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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] The Names for Mt. Hermon
  • Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:47:07 EDT


The Names for Mt. Hermon

Deuteronomy 3: 9 sets forth a Sidonian name for Mt. Hermon, and an Amorite
name for Mt. Hermon:

“which Hermon the Sidonians call Sirion, and the Amorites call it Senir–”

“Sirion” is sin-resh-yod-nun. This could alternatively be transliterated
into English as “Siryan” or “Saryan”, which are virtually the same as the
following attestations in the secular history of the Late Bronze Age for
names of
Mt. Hermon: “Siryanu” and “Sariyana”. (Biblical Hebrew routinely either
dropped, or at least did not overtly reflect in writing, vowel endings like
the –
U and –A here. The underlying match of this Biblical name to secular history
is in fact perfect.)

Mt. Hermon is the highest mountain in greater Canaan. Perhaps the original
root of the various names for Mt. Hermon was S-R/sar. In Hebrew, sar means
to
have power, as a prince. In the Akkadian cuneiform of the Amarna Letters,
sar
meant “king”. Each Egyptian pharaoh proudly called himself Sa-Ra, featuring
the consonants S-R, meaning son of the sun-god, or the king. Thus in many
different ancient languages, sar/S-R had the connotation of being majestic or
mighty or highest, like a great king, with the king being the highest person
in
the land. It would be logical for Mt. Hermon, the highest mountain in
greater
Canaan, to be called S-R, or the S-R place, meaning “highest place”. In
order to make a verb into a noun suitable for a place name, the west
Semitic-speaking predecessors of the Hebrews often added a T/tav or an N/nun
at the end of
the verb. Thus the S-R place (Mt. Hermon/highest place) could come out
either as S-R-t, or S-R-n, meaning the highest place.

S-R-n, meaning “highest place”/Mt. Hermon, is quite close to
S-R-Y-N/sin-resh-yod-nun/ “Sirion”, which at Deuteronomy 3: 9 is stated to be
the Sidonian
word for Mt. Hermon. The spelling S-R-Y-N may reflect how S-R-n came to be
pronounced, even though originally, the name for Mt. Hermon may have been
simply
S-R-n. That is to say, S-R-Y-N may have derived from the older S-R-n as one
of the oldest names for Mt. Hermon, prior to the days of the Hebrews.

An early alternative to S-R-n, as a very old name for Mt. Hermon, may then
logically have been S-R-t, which would have had the identical meaning:
“highest
place”. That S-R-t is what is found at item #108 on the Egyptian pharaoh
Thutmosis III list of geographical place-names of places in and near Galilee
in
the mid-15th century BCE. See:

_http://www.archaeowiki.org/Topographical_List%2C_First_Campaign_of_Thutmose_III_

(http://www.archaeowiki.org/Topographical_List,_First_Campaign_of_Thutmose_III)


Item #108 currently is thought to unidentified, because it is not “Sirion”/“
Saryan”, per Deuteronomy 3: 9. But once the –T/tav ending is viewed as being
identical in meaning to a –N/nun ending, S-R-t can be seen as being a variant
of S-R-n, with S-R-n then being a close match (though lacking the yod) to “
Sirion”/“Saryan” at Deuteronomy 3: 9.

Greatly strengthening this theory of the case is the immediately preceding
item on the Tuthmosis III list, #107, which is Amq. That must certainly be
Amq
(per p. 74 of Anson Rainey, “The Sacred Bridge” (2006)), which is the Beqaa
Valley, frequently referred to in the Amarna Letters as Amq (sometimes with a
standard -U ending). It is eminently logical that after the Beqaa
Valley/Amq,
one would find listed the tallest mountain in greater Canaan, which towers
over the Beqaa Valley: Mt. Hermon. (Item #77 appears to be a generic
listing of
“mountains”, so we know that sometimes mountains were recorded on this
topographical list, though most of the list consists of names of towns in
Galilee.)

So in the beginning, in the 15th century BCE before there were any Hebrews,
the two local names for Mt. Hermon may have originally been S-R-n and S-R-t,
which had identical meanings: “highest [S-R] place [-n, or –t, as generic
endings]”. On this analysis, a close match to the S-R-n variant is recorded
(many
centuries later) at Deuteronomy 3: 9, as “Sirion”/“Saryan”, and the S-R-t
variant is right there as item #108 on the Tuthmosis III list.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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  • [b-hebrew] The Names for Mt. Hermon, JimStinehart, 07/21/2008

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