fontes historiae nubiorum - Digitalt - Universitetet i Bergen

Introduction
Coptic shows us that the word was pronounced nûte in late times; and other
evidence confirms that the loss of final r occurred long before the Coptic period.
Thus, a transliteration nt would be entirely appropriate for the period of our
corpus, and in fact there are texts in Late Temples which include puns that only
become evident when this transliteration is used. Clearly, a rigid policy of
transliteration creates its own problems. The transliterations given in this corpus
are inconsistent. Sometimes they point to standard entries in reference
works, sometimes they directly reflect the translator's ideas about state of the
text. In a few instances, a transliteration consistent with the text is followed by a
pointer in parentheses to the common citation form. To have striven for consistency
would have thrown up a host of problems to attempt to solve which
would have prolonged the labor involved in preparing the Egyptian texts disproportionately
to the gain one could reasonably anticipate. On the other hand,
to have eschewed transliteration would have made it harder to recognize translator's
errors and deprived some readers of useful guidance.
lI(HP]
The following signs have been used in the transliteration and translation of
Egyptian:
Enclosing damaged words or parts of words restored by modern writers.
Enclosing words the reading or translation of which is open to question.
In transliterations, enclosing words not written by the scribe but probably
present in the spoken language; in translations, enclosing words
added by the modern writer to clarify the sense.
< > Enclosing words omitted in error by the scribe.
l I Enclosing words to be deleted.
In the transliteration of Egyptian we have used Peter Der Manuelian's copyrighted
DyPalatino font, which we purchased from him in 1993.
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