Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On ANE-2, Biblical-studies, the Paleo-Judaica blog, and following Joseph
Lauer, there are various reports of the decipherment of texts in Egyptian
hieroglyphics by Richard Steiner.  This hasn't been reported on this list
and I thought it would be of interest to readers.  From the JTA Brief:
"The earliest continuous Semitic text ever deciphered was displayed
publicly for the first time Monday at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Richard Steiner, professor of Semitic languages and literature at Yeshiva
University, interpreted Semitic passages in Egyptian texts discovered
more than a century ago inscribed on the subterranean walls of the pyramid
of King Unas at Saqqara in Egypt sometime between the 25th and 30th
centuries BCE."
http://jta.org/page_view_breaking_story.asp?intid=6535
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467792041&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Also:

Readers of Hebrew can also follow up here:
http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/533/840.html
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=816788
and also read the PDF of the article, "Proto-Canaanite-Spells in
Hieroglyphics: An Initial Review of the Development of Hebrew in the
3rd Millenium BCE":
http://hebrew-academy.huji.ac.il/PDF/steiner.pdf (Hebrew)

> From looking at the article, he makes some interesting comments,
from defining the original meaning of "qbb" as "spell"/"incant" rather
than "curse", and an ancient plural of words such as ph "mouth" in
"pahot", a word "qawu" meaning "saying" (compare Ps 19:5) to
suggesting a possible literary connection between the "mother of
snake" )m xw to Eve, )m kl xy ("xw" being an ancient Canaanite
word for snake, that survived as late as Galilean Aramaic).

Yitzhak Sapir