# Egyptian: snow



## prtzllife

Does anyone know if there is an Egyptian hieroglyph or a combination of hieroglyphs for snow or ice. I've tried to fine one online without success, any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!


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## Nunty

Intrigued by this question, I contacted an Egyptologist at a local university. Here is the relevant part of her reply:


> The Egyptian word for snow is salqu (the vowels are basically an educated guess) probably related to the Hebrew word for snow, sheleg. Obviously, they had no snow at home in Egypt but came across it in countries further north.
> 
> Snow is mentioned in one ancient Egyptian text, in the context of unpleasant or dangerous phenomena that might happen on the mountains of northern lands in the winter. Officially speaking, the Egyptians didn’t like snow.


She also sent the hieroglyphs. I'll try to add them as an attachment.


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## prtzllife

That's wonderful! Thank you so much!
That's really interesting that it's probably borrowed from Hebrew.
I've looked to see what the first hieroglyph is/means, but I couldn't find it. I guess it's phonetic for /s/? That would make sense given the phonetic values of the others, and the final logogram for precipitation.
I am a little confused about the vertical strokes. Wikipedia says they mark a logogram, but it seems to me they're in the middle of all the phonetics. Any thoughts?


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## Nunty

My source says that it is the Canaanite word. She mentioned Hebrew because she knows I speak it. She also says: 





> It is written phonetically sa - r (for l)-q + classifier for rain.


 That should help you work out the hieroglyphs.


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## prtzllife

That's great! Thanks so much!!


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## Flaminius

_Salqu_ makes sense vis-à-vis _sheleg_ because Hebrew inherited Proto-Semitic /s/ as /sh/ (cf. consonantal correspondences with daughter languages).  Just for reference, *Nunty*, does the Egyptology professor say anything about the date of the text? I am interested to know how old the word is.


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## JAN SHAR

But why would the ג of Hebrew change into ק?


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