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ing of cupbearer, servant ." It can be observed, however, that the writing of the two words
changed slightly during the time, in some cases becoming very similar, and so it might
be possible to interchange them because of this resemblance. Erman provides examples
of this kind of orthographical error as well, noting that instead of an uncommon, lesser
known word another frequent, familiar one is used, or the two words are merged into
one another.” These orthographical analogies would lead to such misinterpretations
like the one in the article of Ventura in which he incorrectly identifies the form tan
as wdpw in the inscription on a rock stele in Timna.” Later, Schulman corrects the read¬
ing of Ventura to wb3 and notes that the form is not plural, as Ventura thought, but the
ending —w is an orthographical error which comes from the word wdpw and it should
not be read.”
Besides Malek, Gregersen also states in her study on the appearances and functions of
wb3/wb3 nswt and wdpw/wdpw nswt that the reading of the two words is sometimes random.”
Although her examination led to some correct conclusions, her analysis was based only on
observations of the written form of the words and did not take into consideration the
textual context in which they were presented, which caused a degree of misunderstanding
regarding the feature of their usage, as well as the differentiation of their formal appear¬
ances. As for the differentiation between the reading of the words wb3 and wdpw, the
tendency of generally merging the examples of the two words attested during New Kingdom
under the reading of wb3 can be observed. Gregersen was not the only one who decided to
refer to both writing forms as wb3 nswt because of the limited number of examples of wdpw
nswt identified in her corpus," but the same categorization can be seen by Lesko® as well
as by Erman and Grapow.”
It is not entirely convincing, however, that a word with its own spelling, reading,
and meaning, in this case wdpw, would merge in meaning and reading into another
word, in this case wb3, while still preserving its own spelling in use. It would make
more sense if the rarely used word disappeared gradually and then completely, and
» Erman — Grapow, 1971, 388; Lesko, 1982, 136.
29 Erman, 1933, 10-11, $17.
Ventura, 1974, 60-63, 62 (b).
Schulman, 1976, 118 b, 127, n. 10-12.
% Gregersen, 2007, 839.
4 Gregersen, 2007, 845. Gregersen does not provide any details on the objects of the corpus of her
examination, thus it is not possible to concur with or contradict her statements concerning the
sources.
% Lesko, 1982, 110, 136.
2 Erman — Grapow, 1971, 292, 388.
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