Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

The scholarly view of PR(H/“Pharaoh” is that (i) it’s only meaning is praA in Egyptian [where the last two Egyptian letters are a/ayin/‘/(, and A/aleph/’/)/3], meaning “great house”, and (ii) the he/H at the end of the Hebrew rendering of this word in the Bible is inexplicable, since on the scholarly view such letter allegedly should be aleph/):

 

“Par‘oh, ‘the Pharaoh, king of Egypt’. The original form of this Pr-‘3 [where “3” is an alternative to capital A in transliterating Egyptian aleph], ‘great house’, Copt. (p)erro, used as early as the Old Kingdom as a designation of the Egyptian ruler.  As Steindorff and Ranke have already pointed out, the word occurs in cuneiform transcription as pir’u, reflecting a contemporary Eg. *per‘o3. The date of the borrowing is somewhat difficult to determine since the Egyptian form was doubtlessly approx. *per‘a3 for a considerable period of time before c. 1200 B. C. and per‘o after that date. If the form were borrowed as *per‘a3, one would expect *per‘a(’) or the like….”  Thomas O. Lambdin, “Egyptian Loan Words in the Old Testament”, in “Journal of the American Oriental Society”, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1953), at p. 153.  austinbiblechurch.com/download/file/fid/9520

 

But on the b-hebrew list, we can figure out why this Biblical word ends with Hebrew he/H, not Hebrew aleph/), and we will also discover that PR(H has three intended meanings, not just one intended meaning.

 

Egyptian has both regular H, transliterated as h, and emphatic H, transliterated as H.  Biblical Hebrew makes no such distinction, and can only represent these two kinds of H in Egyptian by he/H.  The first intended meaning of Biblical PR(H is that the Hebrew he/H was intended to render emphatic Egyptian H [not regular Egyptian h].  The second half of this word can now be seen to be aH, that is, Egyptian ayin-Egyptian emphatic H.  aH means “palace” in Egyptian.  [Only in initial position, as here, does Egyptian ayin/a need to be rendered by its own separate Hebrew letter:  Hebrew ayin/(.]  (H in Hebrew = aH in Egyptian = “palace” in Egyptian.  As to the P R beginning of this word P R (H, we’re all familiar with P R from the end of the name of Joseph’s initial Egyptian master, “Potiphar”/P W+  -Y-  P R/pA wAt  -Y-  pA ra, where everyone agrees that P R in Hebrew at the end of that name renders pA ra in Egyptian, meaning “The Ra”.

 

So the first intended level of meaning of the Biblical word P R (H is “Palace of The Ra”:  pA ra aH.  That’s a sensible, if colorful, generic reference to the king of Egypt.  Rather than the final Hebrew he/H being inexplicable, as on the scholarly view [which thinks the last Hebrew letter should be aleph/)], we see that viewing Hebrew he/H as rendering emphatic Egyptian H makes perfect sense.  Every pharaoh proudly bore the title sA ra, so it makes sense to refer to the king of Egypt as pA ra aH : P R (H : “Palace of The Ra”.

 

But we’ve still got two more intended levels of meaning to go in analyzing P R (H.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois