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  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>, <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Vav Nun Suffix
  • Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 11:18:17 +0100


----- Original Message ----- From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
To: fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr ; if AT math.bu.edu
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 4:00 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Vav Nun Suffix


The historically important element in a vav nun suffix is the vav, not the nun. In the Bible, MGD-W is a rare case of a vav suffix. Another classic vav suffix is found on the famous Israel Stele, also called the Merneptah Stele, from the late 13th century BCE, which is described in relevant part by Anson Rainey at p. 99 of “The Sacred Bridge” (2006) as follows:

“The fourth line from the top and the third line from the bottom refer to Canaan and Kharu (X3-rw = Xa-ru; = Xurru?), the latter being a confirmed synonym for Canaan during this period.”

It is most unfortunate that scholars insist on treating a final vav in the Late Bronze Age as being a vowel. It wasn’t.
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Armenian borrowings from Urartean show that long [u:] was [o:] and short [u] was [u].
If we accept that Hurrian had the same allophonie then Hurru- can be [xo:ru]
kh3ru with Egyptian full alphabetic writing is coherent with *[xo:ru] as Middle Egyptian changed [a:] = 3 to [o:].
p-kh3ru means Syrian not Canaanean, which is unknown in Egyptian I guess.
A.
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At that early date, vav was a true consonant, which functioned like a true consonant, and was not a vowel. A final vav is the classic non-Semitic way to turn a name or word into a geographical place name (as was frequently the case at Nuzi, for example).
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For example?
A.
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The cuneiform spelling of this name is XURW, though unfortunately that is usually set forth in reference works as Huru or Hurru.
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Are you aware that cuneiform would never be able to write something like Xurw-?
What we have is hur-ru-u-he2 and hur-wu-u-he2 "Hurrian".
A.
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The vowel sound after the heth differs, but the three consonants are identical in the Egyptian and cuneiform renderings: X-vowel-R-W.
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Two consonants X and R.
3 and u write vowels.
A.
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The Egyptians were deliberately insulting the people of Canaan by calling greater Canaan X3RW, emphasizing that Canaan had, in the 14th century BCE, been taken over by non-Semitic people from eastern Syria as the new ruling class. Not surprisingly, the people of Ugarit and the Hebrews did not look at things that way, so neither in Ugaritic nor in Hebrew does one ever see that awful name XRW.
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Why should it be an insult?

Arnaud Fournet
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