9 bows peoples

Egypt and the desert tribes

The great Egyptian cities and strongholds were located along the Nile and its marshes & oases. Outside of that was mostly desert, and the people living there were not considered Egyptians, probably because they couldn’t easily be subdued. As usual, trade was conducted between the different regions. Presumably, small groups of people would also migrate & resettle between them in times of crisis. And of course there were also occasional hostilities, as they’ve always existed between farmers & nomads. The Egyptians left many vivid & detailed depictions of the desert peoples, as traders & herders, and also as defeated enemies.

One weapon of choice for the desert dwellers seems to have been the bow, so “bowman” & “bow” became a synonym for “desert-dweller” & “foreign peoples”. If you insert an S into the word pḏt “bow”, then it becomes psḏ.t “ennead” / “nine-ness”. So in an attempt at wordplay, the desert peoples were collectively termed “9 bows”, even though it was never precisely 9 peoples, and the names of the associated peoples changed over time.

However, while they may have been a nuisance & menace at times, it’s doubtful desert-dwelling tribes were ever the great danger to fortified cities they were claimed to be. “Barbarian invasions” of later epochs cannot serve as reference examples, because they are likewise doubtful. So the over-emphasis of the “9 bows” threat, with ridiculous depictions of over-powerful Egyptian kings personally smashing the head of shackled nomads, smack of propaganda. And maybe it was even more than an exaggeration, maybe at some point it went from there to a systematic deception.

9 bows as pun with “mock rebellion”

If the “number 9” had merely been a pun with “foreign bowmen”, then we should find more such playful terms, because there were many synonyms for “foreigners”. However, it’s always the “9 bows”, over & over.

As usual, the answer may be a secret 2nd-level spooky pun: Egyptian psḏ “nine” puns with bšd / bšṯ / bšt “rebellion”. That fits the depiction of the desert peoples as rebellous attackers, so it’s more confirmation for wordplay.

But what are the “bows” supposed to pun with? The best spooky match is pḏt “bow” punning with pjṯ.t / fjṯ.t “mockery”.

Together, the “9 bows” then become a “mock rebellion”.

If this is the intended pun, then the “9 bows” threat was really a mockery enacted by the Egyptian elites to justify their rule as “defenders of the realm”, like it’s still done by today’s spook rulers. More research is needed to confirm this though.

(Note: Female T-suffixes for abstract nouns are needed here, but they can be slapped onto virtually all words, and the Egyptians frequently used them. Such a T-suffix is even employed in the semi-official pun to make psḏ.t “nine-ness” pun with pḏt “bow”. A mere psḏ “nine” without T-suffix wouldn’t have worked here, because pḏt “bow” is always written with T.)