The ancient Egyptian Bone-with-meat hieroglyph (

Gardiner Gardiner may refer to: Places Settlements ;Canada * Gardiner, Ontario ;United States * Gardiner, Maine * Gardiner, Montana * Gardiner (town), New York ** Gardiner (CDP), New York * Gardiner, Oregon * Gardiner, Washington * West Gardiner, Maine ...

F44) represented: "ancestry, inherit", and phonetic ''isw, iw' '' (inherit, etc.); a determinative for the

femur The femur (; ), or thigh bone, is the proximal bone of the hindlimb in tetrapod vertebrates. The head of the femur articulates with the acetabulum in the pelvic bone forming the hip joint, while the distal part of the femur articulates with ...

, (iw'); and ''swt'', for the

tibia The tibia (; ), also known as the shinbone or shankbone, is the larger, stronger, and anterior (frontal) of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates (the other being the fibula, behind and to the outside of the tibia); it connects ...

.Kamrin, 2004. F44, p. 238. The

Old Kingdom In ancient Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom is the period spanning c. 2700–2200 BC. It is also known as the "Age of the Pyramids" or the "Age of the Pyramid Builders", as it encompasses the reigns of the great pyramid-builders of the Fourth ...

usage on

slab stele Slab or SLAB may refer to: Physical materials * Concrete slab, a flat concrete plate used in construction * Stone slab, a flat stone used in construction * Slab (casting), a length of metal * Slab (geology), that portion of a tectonic plate that i ...

s, from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, shows the proto-type form of the hieroglyph as a 'cut of meat', much like the spare ribs or beef ribs of the present era. The slab stela shows the bone as a multiple of two curved bones, much like the spare rib. An example of a wall relief scene from

Edfu Edfu ( egy, bḥdt, ar, إدفو , ; also spelt Idfu, or in modern French as Edfou) is an Egyptian city, located on the west bank of the Nile River between Esna and Aswan, with a population of approximately sixty thousand people. Edfu is the site ...

at the Temple of Edfu shows a

cartouche In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the fea ...

with the ''joint of meat'' hieroglyph. Another less common hieroglyph pictured within the cartouche is the vertical standing ''mummy hieroglyph.''

References

*Budge. ''The Rosetta Stone,'' E.A.Wallace Budge, (Dover Publications), c 1929, Dover edition(unabridged), 1989. (softcover, ) *Kamrin, 2004. '' Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Practical Guide'', Janice Kamrin, c 2004, Harry N. Abrams, Publisher, (hardcover, {{ISBN, 0-8109-4961-X) Egyptian hieroglyphs: parts of mammals

See also

References