Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Yitzhak:

On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>wrote:

>
> But Mr. Sweeney does not know a lot about Egyptian phonology.
> The letter transcribed as Dj was transcribed into Hebrew as Sade.
> This is the case with the city name Zoan:
> http://books.google.com/books?id=8Onqc1llLRoC&pg=PA39 (top)
> The phrase Djeser-ka is transcribed as: D_SR-K3 as in the following:
> http://books.google.com/books?id=gMxfheT1XQIC&pg=PA337
> It would be transcribed into Hebrew, I guess, as: "c$r-k)" צסרכא
> And with the Re, צסרכארע.
>

Your transliteration is according to modern Hebrew pronunciation. What was
the pronunciation of 900 BC Hebrew? You and I have disagreed on this in the
past, and did not come to a consensus, therefore must agree to disagree
again. Similarly, what was the Egyptian pronunciation? In the 500 years
between the transliteration of Zoan and following Solomon’s death, did the
Egyptian pronunciation change enough to effect transliteration?

>
>
> And this is not all!  Thutmose III's throne name was not
> Djeser-ke.  It was Menkheperre.  Djeser-ka-re was the
> Horus name of Amenhotep I.  Here are some references
> on Thutmose III that I would accept as authoritative:
> Cline and O'Connor's Thutmose III
> http://books.google.com/books?id=eqHKDKo3cVsC
> Redford's The wars in Syria and Palestine of Thutmose III
> http://books.google.com/books?id=2uDdg8bDVzMC
>
> So now, can you tell me how you got that Thutmose is
> Shisherke?  And how you got that Shoshenq cannot be
> the Hebrew $W$Q?
>
> Yitzhak Sapir
>

While we may disagree on the linguistic aspects, there are other facts that
make a bronze age Thurmosis III unlikely:

If the historical aspects of Torah, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and
Chronicles are correct, then the zero mention of Egypt outside of mentioning
the historical aspect of the Exodus from the time of the Exodus itself to
after Saul, and geographical and sociological claims about Egypt, contradict
the claims of Thutmosis III and his followers having been in the Judea,
Samaria and the surrounding areas during that era.

A recent BAR article about the EA Letters mentions that there seems to be a
contradiction between the findings of archaeology and claims in the letters.
Strangely, the only major city found in Canaan was Hazor, which was never
mentioned in any of the letters. Ever heard of Judges 4? I, as well as
others, find the synthesis proposed by BAR to be less than satisfactory.

The conquests of Shoshenq, at least from reviews I have read, do not mention
conquests in Judea, unlike the Thutmosis III list and 1 Kings 14.

The main arguments for ששק = Thutmosis III are historical and
archaeological, not linguistic, hence only of incidental interest to this
list.

Karl W. Randolph.