Egyptian Text Template

Hieroglyphs · Transliteration · Translation · Analysis

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Transliteration

ḥtp-dỉ-nswt wsỉr nb ḏdw nṯr ꜥꜣ nb ꜣbḏw

Translation

An offering which the king gives to Osiris, lord of Busiris, the great god, lord of Abydos…

This is a classic ḥtp-dỉ-nswt formula, the standard offering formula that appears on countless Middle Kingdom stelae and tomb walls. The phrase literally means “an offering that the king gives”.

wsỉr nb ḏdw – Osiris is identified both as “lord of Busiris” (his traditional Delta cult centre) and later as “lord of Abydos”, reflecting the dual centres of his worship.

Note the use of the epithet nṯr ꜥꜣ (“great god”), which becomes increasingly common from the late Old Kingdom onward and emphasises Osiris’s elevated status in the afterlife ideology.

The formula continues with a request for the usual funerary offerings (bread, beer, oxen, fowl, alabaster, linen…) for the ka of the deceased. Replace this paragraph with your own philological, historical or iconographic remarks.

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