Question #1: Cartouche Again

I am a historian currently working on his PhD at Laval University in Quebec City. On last week’s podcast (March 1st), Steven mentioned that the term cartouche is derived from the French word for gun cartridge. This immediately sounded alarm bells in my head. Not only am I a native French speaker, but I also regularly come across the word cartouche in my pre-Napoleonic research. True, cartouche is a homonym for a cartridge. However, it has also been a long established term since 1543 describing an ornament or drawing representing a royal crest or coat of arms. These are most often seen on maps, not only denoting a crest but sometimes a detail of a cityscape (today this French word is still used to describe the area containing a map’s key). And the term, naturally, has been expanded to describe the royal Egyptian inscriptions found within hieroglyphs. In fact, this definition precedes that of a gun cartridge in the dictionary (Source: Dictionnaire le Petit Robert). Through the word’s pre-existing etymology, I conclude that the soldier story is highly unlikely. So where does this story originate? I can’t be sure, but I will point out that Wikipedia’s cartouche article refers to Jon Manchip White’s “Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt”. A quick read through Amazon’s user reviews reveals that “the book was originally written in 1970, and sadly relies on many sources (such as Budge) that are full of errors.” Yours truly, -Joseph Gagné (pronounced Gah-ny-ay) Quebec