probably goes back to a not unknown cross-linguistic reinterpretation of aspect (Bybee et al. 1994: 172), where repeated action can occur with such extreme frequency that it becomes interchangeable with a state (e.g. “she is running and running and running and running” is equivalent to “she is busy”; it should be noted that a similar development has been hypothesized to underlie the emergence of reduplication as a marker of the Indo-European perfect, per Bybee et al. 1994: 172n3).

On the basis of the development of the sound transliterated 3 in ⲀϢⲀⲒ “be many” (< ‘š3) and the geminated biliteral root of ⲀⲒⲀⲒ “great” (< ‘33), it becomes understandable to postulate a historic root *b33 related to a verb b3 “be powerful,”  which would have started to function at some point as something like *ⲂIV(:)Ⲓ (cf. Coptic ⲂⲀⲒ, per the attestation of Horapollo as given in Crum 1939: 28). This would of course closely match the phonetic shape perceivable through the cuneiform and “bee”-word evidence. Indeed, although estimates of sound changes in Egyptian can be inaccurate (e.g. the evolution of what is transliterated as ‘, per Mihalyfy, n.p), some evidence suggests that this sound transliterated 3 might have already started shifting by the time of the Pyramid Texts (Allen 2020a: 64). This sound transliterated 3  also could already be used as a vowel when writing the N-stem prefix at the time of the Dialogue of a Man with His Soul (Mihalyfy 2022-23: 119-120; cf. Allen 2020a: 55, 64). Thus, its appearance in cuneiform is relatively explicable. Such a form *b33 can also probably explain the large range of writings for the word “bee” as well as its re-applied uses for other similar-sounding words (e.g. Meeks 2010: 281-282).

Powerful confirmation for postulating this word *b33 “mighty” can also be found in a thought-provoking analysis of Egyptian’s sparsely-attested names for insects (the incredibly important work of Meeks 2010). For example, the verb  h̬sr “drive away” may help form a name for an insect h̬sr (given as “repelled,” but perhaps like “repulsive”?), while the verb tkk “attack” forms a name for an insect tkk.t (given as “attacker,” but perhaps like “belligerent”? (Meeks 2010: 283). Thus, in light of this animal naming practice – especially the latter geminated form of tkk.t – it becomes very plausible to see the bee as having a name of *b33 “mighty (fly).” Furthermore, this type of adjective is possibly even preserved alongside the noun in Coptic forms like [Ϩ]ⲀⲂⲒⲞⲨⲒ “wasp” (< *‘f b33) (Crum 1939: 660; for relation to “fly,” see Černý 1976: 276). And of course, once you have a plausible interpretation of “mighty (fly),” it is easy to perceive a conventional application to the “mighty (person).” That is, it was the very same adjective used in each case, and the easily-depictable bee was used to write that same adjective when applied to a title for successive humans of high status.

Besides all of this, this animal naming practice identifiable through insects possibly also has implications for the very odd usage of the related b3 word for the very different animals of the stork, ram, and leopard (Janák 2016: 1). If other animals beyond insects had such quality-names or epithets and each could be called a “mighty (animal)” – a “mighty (bird), a “mighty (hoofed quadruped),” a “mighty (cat)” – the use of the same phonetic sequence for three different animals becomes vastly more intelligible. The use of a hieroglyph depicting “probably the largest flying bird of ancient Egypt” (Janák 2014: 3) for the “soul” word then also becomes more intelligible in turn – it is not only the “logical” use of “such an impressive bird” to write a majestic thing because they both share the same quality of majesty (Janák 2014: 3), it’s because both of these majestic things were named with the same substantivized adjective “mighty,” and the “mighty (bird)” was used to write the “mighty (thing)” (i.e., the “soul” as “might” or “force”).

Incidentally, indirect traces of this naming practice also might survive down to Coptic in the variant forms of “ibis” like ϨⲒⲂⲞⲨⲒ (< *hb b33) (Crum 1939: 655; note that Černý 1976: 274 remarks on the obscurity of the second element). If this etymology is correct, it shows that the geminated form of the adjective also seen with bees was equivalent enough in meaning to substitute for its non-geminated form associated with the hieroglyphic depiction of the “soul”-word. As with [Ϩ]ⲀⲂⲒⲞⲨⲒ “wasp” (< *‘f b33) (Crum 1939: 660), variant forms like ϨⲒⲂⲞⲨⲒ (< hb b33) (Crum 1939: 655) would also be evidence for how these types of adjectives could be used not just as standalone substantives, but also alongside explicitly-stated animal names.

 

Desiderata.

It should be emphasized that disconfirmation for many parts of this theory could perhaps come from better knowledge of Egyptian-Coptic phonetics, phonology, sound changes, and dialectology. But, the study of all of these things is in its relative infancy, and they do not seem capable of supplying any counterarguments with a high degree of confidence, at least for the foreseeable future.

To turn to the concrete title proposals, an N + S-stem from ‘3 “exalted” raises the question of the word’s cultural and religious overtones (e.g. what it means to be “great,” who was conceptualized as doing the exalting, what the exaltation implied, etc.).

Another big question is whether the animal naming practices were merely about size and power and majesty, or whether they had some sort of religious motivations and overtones at times (e.g. taboo, as with the famous examples of substitutions for the Indo-European words for “wolf” and “bear”; see Fortson 2004: 28, for example). However, given that b3 and bity are incredibly early words in Egyptian, this would plausibly place these animal naming practices at the end of the 4^th millennium BCE at the latest, during or even before the time of crucial early state formation in Upper Egypt.  Thus, this big question raises yet another big question: do we have any other evidence to get at the details of these animal naming practices – for example, through archaeology and fine-grained anthropological comparisons?

Besides this, one peculiarity is Egyptian’s early use of gemination to form triliteral roots from biliteral ones (p.c., A.Z. Foreman). A question: how could this be explicable – could it somehow be linked to language contact and early state formation, like is the case with auxiliary verbs (Mihalyfy 2025)?

Another peculiarity is the similarity of the word for “bee” and “honey” (as noted by Meeks 2010: 281). A random idea: could this be explicable through the “mighty” word, where the “mighty (fly)” produces a “mighty (liquid)”?

All of these issues deserve thought. 

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David Mihalyfy is an independent scholar with a B.A. in Linguistics (Harvard, ’02) and a Ph.D. in the History of Christianity (UChicago ’17). 

In a not uncommon scholarly trajectory, he first became interested in Afroasiatic historical linguistics because he happened to study one language (Coptic, for Christian texts), and soon realized the relative underdevelopment of diachronic knowledge in comparison to Indo-European languages.

He has presented at several Egyptological Symposiums of the American Research Center in Egypt’s Missouri Chapter, as well as at the North Atlantic Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics and remotely at the Egyptological Conference in Copenhagen. A series of several short articles from a larger project on the survival and transformation of Afroasiatic N-stems in Egyptian have been appearing in the Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities. 

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