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Middle Kingdom
wdpw 5». oŸ. OS. ed. 8
TS TS Te OR TS TR TS IS TIS.
[Spi Dh TS bt Le oS
Table 5. Variations of the writing of wb3 and wdpw in Middle Kingdom sources
wb3
Since most of the stelae are from Abydos from the 12" dynasty, this written diversity
cannot be explained by regional division or time of origin, nor even by the workability
of the material, since almost all of the stelae are made of limestone. There are some
examples of representing more variant forms of the same word on one stele.** As can be
observed, the variations of wb3 are much wider than those of wdpw, even if wb3 has less
than half as many occurrences as wdpw has. The explanation for this could be the nov¬
elty of the word wb3. Its consequent writing cannot yet be confirmed, and the main signs
of it — the drill or the night sky — appear with diverse complements. In the case of wdpw,
in contrast, the variations are confined to the numerous shapes of the vessel sign. If there
is a complement after the vessel, it is always a waw. Complementing the word wdpw
seems to have become more common during the First Intermediate Period when its
appearance was relocated from the labelled depictions of tomb scenes to the texts of
funerary stelae. In many cases the word stands alone in the text without any figural
depiction, which became more frequent during the Middle Kingdom.
Besides the variations of each word, we can also observe the combination of their
writing with their signs mixed. The fact that the usage of the two words would not have
been separated clearly from each other by that time, and the duties of these offices might
not have been differentiated enough, could have caused their interchange and some
orthographical shuffling between them as well." This, however, does not seem to have
been a general tendency since this phenomenon can be observed only in four cases, which
number is minimal compared to the total number of the appearances mentioned above.
In three of the cases wb} is complemented with waw,* and in the fourth case the vessel
sign is complemented with a leg and a b3-bird,* in an attempt to show which word they
*+ For example BM 170, Budge, 1913, 7, pls. 12-13; BM 216, Budge, 1912, pl. 47.
® For further information, see Ward, 1978, 92, $178.
*° Lange — Schafer, 1902, CG 20075, 91; CG 20171, 202; CG 20199, 226, pl. 16; Simpson, 1974, pl. 26, CG
20075.
#7 Simpson 1974, pl. 81, MMA 63.154.