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  • From: MarianneLuban AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Akhenaten and the Hebrew Religion
  • Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 17:20:39 EDT

In a message dated 7/22/2004 11:30:48 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
formoria AT carolina.rr.com writes:


> Marianne, let me put a question to you: how do we know that biblical
> Zoan is Tanis/San el-Hagar? Apart from the assumption that the
> references must be to the capital of Ramesside Egypt, I mean?

It is assumed mainly on philological grounds. In hieroglyphs, Zoan is
spelled "Dan.t". As James Hoch ably demonstrates in his work "Semitic Words
In
Egyptian Texts", Egyptian /D/ corresponds with Semitic "z". As you probably
know,
the Egyptians wrote only with consonants, /a/ being one of them. Mostly, it
has been assumed this was vocalized like Semitic "ayin"--but this has been
questioned by some philologists with good reason. There are many indications
that /a/ was pronounced something like "o" and, if not, some foreigners
tended
to hear an "o" there. The true "a" in Zoan was likely the unwritten vowel
and,
of course, final /t/ is silent--as it usually is in Egyptian. In the Coptic
Bible(Coptic being the ultimate stage of the Egyptian language) Zoan is
written
"djane" (due to the fact that the final silent /t/ always demands a preceding
vowel sound) and the Arabs call Tanis "San el Hagar" or "San of the Stone".
"Tanis" is the Greek version only. The fact remains is that certain sounds
can only be approximated with foreign graphic systems. If Zoan is not
Tanis--then one scarcely knows what other place it can have been.




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