typical offering formula

I drew this so you can learn in a few minutes what students study a week to take up. This is a very typical offering formula seen on stela in museums worldwide, in temples, in tombs, on false doors and such. False doors were an integral part of many ancient tombs of various cultures, not just Egyptian. They are real doors for spirits, the means for spirits to enter the physical world, the place where living people go to put their actual offering.

Imagine the look on your significant other's face when you read this to them.

This is what fascinated Dr. Fred about me. His delight was gleeful. I'd go, "Hey Fred, wanna see if we can get all the theme answers to this crossword before the waiter gets back here with our food?" But he kept stopping and holding things up by asking repeatedly, "How do you know that?" Then I'd have to think back how I knew that. Apparently there are a lot of things I wasn't entitled to know.

This stela is for a man named Amenemhat who was chamberlain to a pharaoh. A few pharaohs were named Amenemhat too, and so were visors, and so were various other overseers of different pharaonic departments and functions, overseer of the granary, overseer of the army, and so forth. You would not believe how many offering stela of this sort exist for men named Amenemhat. It's ridiculous.

This vignette is typical. It is instantly recognizable by its art and by its text. Its elements stick right out like flashing lights by its iconography on sight in the same way that no thought is applied to the comprehension of this:

You don't even need all it's elements. Joseph and Mary and Jesus will do to convey the whole concept. A baby in a manger will convey the entire nativity. Just as the three magi will do. An angel holding a scroll with Latin phrasing on it works as symbol for all other nativity symbols. 

While an entirely different vignette or any of its specific elements conveys the same date, the same event, but in a wildly different fashion centering around a different mythology applying to the same event.

While an entirely different vignette, another set of iconography, applies to the same historic person but a different event, another aspect of the same man's life. Any element will do to serve as symbol for the whole set. There are significant elements omitted from this one. It's only one aspect of the whole portion. There is no crown of thorns. No crosses. 

And with its own pagan iconography, where any single element serves to represent the whole set for the same thing as the religious set. A decorated egg works for the whole scene, or a basket, or bunnies or chicks all work to suggest Easter.

This same thing happens in other cultures too. All across the world. All through history. The same vignettes are expressed various ways yet you'll see the same elements repeated, altered, spelled differently, shown differently, elements omitted, and embellished.

In these hieroglyphs you will see "nb," a semi circle that is a basket without a handle stand for "lord" and the same "nb" used to spell the Egyptian word for "everything." Incidentally, a basket with a loop handle is the letter "K."

The symbols are used for sounds in Egyptian language, for letters, for words that are spoken, and for concepts unspoken that specify the preceding word or group. Symbols are used for grammatical gender of noun, verb, object agreement and symbols are used for redundancy, they repeat the final sound of the usually preceding associated word.

A segment of "overseer of the chamber" is destroyed. Overseer is clear enough, that's an owl and mouth and in this version, a vertical line meaning "a thing" and an arm, for "Im-r-eh" There are various ways to write this including or omitting redundancies and glyph choices for sounds. They all include the glyph for "room," a "p-r" sound, the same glyph that is used for the sound of the word "pharaoh" but here meaning actual room. But I can not see that required glyph in the bashed out portion. I could not discern the original without something inside the room, and the most typical cannot fit into the space that is bashed. So something else was used there but I cannot match the shapes of apparent shadows. So, I stuck in the sounds that are needed, even though they do not match what is left, while having no idea what was originally there. Other people are a lot better at this than I am. I looked at the student's answers for the required sounds but I honestly cannot see how they arrived at them. They just don't fit into the spaces.  Frankly, I think they're going along with what their text tells them it is. I think they cribbed their answers. How else does a whole class of beginners agree on precisely the same transliteration?

For the record, this is what "overseer of the chamber" would look like in full.

imy-rA aXnwty (for keyboard communication)

There is overlapping sounds here. The goat is "hn" the water is "n" the jug is "nw" the swirl is cursive for the chick, "w" and the teardrop shape is "ty" the rectangle is "pr" unvoiced determinative for "room." So that whole group following the headless goat, or any substitution for it, any omission, is to be crammed into the bashed out segment. Formulaically, this is what is required in that space.