# ḏd-mdw
## Egyptian
### Etymology

ḏd (“to say”) +‎ mdw (“speech, words”), with ḏd in the infinitive.

### Pronunciation

* (reconstructed) IPA: /ˌcʼaːtʼ maˈtʼuww/ → /ˌt͡ʃʼaːʔ maˈtʼuww/ → /t͡ʃʼəməˈtʼuww/ → /t͡ʃʼəməˈtʼøww/
* (Old Egyptian, c. 2500 BCE) IPA: /ˌcʼaːtʼ maˈtʼuww/
* (Middle Egyptian, c. 1700 BCE) IPA: /ˌt͡ʃʼaːʔ maˈtʼuww/
* (Amarna-period Late Egyptian, c. 1350 BCE) IPA: /t͡ʃʼəməˈtʼuww/
* (latest Late Egyptian, c. 800 BCE) IPA: /t͡ʃʼəməˈtʼøww/
* (modern Egyptological) IPA: /d͡ʒɛd mɛduː/
** Conventional anglicization: djed-medu

### Noun

m
* (singular only) recitation (+ jn or (since the 19th Dynasty) n: by; + ḥr: about; + ḫft: when doing); used as a title to introduce various kinds of text to be recited [since the Pyramid Texts]
** introduces the words spoken by a particular god in temple inscriptions, monuments, and old religious texts
*** c. 1450 BCE, The Poetical Stela of Thutmose III: Part I, Cairo Museum 34010:
    ḏd-mdw jn jmn-rꜥ nb-nswt-tꜣwjA recitation by Amun-Ra, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands.
** introduces the main bulk of a religious spell or utterance, after any prologues
** introduces a line of text in general in some collections of religious utterances
* introduces the name of a god, without any following text to be recited [Late Period]
* (uncommon) written in place of omitted text; ‘the usual (words to recite)’
* (rare, only attested in a single manuscript) introduces explanatory glosses to a text [Book of the Dead]
* Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see ḏd,‎ mdw.

#### Usage notes

This term may be followed immediately by ḏd to indicate that the following text is to be recited without interruption after the preceding one, or by zp and a number to indicate how many times the following text is to be recited.

#### Alternative forms

| ḏd-mdw | ḏd-mdw | ḏd-mdw | ḏd-mdw | ḏd-mdw |
| [since the Pyramid Texts] | [Pyramid Texts] | [since the Medical papyri] | [since the Book of the Dead] | [since the Book of the Dead] |
| usual form | rare |
| ḏd-mdw | ḏd-mdwt | ḏd-mdwt | ḏd-mdw | ḏd-mdw |
| [since the Book of the Dead] | [since the Book of the Dead] | [since the Book of the Dead] | [Greco-Roman Period] | [Greco-Roman Period] |

#### Descendants

* Demotic: ḏd-mdt, ḏd-md
** Bohairic Coptic: ϫⲉⲙⲧⲁⲩ (čemtau)

### References

* “ḏd-mdw (lemma ID 186050)” and “ḏd (mdw) (lemma ID 852969)”, in Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae‎, Corpus issue 18, Web app version 2.1.5, Tonio Sebastian Richter & Daniel A. Werning by order of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert & Peter Dils by order of the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 2004–26 July 2023
* Erman, Adolf, Grapow, Hermann (1928) Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache‎, volume 2, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN, pages 180.8–180.10
* Erman, Adolf, Grapow, Hermann (1931) Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache‎, volume 5, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN, pages 625.3–626.5
* Faulkner, Raymond Oliver (1962) A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Oxford: Griffith Institute, →ISBN, page 325
* James P[eter] Allen (2010) Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 169.
* ↑ Middle Egyptian Grammar: The Poetical Stela of Thutmose III: Part I, Dr. Gabor Toth, Rutgers University