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Searching for words in the Egyptian/Demotic lemma list

A list of all words (lemmata) of the Egyptian language, the lexical thesaurus, forms the backbone of the lexical database. Clicking on "Search list of Egyptian words" will take users to an entry form of the lemma lists. Two separate lemma lists are made available by the system: (non-Demotic) Egyptian and Demotic. Users may choose their preferred option from the drop down menu in the search form.

Pressing the "Start" button without having entered any search values will fully display the lemma lists, which lend themselves to browsing.

Targeted search is executed by entering search values into the fields:

Lemma of an Egyptian or Demotic word
Translation: a translated word
Short bibliographic reference: bibliographic information according to a list of bibliographic short titles

and clicking on the "Start" button to set the search procedure in motion (see Further information).

The drop down list "Restrict search to word class" makes it possible for searches to be restricted to lemmata of specific word classes.

In the (non-Demotic) Egyptian lemma list users may search for lemmata by their hieroglyphic spellings (see Further information).

Further information:
Searching for words via transkription
A search within the field "Transkription" is case-sensitive, i.e., discriminating between upper-case and lower-case letters (but only in as much as is necessary to represent the special signs of the Egyptian alphabet). And it is executed in right truncation only. If, for example, pr is entered, words beginning with pr such as prj, pr-wr and pr.t will be located. However, words such as jm.j-rA-pr will not.
The set of signs used to represent Egyptian and Demotic trankriptions is the following:

Sign	Meaning
'	unknown weak consonant (apostrophe)
A	aleph
e (Demotic)	e
i (Demotic)	i with apostrophe (spiritus lenis)
i (Egyptian)	weak final consonant of the verbs ult. j
j	j (Egyptian: simple reed leaf)
y (Egyptian)	double reed leaf
a	ayin
w	w
u (Egyptian)	weak final consonant of the verbs ult. w
b	b
p	p
f	f
m	m
n	n
r	r
l	l
h	h
H	h with dot below (dotted h)
x	h with breve below (rounded h)
v (Demotic)	h with circumflex below
X	h with line below
z	z
s	s
S	schin
q	q
k	k
g	g
t	t
V (Demotic)	t with circumflex below
T	t with line below
d	d
D	d with line below
.	separation of word-formation endings
=	separation of suffix pronouns
-	partition of compound words into their components

Searching for words via translation: A search within the field "Translation" is not case-sensitive, being automatically executed in both right and left truncation. This means all words whose translation includes the search value in any place are shown. If, for example, the search value "Grab" ("tomb") is entered, words translated as "Haus; Grab; Tempel" ("house; tomb; temple") will be located as well as "begraben" ("bury").

Searching for words via short bibliographic reference: Searching within the field "Short bibliographic reference" is not case-sensitive and is automatically executed in both right and left truncation. The short titles used are included in the list of bibliographic short titles.

Searching aid using "Regular expressions" (special signs for alternative searches): Using specific special signs (so-called "Regular expressions") enables searching for certain sign constellations. This option is of particular interest within the context of the "Transkription" field of the lemma list. In this way, it is possible to search for signs at the end or at the beginning of a word, or for alternative signs in a string of signs. Specific alternatives are included in the following List of regular expressions. Here are just a few examples to illustrate this option: §mn will find words such as jmn and rmn., Entering rm?T will locate rmT and rT. [zs]A will find zA and sA .

Sign	Definition	Example
§ (In the "translation" and "short bibliographic reference" fields, please use a full stop (.) instead of the section sign.)	any one sign	§mn will find words such as jmn and rmn
$	end of a word	mn$ will locate only words ending with mn
^	beginning of a word	(A search in the "lemma" field involves the setting of this mark by default.)
[ccc]	group of alternative signs	[zs]A will find zA and sA
[^ccc]	none of the signs in the group
?	The preceding sign may be in place, but may be missing as well.	rm?T will find rmT and rT
+	The preceding sign is required to appear at least once, but may appear several times.	wn+ will find wn and wnn
*	The preceding sign may appear any number of times, or need not be in place at all	§*mn$ will find all words with any beginning, but ending with mn.

Further information
Search values entered are connected by the logical AND operator. This means, the results output includes only words that meet all search criteria.If a search does not yield any result, the search criteria need to be reviewed, and changes, if any, be made to transkription/structural signs, before the search procedure may be started anew. Certain familiar words might fail to be located at all. These words have not yet been provided with linked citations (textual references or digital slips) in the database

Searching for words via hieroglyphic signs
Users may search for lemmata by their hieroglyphic spellings, using the search form "Search for lemmata by hieroglyphic spellings"
Note: The form "Search for lemmata by hieroglyphic spellings" is not associated with the form mentioned above, which is used to search for lemmata by other criteria. This means that search criteria of the two cannot be combined in one query.

To search for hieroglyphic spellings, users need to enter into the "Sign codes" field the codes of the signs that are to be included in the requested spellings. For search criteria and information on the sign inventory available, please see the texts under and , "Information on data set" und "Rules for encoding a query" consultation of which is recommended prior to use.

Clicking on "List of signs" will open a dialogue box. Here, users may look up forms and codes of signs to select from. Signs chosen will be automatically imported into the search field of the query form.
The search procedure is started by clicking on the "Search" button.

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