pr (hieroglyph)

{{Short description|Egyptian hieroglyph}}

{{more citations needed|date=February 2021}}

{{Hiero|House
(" floor plan" )|pr|align=right|era=egypt}}

Pr (𓉐 Gardiner sign listed no. O1) is the hieroglyph for 'house', the floor-plan of a walled building with an open doorway.

While its original pronunciation is not known with certainty, modern Egyptology assigns it the value of per, but purely on the basis of a convention specific to the discipline. However, the Ancient Greek rendering of the title pr-`3 as {{langx|grc|φαραώ}} {{lang|grc-Latn|pharaō}} suggests the reconstruction of the historical (Late Egyptian) pronunciation as *par, see Pharaoh#Etymology.

{{Hiero|House of Life
"library" |pr-anx-pr|align=right|era=egypt}}

Pr combined with an associated "personal name", god, or location becomes the "house of .... ." An example for pharaoh Setnakhte is the city of: Pr-Atum, (city of Pithom). Pr and ankh-(life) is a "combination hieroglyph" and is the "word" for house of life. The "house of life" is a library for papyrus books-(scrolls), as well as a possible scriptorium.

The shape of pr in beginning dynasties had variations in the shape of a square, with the opening. See Garrett Reference for tomb of Official Ti.

Pr is one of hieroglyphs adopted into the Proto-Sinaitic script, the earliest known alphabetic writing system. It was used to represent the phoneme /b/ as in bayt, the Canaanite word for "house", after the hieroglyph's original meaning.{{cite journal | last = Goldwasser | first = Orly | authorlink = Orly Goldwasser | title = How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs | journal = Biblical Archaeology Review | volume = 36 | issue = 2 | publisher = Biblical Archaeology Society | location = Washington, DC | date = Mar–Apr 2010 | url = http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=36&Issue=02&ArticleID=06 | issn = 0098-9444 | accessdate = 2016-08-03}} The Latin letter B is a distant descendant of this letter.