The last lesson built whole sentences without a verb. This one shows how to say that something is not so. Alan Gardiner opens his chapter on negation by calling Egyptian "rich in negative words", each with its own habits, and he starts with the commonest. It comes in two forms: nn, written with a pair of outstretched arms above the ripple of water, and n, the arms alone.
Gardiner notes that Old Egyptian did not keep the two apart, and texts of the Eleventh Dynasty still often write n where nn is meant. He calls the difference between them "rather obscure", but suggests a working idea: nn behaves like a statement in its own right, "it is not the case that", while n is tied more closely to the word it stands in front of. James Allen's description fits this, since in his account n on its own negates single words. Careless scribes mixed the two up, Gardiner adds, especially after the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
The clearest job of nn is to deny that something exists. Gardiner gives nn wn, "there exists not", and says that nn very often does the work alone. One of his examples begins "People say", followed by just nn wn: "there is nothing", literally "there does not exist".
Both grammars quote the same bleak line, nn mꜣꜥtyw, "there are no righteous". Allen points out that mꜣꜥtyw is a nisbe made from mꜣꜥt, Maat, the kind of adjective built with -y that this series met in the sixth lesson.
Add a suffix pronoun from the third lesson and "there is not" becomes "has not". Allen's example is nn msw·f, "he has no children", literally "his children are not". After a noun with no "the" in front of it, the same pattern is usually best read as "without": wsḫt nn ḥmw·s, "a barge without a rudder", literally "a barge, its rudder is not". Gardiner also gives "without" as a common rendering.
The same nn negates a sentence that says where something is, the kind with a phrase such as "with you" or "in the house" as its predicate. It goes in front of the subject. Gardiner and Allen both quote nn mwt·k ḥnꜥ·k, "your mother is not with you". Allen explains that this is really another denial of existence: as far as "with you" is concerned, your mother does not exist.
Sentences that say what something is work differently. Allen says they are normally negated by two words together, n and the particle is, placed on either side of the first part of the sentence, much as French wraps a verb in ne and pas. Gardiner calls these negations uncommon, and gives n sꜣ·i is, "he is not my son", where the little word pw has been left out; Allen quotes the same phrase.
Here the two grammars do not quite agree. Gardiner says nn is used before a noun followed by pw. Allen says nn is not normally found in these sentences, and that the few cases come mainly from texts after the Twelfth Dynasty, where they are still the exception. For a beginner, n with is is the pattern to learn.
Verbs come later in this series, so one rule will do for now. Gardiner says the negative word comes before the verb and changes its meaning "in a strange way". With one common verb form, n mostly gives a past meaning and nn a future one, as in nn wꜣs·f dšrt, "he shall not wear the red crown". He warns that the positive and negative uses of a verb form are separate things and must not be confused: a negative form is not simply the opposite of the matching positive one.
Look again at nn mwt·k ḥnꜥ·k. The word ḥnꜥ, "with", is a preposition, and prepositions are the subject of the next lesson.