The register rules: Šw
Evidence dossier 236 — Šw. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: Šw
- Original script: 𓄑
- Pantheon: Egyptian
- Convention: Egyptological transliteration — ꜣ, ꜥ, ḥ, ḏ, ṯ as the grammars record them
- False forms on record: 0
- Contested forms: none attested
- Series: The Canonical Register, No. 236 of 287
The Evidence
Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The attested form is 𓄑, from the tradition's own record. The canonical transliteration is Šw.
Exhibit 2 — the flattened form. The plain form shu is not false — it is a fallback, and the register is exact about what that means. In systems that cannot carry diacritics (legacy databases, older tooling, parts of the address-bar pipeline) the flattened form is the accepted vehicle, and the rulebook names it explicitly as the final rung of the fallback hierarchy: full restoration first, circumflex where attested, macron-only by the academic standard, an attested variant, and only then plain ASCII.
What the fallback status forbids is promotion: shu may carry the name where marks are impossible, but it may not represent the name where marks are possible. A fallback is a vehicle, never the primary.
Exhibit 3 — the physical record. Shu is depicted raising Nut above Geb in royal tombs such as KV57 (Horemheb) and in the Book of the Dead papyrus of Nakht (TT52). The ostrich feather, his distinctive attribute, appears on statue crowns and amulets from the New Kingdom. Temple reliefs at Karnak and in the Osireion at Abydos show Shu as part of the Heliopolitan ennead. Bronze figurines of Shu in the pose of supporting the sky have been recovered from temple deposits at Thebes and Saqqara.
Exhibit 4 — the continuing record. Shu survives wherever we speak of 'atmosphere' or 'breath of life'. The Greek Atlas is his most famous heir, but the idea of a living medium between heaven and earth is older than Greece.
The Convention's Own History
Egyptological transliteration exists because hieroglyphs write consonants, not vowels. The characters ꜣ (aleph) and ꜥ (ayin) are consonants — a glottal reed and a pharyngeal grip — and rendering them as vowels does not "simplify" the name, it deletes consonants from it. The conventions in use descend from nineteenth-century decipherment and the standardized Manuel de Codage: ḥ, ḫ, ḏ, ṯ each mark a distinct consonant the Egyptian wrote and a modern reader must not merge. When this register defends them, it defends the principle that a writing system older than the alphabet gets to keep its consonants.
The Protocol's Position
Can the canonical form live in the address bar? Almost always, yes. IDNA 2008 admits every mark this register defends — the DNS stores them as `xn--` punycode and modern browsers render them natively. The real frictions are practical, not legal: some registrars stock only part of the IDN space, so a theoretically valid name can be temporarily unbuyable; and stacked combinations (an acute riding a macron) remain awkward to type on mobile keyboards even where the protocol accepts them.
The project's answer is a ranked ladder, not a compromise: the full restoration first, then attested fallbacks in descending order of completeness. The ladder's lowest rung, plain ASCII, is a vehicle for legacy systems — sanctioned, but never presented as the scholarly form.
The Verdict
Case closed on Šw: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form shu rides as the sanctioned fallback — and stays in that lane. The register's files remain open: if a source surfaces that changes any line of this entry, the entry changes. Until then, the temple at /sites/shu/ holds the canonical form.
The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 13 cited sources — Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache (Wb), šw.
The Register Continues
Entry 236 of 287 in the Canonical Register. Around it: the temple's founding dispatch, the Restoration File on the marks themselves, the Resonance File on the archetype at work, and the Rulebook behind all of it.
Continue the register — previous entry: Śiva (read it) · next entry: sjꜣ (read it).
The Canonical Register is written from the same canonical record as the lexicon itself. If a false form is missing from this page, it is because the evidence does not support calling it false — or because we have not seen it yet. Show us, with a citation, and the register will answer.