As I mentioned in my previous article, the Egyptian F36 hieroglyph ‘lung and windpipe’ 𓄥 likely had the pronunciation [smera] in an older version of the language.¹ [smera] transitioned to [chera] in Malayalam before Sanskrit entered the lexicon. Among other contexts, [smera] was a toponym of a foreign land whose whereabout is unknown to modern-day Egyptologists.
However, in some other contexts, Egypt itself — or more accurately, the ruling dynasty of Egypt — was called smera-tiru 𓄥𓇿𓇿, with the F36 hieroglyph interpreted as ‘union’ and the phrase smera-tiru to mean ‘unification of the two lands.’² Interestingly, pharaohs who usurped the throne gave themselves this title: Narmer, the first pharaoh of dynastic Egypt, around 3000 BCE; Mentuhotep II after conquering petty chieftains and taking over the throne around 2008 BCE; Sobekhotep II after starting a new dynastic line around 1803 BCE; Piye, a Kushite king who conquered Egypt and crowned himself pharaoh around 744 BCE; and Cambyses, king of the Achaemenid Empire whose conquest of Egypt around 525 BCE changed the course of its history forever.³ The phrase therefore probably applied as an epithet of a conqueror, a leader who united warring factions and brought harmony to a divided land, thereby legitimizing his divine right to the Egyptian throne.
Although smera-tiru is interpreted as ‘unification of the two lands,’ given the correspondence between Egyptian and Malayalam, tiru could better correspond to Malayalam tiru തിരു ‘blessed.’⁴ If so, smera-tiru corresponds to tiru-chera തിരു ചേര ‘blessed Chera,’ which matches the context of the Egyptian title to a tee!⁵ Could the ancient Chera dynasty that ruled Kerala during the Sangam period (ca. 200 BCE — 1000 CE) have had a connection with the smera-tiru dynasty of pharaonic Egypt? Perhaps the Chera kings of Kerala were conquerors of their neighboring chiefdoms, giving themselves the title tiru-chera according to their native language derived from old Egyptian. Aside from this linguistic coincidence, could the Chera kings of Kerala have been actually related either by blood or vassalage to the Egyptian pharaonic dynasty?
A clue lies with the insignia of the Egyptian dynasty. The origin of smera-tiru can be traced to the first pharaoh of dynastic Egypt, ca. 3000 BCE, who united the northern and southern regions of Egypt into one unified kingdom. This unification was captured symbolically in a motif that typically accompanied many royal iconographies on the walls of temples, tombs, palaces, thrones, and even furniture, such as those recovered from the tomb of the famous pharaoh Tutankhamum.⁶ It is a symmetrical composition, whose axis is the F36 hieroglyph, ‘lung and windpipe’ around which are intertwined the lotus representing southern Egypt on one side and the papyrus representing northern Egypt on the other side. This motif came into existence quite early in Egyptian history and persisted into Graeco-Roman times.
Another variant is shown below, this one found among the inscriptions in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari.⁷
Yet another variant is shown below, in a mural of pharaoh Amenhotep II and queen Tiye (ca. 1350 BCE).
Yet another Egyptian variant from around 100 CE is shown below. As can be seen, the design is far removed from the original. The mosaic glass technique used for creating the inlay below probably resulted in the F36 hieroglyph taking on the shape of an arrow rather than a windpipe and lungs.
In another variant, deities hold the lotus and papyrus stems.
In other variations, the horizontal bar above the F36 hieroglyph has an assortment of lengths: in some, it stretches across the curves of the reeds on either side; in others, it is shorter. There are differences in the reeds too; some motifs show a greater number of reeds than others. In some, the flowers are clearly shaped; in others, it takes a fair bit of imagination to see them as flowers. Indeed, such variations could very well arise based on the context, material used, the artist’s skill, the size of the design, the process of making it, and such. All in all, the components that seem unchanged in any of the variations include the symmetry, the central windpipe-and-lung, one curved arc upwards and another downwards.
Remarkably, this Egyptian insignia may have a relationship — perhaps tenuous — with the well-established bow and arrow insignia of the Chera dynasty of Kerala (see below).⁸
The bow and arrow/scepter insignia can be found on many different varieties of coins dating to various time periods during the reign of the Chera kings. Some have even been found in Egypt proper, dating to the first century CE during Graeco-Roman times.¹⁰ The different designs unmistakably indicate a bow and an arrow: the curve of the bow intersects the arrow at their mutual midpoints, with the bowstring stretched between the ends of the bow so that one end of the arrow rests on the bowstring and the tip points away. The arrowhead is consistently shown with a pointed heart shape, two barbs facing away from the tip. Surprisingly, in some variants, the bowstring does not extend all the way across the bow. In at least one variant, the bowstring does not touch the bow at all. According to yet another variant, the bowstring is “represented as fluttering forward in two spiral strands from the top notch of the bow.”¹¹
Now, I have highlighted a portion of the Egyptian motif in a few examples below. What appears in clear relief by the highlight is the Chera’s bow and arrow oriented with the arrow pointing down! See the symmetry around the middle “shaft,” the placement of the “arrow’s” end on the horizontal bar, the curved “bow” intersecting with the midpoint of the central “shaft,” and the shape of the “arrowhead.” The similarities are unmistakable.
