At the Dream Stele: Zep Tepi

Описание: I am reading the 6th and 7th line of the Dream Stele where the First Time is mentioned. The gravitas of the inscription is palpable. When standing there, you feel time in a way that is difficult to put into words.

Edit (July 3, 2022): An explanation is in order regarding what I call a cryptic mention of Mehit. The problem presented to prior translators is that the area to the left/south of the vulture goddess mwt/Mut is illegible, which creates a problem as to where to place the next legible sign, nṯrw/Neteru for "gods"—look near the left end of the sixth register of Lepsius' transcription: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...

nṯrw, however is a masculine plural of the noun nṯr/Neter for "god" or "power of nature". Therefore, unlike prior translators, I think it must be the object of the same phrase of which mwt is the subject. nṯrw cannot be the subject of the next phrase for which mḥtt is an adjective, because mḥtt has been uniformly interpreted here by prior translators as "north". But even if this were correct, it would have to be a feminine nisbe (i.e. a derived adjective called a nisbe made by adding the ending "t" to the noun mḥt/Mehit, ostensibly referring to "northern" in this case given that the same word is used above in register 5 near the center where is also used as an adjective for the feminine noun w3t for "road"). Hence it is not in gender agreement, grammatically speaking, with nṯrw, which is masculine plural.

Nevertheless, previous translators, like Henry Breasted for example (page 323 of http://etana.org/sites/default/files/...) translated this passage as "Renutet in [- - a] in heaven, Mut - - of the northern - the mistress of the Wall of the South,"...

In other words, without exception to my knowledge, "northern" has been linked by all previous translators of the Dream Stele with the previous phrase, and "Mistress" has been assigned to the one that follows.

I say this cannot not be correct. Instead, mḥtt must be the subject of the next phrase. Since it comes before nbt/Nebet for "Mistress" or "Lady", it must either be a proper name of a goddess, like Mut before, and is therefore honorifically preposed before nbt, or it is an epithet.

Long story short, the correct way to read this, regardless of the missing section, should be

"Mehitet, the Lady of the Southern Wall."

Note that even this phrase, "of the southern wall," is not assured. This is an epithet of Ptah, but look at this stele from the time of Ramses II: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collect...
First column. The same epithet, but the actual wall sign is used, spelled jnb (wall), but not s3t. The dictionary has something else for s3t, for example, blaspheme (verb), or damage (noun). An alternative, therefore, may be "Northerner, the blasphemed of the south." But this did not make sense to the translators, I am convinced. How could it?

I am fully aware that this is not how translators before me have read this, because they are missing the context of Mehit. But even without this context, grammatically in other words, Mehitet must be a proper name or an epithet that refers to a proper entity in a cryptic way. For example, Mehitet could be translated as "The Northerner" (fem.), and this would be a allusion to Mehit by virtue of the phonetic Heka invocation. Whatever it is, "northerner" must be linked to "mistress."

But why go through the trouble of not making this clear? The reason is that Mehit was taboo in relation to the Great Sphinx, which goes with damage and blaspheme. This is all explained in our upcoming paper which you can find on my Academia page after July 13, 2022.