mdw jꜣw

mdw (“staff”) +‎ jꜣw (“old age”) in a direct genitive construction, thus literally ‘staff of old age’.

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /mɛduː iɑuː/
  • Conventional anglicization: medu iau

 m

1. a son who assumes the duties of his aged father, allowing the father to remain in office, supported by his son, who carries out the father’s responsibilities as deputy [Middle Kingdom and 18th Dynasty]
   • c. 1900 BCE, The Instructions of Ptahhotep (pPrisse/pBN 186–194) lines 5.2–5.3:

     wḏ.t(w) n bꜣk jm jrt mdw jꜣw jḫ ḏd.j n.f mdw sḏmyw sḫrw jmjw-ḥꜣt pꜣw sḏm n nṯrw

     May your humble servant (i.e. the father) be commanded to make his son his deputy (lit. a staff of old age); then I will tell him the speech of the listeners, the advice of ancestors who once listened to the gods.

• Allen, James (2015) Middle Egyptian Literature: Eight Literary Works of the Middle Kingdom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 168–169
• Erman, Adolf; Grapow, Hermann (1928) Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, volume 2, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN, page 178.11
• Faulkner, Raymond (1962) A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Oxford: Griffith Institute, →ISBN, page 122