Ra the Egyptian god

Ra’s puns in a nutshell

Ra is written 𓇳 rˤ ra. Since vowels didn’t seem to count with the ancient punners, his aspects are puns with all words written with R, plus some vowels before or after that. Egyptian vowels are ȝ, ˤ, j, y, w.

• Ra is the sun god, because his name rˤ means “sun”. It’s that simple.
• Ra is identified with Horus as Ra-Horakhty and depicted with a falcon head, because rˤ means “day” and is the name of Ra, and hrw also means “day” and puns with Horus. They’re synonyms.
• Ra is identified with Atum, because r-ȝw means “everything” and puns with Ra, and tm also means “everything” and puns with Atum. They’re synonyms. 🡻
• Ra is identified with Aten, because rˤ for “sun” is the name of Ra, and jtn for “[sun] disc” is the name of Aten. They’re synonyms. 🡻
• Ra has to expel monsters from his barque, because ȝr means “expel” & “drive away”. The same word also means “suppression” & “oppression”, so it may appeal to spooks.
• Ra is a spook symbol, perhaps because wr-ˤȝ means “great magnate” & “great nobleman”. The aristocrats perhaps made their unwitting subjects worship the embodiment of aristocracy. 🡻
• Ra is a spook symbol, perhaps also because r-ˤȝ means “to greatness”, with ˤȝ “great” often referring to the aristocracy such as magnates & nobles. The main problem here is that the prefix r- “to” has a gazillion of grammatical meanings, so it’s hard to guess which one they meant. 🡻
• As a hint, the Egyptian people were sometimes called “cattle of Ra”. 🡻
• Ra’s 2 barques are symbols of spookery, because the “day barque” named wjȝ-n-ḥḥw puns with jȝw-n-ḥḥw “worshiped by millions”, while the “night barque” named msktt puns with mj-s-ktt “like a little person” and with mj-s-kt “like another person”. The spooks love to be worshiped by millions, but pretend to be other people when committing their crimes of corruption! 🡻
• Ra’s worst enemy is Apophis, likely because ˤȝpp “Apophis” puns with ˤȝ-jpp “the great ones investigated”, which also means “great reckoning”. It’s the aristocrats’s only fear: the common people investigating them, and the great reckoning that would follow.

Ra as pun with wr-ˤȝ for “greater noble” & “king”

The best pun for Ra is with the compound 𓅨𓉻 wr-ˤȝ ur-aa, which means “greater nobleman” or “greater nobility”. wr means “great” & “noble”, and ˤȝ also means “great” & “noble”. So wr-ˤȝ means something like “greater noble” or “great of the great”. It is often translated as “prince”, “grand duke” or “very great one”, referring to foreign noblemen, but also to Egyptian ones.

If this is the main intended pun, then Ra would stand for the Egyptian aristocracy in general, while the other Egyptian gods would stand for more specific aspects of rulership, such as secrecy or deception.

As for the pun similarity: The initial w is a vowel and would probably not deter our ancient punners. They would still feel that wr-ˤȝ ur-aa is similar to rˤ ra. Interestingly, there’s also a late Coptic Egyptian term ⲣⲣⲟ rro for “king”, derived from ⲟⲩⲣⲟ ouro, and that from Ancient Egyptian wr-ˤȝ ur-aa. So, at least in Coptic Egyptian, the term has lost its w, and puns very well with Ra.

(Note about the glyphs: The biliteral glyph for wr is 𓅨 the swallow, so the original meaning was probably “great height” & “high position”. This glyph is easily mistaken for 𓅪 the sparrow, which means the exact opposite, i.e. “lowliness”.)

Behold, I am a great one, son of a very great one.

m =k wj wr zȝ wr-ˤȝ

𓅓𓂟𓎡𓅱𓀀𓅨𓅭𓅨𓂋𓉻

TLA: Book of the Dead of the Egyptians

He cleansed himself with a divine oath in front of these kings and princes of Lower Egypt

swˤb.n=f sw m ˤnḫ nṯr ḫft-ḥr nn nswt wr-ˤȝ n.w tȝ-mḥ,w

TLA: Victory stele of Piye, line 110

𓋴𓃂𓈖𓆑𓇓𓅱𓅓𓋹𓊹𓐍𓆑𓏏𓁷𓇒𓈖𓇓𓏏𓇓𓏏𓇓𓏏𓀙𓏪𓉼𓏥𓏌𓏤𓇿𓇇𓈅𓊖

Wikipedia: Victory stele of Piye, line 110

Ra as pun with r-ˤȝ for “entirety” & “to [be] nobility”

The Egyptian word 𓉻 ˤȝ, probably pronounced something like aa, means “great”, with a 1000 derivations. One derived meaning is “nobility”, so the aristocrats would have loved this word. It’s the oh in Pharaoh.