Given the linguistic correspondence between smera-tiru and tiru chera, these similarities in the royal motifs suggest that the insignia used by the Chera kings of Kerala was not randomly created. The bow-and-arrow of Kerala’s Chera likely started out as the floral motif of the Egyptian pharaonic dynasty and — separated from its original context and influenced persistently by neighboring cultures on the Indian peninsula — evolved away over hundreds of years. Bereft of its initial source, removed from the historical significance of its design, limited by local artisanal materials and skills, it could have lost its various details to retain only the portions that seemed familiar to the warring South Indian milieu of its times.
One thing is clear: by the time the Chera of Kerala stamped their insignia on coins, they had long lost any direct ties with the pharaohs of Egypt. Given that Chera coins imprinted with their distinctive insignia were found during the Graeco-Roman era, their direct connection with pharaonic Egypt probably dates back even farther by hundreds of years. How far back? How did they forge this connection? Will we ever know?
Notes
[1] Current interpretation based on a later version of Egyptian language is [sema].
[2] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/856194. Modern day interpretation of the pronunciation of the hieroglyphs is sema-tawi ‘union of the two lands.’ https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134550. The interpretation of smera as ‘unite’ arises from other contexts, in which the corresponding Malayalam is cheru ചേര് ‘unite.’ In Malayalam, cheru ചേര് and chera ചേര have different meanings, and it is likely that such could have been the case in ancient Egyptian too, although it is equally likely that chera ചേര could have derived from cheru ചേര് as in Egyptian.
[3] Ronald Leprohon, 2013, The Great Name: Ancient Egyptian Royal Titulary (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature).
[4] tiru is written in hieroglyphs using two N16 hieroglyphs. The N16 hieroglyph ‘flat alluvial land’ 𓇿 represents a composite of two sounds: [t] and the vulture hieroglyph, currently interpreted by Egyptologists as [a], to yield a pronunciation of [ta]. Thus, the two N16 hieroglyphs together is pronounced as [tawi]. As I mentioned earlier, the vulture hieroglyph was pronounced as [r] earlier, so that the N16 hieroglyph could be pronounced as [tera]. In the plural form, it could become [terui], but the vowel sound [i] can move into the middle of the word to [tiru]. Other words in which the two N16 hieroglyphs are used is sen-tiru ‘high priest.’ https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/136570, corresponding to Malayalam tantri തന്ത്രി ‘high priest;’ nsw.t-tiru, a place name, corresponding to Malayalam tiru-vanchi തിരുവഞ്ചി, also a place name; neb-tiru ‘lord’ corresponding to Malayalam nambiatiri ‘lord;’ and many others. Besides, tiru appears in divine and royal epithets, just as in Malayalam, suggesting that the pronunciation [tiru] for the two N16 hieroglyphs is not inconsistent with Malayalam.
[5] Prefix and suffix are transposed between Egyptian and Malayalam. Alternately, cheratiri ചേരതിരി.
[6] Karol Myśliwiec, 1999, The Twilight of Ancient Egypt: First Millennium B.C.E. Translated by David Lorton, 2000, 6–7 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Claudia Venier, 2020, “Show me your chair, I’ll tell you who you are,” in Tutankhamun: Discovering the forgotten Pharaoh, edited by Smith Connor and Dimitry Laboury, 180 (Liege: Presses universitaires de Liege).
[7] Kasprzycka, Katarzyna. 2019. “Reconstruction of the bases of sandstone sphinxes from the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari,” Polish Archeology in the Mediterranean, vol. 28(2): 365.
[8] P.V. Radhakrishnan, 2019, “Significance of Religious Symbolism on ‘coined money’ with special reference to South Indian coinage,” in Studies in South Indian Coins, vol. 29, edited by A.V. Narasimha Murthy and T. Satyamurthy, 10 (Chennai: South Indian Numismatic Society).
[9] Travancore Archeological Series, vol. 1: 162.
[10] Shailendra Bhandare, Hélène Cuvigny and Thomas Faucher, 2022, “An Indian coin in the Eastern Desert of Egypt,” in Networked Spaces: The Spatiality of Networks in the Red Sea and Western Indian Ocean, edited by Caroline Durand, Julie Marchand, Berangere Redon, and Poerre Schenider, 507–512 (Paris: MOM Éditions).
[11] Travancore Archeological Series, vol. 1: 162.
