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  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>, <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Goshen
  • Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:49:48 +0200


----- Original Message ----- From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
To: fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr ; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2010 8:39 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Goshen


Dr. Arnaud Fournet:

1. You wrote: “In my humble opinion, it is near doubtless impossible that Goshen could be this place in Egypt. It is clearly written Q S with an emphatic Qoph.”
The Egyptian Q in Qis is a hieroglyph that looks like a curvy triangle. See here:
http://hieroglyphs.net/000501/cgi/lookup.pl?ty=en&ch=q&cs=0
That curvy triangle is hieroglyph N29, it is transcribed Q, and it is described as “K pronounced in the back of the throat”. http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html
What is of critical importance here is that we see that identical curvy triangle as the first letter at item #104 on the mid-15th century BCE Thutmosis III list of places in Canaan, where Gezer/GZR is written in Egyptian as follows: QDR. [The D is underlined, indicating a Z-type sound.]

So an Egyptian curvy triangle, transliterated as Egyptian Q, is the first letter in GZR/Gezer, having as its Biblical Hebrew equivalent gimel/G. Thus the first letter in Qis in Egyptian matches the first letter in G%-N in Biblical Hebrew perfectly, in a Late Bronze Age context.
***
Yes I agree that Gezer is indeed rendered as <q d_ r>.
Logically <q d_ r> should be something like <q tz r> in Hebrew,
so the conclusion is that the modern reading as Gezer must be a dialectal highly divergent pronunciation, where emphatics surface as voiced phonemes.
The regular pronunciation of Egyptian q appears in Qadesh with q.
It can be noted that Egyptian <Q s> is unsurprisingly rendered as Arabic <Q (u:) s y (a)> with initial <Q>.
There is no doubt no g at all in that place name.
A.F
***


2. You wrote: “In addition Latin, Greek and Arabic are coherent with the first vowel being a long /u:/ and the next /a/. So it sounded something like /Qu:sa/”

There are no vowels in the unpointed Masoretic text in original defective spelling, prior to exilic times. No one knows what the vowel sound is. As to referencing Greek, the Septuagint indicates an E, not a long U. Note that each of Qesy and Gesa has E for the vowel, which matches the Septuagint. The Egyptian hieroglyph suggests I for the vowel.
***
There is no I at all in Egyptian.
Egyptian is clearly <Q s>

In addition I completely disagree with that approach you have of dismissing Masoretic vowels.
These are the vowels we have.
I see no reason to think they are wrong or do not represent the original vowels or an evolved continuation of the original vowels.
Dismissing Masoretic vowels is only a procrustean leeway you are offering yourself for interpretations that conflict with the only vowels we have.
I definitely disagree with that unsupported and undiscussed dismissal.
Anything that conflicts with Masoretic vowels should **first** explain why it moves away from Masoretic vowels.
A.F
***



3. You wrote: “In addition Arabic has emphatic s, but this does not appear in Egyptian /s/.”

The Egyptian hieroglyph is S29 (per the above-noted cites), and it’s pronounced S. This hieroglyph appears at item #44 on the T III list, KNT JSN. Egyptologist Paul James Cowie sees the Hebrew equivalent as being GT )$N. If so, then this Egyptian hieroglyph is sin/shin in Biblical Hebrew.

4. You wrote: “So not a single letter matches.”

Au contraire, there are only two letters to match, G and %, and both of them match the Egyptian hieroglyphs [N29 and S29] in Qis perfectly, per the T III list. [The other Egyptian hieroglyphs in Qis are vowel-type sounds, which were not recorded in early Biblical Hebrew defective spelling.] An early Hebrew author trying to write down Egyptian Qis would be expected to write down G%, and then add a standard west Semitic suffix -N. The linguistic match is p-e-r-f-e-c-t.
***
No
there is utterly no match at all.

Egyptian is <Q s> with vowels u:_a.
Logically Hebrew should be Qu:s(^)a.
This has nothing to do with Goshen.
Nothing.
Irremediably nothing.

Arnaud Fournet
***








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