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  • From: Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Akhenaten and the Hebrew Religion
  • Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 17:01:09 -0600

On Thursday 22 July 2004 15:20, MarianneLuban AT aol.com wrote:
> 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.

I see massive speculation here, as well as questionable phonology. As for
the
last sentence, who says it has to be a place that is already known? I'm all
too familiar with the tendency to try and associate the unknown with
something known, but it's a tendency that often needs to be resisted if we
are to make true progress. "I don't know where it was" really is a
legitimate answer in this type of context, and the fact is that we don't know
where this Zoan was.

--
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
Insert clever epigram here...or not




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