To make this ˤȝ aa pun with Ra, you can prefix it with r-, a very common prefix in Egyptian. The basic meaning is “to”, and it roughly corresponds to Semitic ˀl and l- (Egyptians wrote both L & R with the same letter). However, Egyptian r- it has so many meanings, I cannot figure out what exactly the spooks meant.

The most common usage of r-ˤȝ is as an adverb, translated as “greatly” or “entirely”, also “entirety”. That is why Ra is identified with Atum, who also puns with “entirety”. They’re synonyms.

If Ra was supposed to pun with r-ˤȝ, then the meaning that the Egyptian proto-spooks meant was probably more something like “to [be] nobility”. In some cases, r- is incorporated into fixed expressions, such as with “entirely” & “entirety”. It may be that the aristocrats somehow punny-read the expression r-ˤȝ simply as “nobility”, i.e. themselves.

Perhaps at some point we’ll be able to decrypt Egyptian texts to get more clarity on the grammar here.

Akhenaten’s switch from Ra to Aten

Mainstream history texts about Egypt often emphasize & glorify the rule of king Akhenaten, who tried to switch worship to the god Aten exclusively, hailed as early monotheism. Aten is a sun god like Ra, but named after a different word for “sun”. However, while rˤ Ra puns with r-ˤȝ “to be great”, jtn Aten puns with jtnw “secret”. This pun is used frequently in the great hymn to Aten. The king’s name ȝḫ-n-jtn Akh-en-Aten can be read as “the benefits of secrecy”.

If this pun is a clue, then Akenaten’s name switch may have been an allusion to a move from proto-spookery towards the full-fledged crypto-aristocracy that we have today. His “reforms” appear to have been short-lived though, and his newly built capital Amarna was quickly abandoned after his death. Either this was a ruse to hide his families’ tracks into secrecy, or it indicates a split, and the larger part of Egyptian nobility had not yet been ready to give up their mostly official tyranny for a disguised one.

Ra’s 2 barques as puns with disguise

Ra was said to have used 2 solar barques during day & night. Their names are somewhat odd though, and may be punny hints to the dual nature of the spook aristocracy:

• The day barque was called wjȝ-n-ḥḥw “boat of millions [of years]”. This is letter-wise identical to wjȝ-n-ḥḥw “warding off millions”. It also puns with jȝw-n-ḥḥw “praised by millions”, and even with jȝˤ-n-ḥḥw “enticing millions”. Since the word for “enticing” is derived from “cloak”, it could also mean “cloaking for millions”. This is the aristocracy during the “day”: Wrongly praised by millions, but really luring them with a false glorifying cloak, thereby warding off their anger.
• Another name for the day barque was m-ˤnḏ.t “of daylight”. This puns with m-ˤn-n-nḏt “pleasing & magnificent for the subjects”, which can also mean “embellished for the subjects”. It also puns with m-ˤn-nḏt “averting the subjects”. So as we would’ve guessed, the appearance of the aristocrats during “daylight” was just an embellishment. They were feigning to be pleasing & magnificent to avert their subjects’ suspicions!
• The night barque was called m-skt.t “of darkness”. This puns with mj-s-kt “like another person”, mj-s-ktkt “like a secret person”, possibly also with mj-s-ktt “like a little person”. It seems that when they wanted to be unseen while conducting their corrupt business, even the Egyptian aristocrats were already being secretive, and pretended to be other people. If they really already enacted themselves as “little people”, it would’ve been full-fledged spookery.

Note: In the transliteration, the 2nd and 3rd puns seem to hinge on how many Ns and Ks and Ts the word was written with. However, the Egyptians didn’t write their letters in a straight line, but in decorative interwoven clusters, and frequently omitted letters, or doubled them by using biliterals plus the original letters. This means that in hieroglyphic writing, all of these puns would’ve worked very well for Egyptian readers. Even later Semitic puns with a regular alphabet often shorten double-letters or double single-letters.

In the night barque, Re has to defend against the snake Apophis, who puns with “examination” & “reckoning”.

Cattle of Ra

The Egyptian people are called “cattle of Ra” in some texts. If Ra stands for the aristocracy, then this would mean they’re the “cattle of the aristocracy”. We can still see this attitude today with our current crypto-overlords. It also seems to match some Egyptian stories, such as the Book of the Heavenly Cow, where the common people rebel against Ra and he solves this problem by having his “cattle” slaughtered.

(A synonym for “cattle” is wnḏyt, which puns with nḏt “subjects”.)

Horus says to this cattle of Re
which are in the Duat, Egypt and the Desert:

jn ḥrw n nn nj ˤwt rˤw
jmyw dwȝt kmt dšrt

𓇋𓋔𓅃𓈖𓇒𓈖𓋿𓅱𓏏𓏥𓇳𓏤

𓇋𓏶𓏪𓇼𓏏𓉐𓆎𓐝𓏏𓊖𓏏𓈙𓂋𓂧𓊖

Erik Hornung: The Egyptian Book of Gates. pg 159