Sky (hieroglyph)
# Sky (hieroglyph)

Sky (heaven) :

Egyptian hieroglyphs :

The ancient Egyptian Sky hieroglyph, (also translated as heaven in some texts, or iconography), is Gardiner sign listed no. N1, within the Gardiner signs for sky, earth, and water.

The Sky hieroglyph is used like an Egyptian language biliteral-(but is not listed there) and an ideogram in pt, "sky"; it is a determinative in other synonyms of sky. For the language value hrt, it has the phonetic value hry.

## Pt, with Gods and the Pharaoh

The Sky hieroglyph can be found in iconography with the gods, especially Ra as referencing the Lord of P(e)t, (Lord of Heaven), and the God's ownership of Pet. The Pharaoh is often equally named as the Lord of Pet.

Some ancient Egyptian names using the sky hieroglyph are Petosiris and the god Petbe.

## Ligatured variants of Sky

The simple 'vault' of the sky hieroglyph has variants that are ligatured with it. Three of these are given separate entries in Gardiner's sign list:

## Why the sky hieroglyph is not a biliteral

Though the sky hieroglyph is used as pt, in the Coptic alphabet, for the Coptic language, (the follow-on to the Egyptian hieroglyphs), the spelling of the "sky" is "pe" in Coptic. Consequently, Budge's 2-volume dictionary lists the sky hieroglyph under "pe-t"

| Preceded by Stool-or-mat (hieroglyph) unileral-P (start of P's) | sky-("heaven") "pt" | Succeeded by Bird in flight p3-(pa) |
| - | - | - |

* Relief
* Pyramidion
* Temple of Hatshepsut
* Hieroglyph-(using Sky hieroglyph)
