... The issue of the pronunciation of the Ancient Egyptian language has recently become confused by popular presentations that ignore some of the essential and undoubted characteristics of Egyptian hieroglyphics, most importantly that Egyptian, just as today is usually the case with Arabic and Hebrew, did not write vowels -- except in late transcriptions of foreign (mainly Greek) words. For a time French (vowels) and German (no vowels) scholars hotly debated this, but the matter was settled more than a century ago. This is typically not explained to people who are told that their names can be written in such and such a way in hieroglyphics (cf. Nom en hieroglyphes), or who are simply told that the name of the Egyptian sun god is "Ra" -- the pronunciation we find in the recent entertaining but historically absurd movies Stargate (1994) and The Mummy (1999). Well, "ra" may be Tahitian for "sun," but it is not Ancient Egyptian. ... [www.friesian.com]

Is "u" not a vowel ?

If not a vowel what exactly does the name really mean then ?

db

"There is nothing as impenetrable as a closed mind"
and ..." if everything is a coincidence what is the point of studying or measuring or analyzing anything ?" db