mer

Etymology

Egyptian root mr, verb mri, “to love, to wish, to want, to prefer.” Written with the hoe sign (Gardiner U6) as phonogram, often with phonetic complements. There is no demonstrated cognate in the Semitic love-roots ʾ-h-b or ḥ-b-b; Egyptian is its own branch of Afroasiatic, and this word should be allowed to stand without being forced into a Hebrew or Arabic family resemblance.

Coptic continues it as ⲙⲉ / me, “to love”, the distant life of the same root after the hieroglyphs had gone quiet.

Historical use

In royal and divine epithets, mry is everywhere. To be beloved of Amun or of Ra is a public claim, not a pillow-word. The root covers preference and wish: one “wants” as well as “loves.” That breadth is native, not a deficiency.

The New Kingdom love songs (Papyrus Chester Beatty I, Papyrus Harris 500, the Cairo love songs) use the root inside a different register: gardens, canals, the brother-sister address that is a convention of endearment, not a document of incest. A girl speaks of her beloved’s house; a boy is sick with merut. The poems are among the oldest surviving literature in which desire is allowed to be ordinary and specific, a door, a path, a name.

Tomb biographies praise a man as one who loved (mri) Maat, or his city, or the king. The verb is an ethic as well as an emotion.

Semantic range

• To love a person.
• To wish, want, prefer.
• To be beloved of a god or king (epithet mry).
• Love of justice, place, or office.

Semantic change

Once Egyptological convention rendered mr as “love,” English readers heard romance. Sometimes that is right, the love songs are love songs. Sometimes it overwrites wish, loyalty, and royal ideology with a Valentine. Hieroglyphs on a cartouche that read “beloved of [God]” are not private correspondence.