Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Will Parsons:

 

1.  You wrote:  “The he at the end of the Hebrew word may simply be graphic, a mater lectionis for the preceding /o/, (which would imply that the Egyptian word was heard as [par‘o] or something similar).”

 

Only if PR(H came into the Patriarchal narratives after 1200 BCE, which as we have been seeing is not the case, because all of these Biblical names fit the Late Bronze Age perfectly.  Lambdin’s classic article that I cited specifically states his surprise at the lack of a final aleph/) here:  “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.”

2.  You wrote:  “It might even have been borrowed twice, first in the form *per ‘a(’), and later reformed on the basis of contemporary Egyptian pronunciation.”

 

But that would not happen if the Patriarchal narratives were written down in Akkadian cuneiform on clay tablets in the Amarna Age, a la the Amarna Letters, which is my view of the case.  We are slowly seeing letter-for-letter  e-x-a-c-t  matches to vintage Amarna Age nomenclature in these Biblical Egyptian names.  There’s nothing post-Amarna about any of these Biblical Egyptian names, in form or substance, because they were all written down during the Amarna Age.

 

3.  You wrote:  “I don't follow your thinking here - it seems to me that Hebrew he and heth would be good matches to Egyptian h and ḥ. respectively.”

 

Not true.  Alphabetical Hebrew heth/X matches Egyptian heth/x.  But what about Egyptian regular h and Egyptian emphatic H?  There’s only one alphabetical Hebrew letter to do double duty there:  Hebrew he/H.

 

4.  You wrote:  “And why wouldn't an emphatic Egyptian ḥ be represented by heth rather than he?”

 

Because Hebrew heth/X directly corresponds to Egyptian heth/x.  In addition to Egyptian heth, Egyptian also had both regular h and emphatic H.  For those two Egyptian letters, there’s only Hebrew he/H.  Hebrew cannot directly represent emphatic H.

 

By contrast, the name “Akhenaten” features Egyptian heth/X, as it starts out:  ax [Egyptian ayin/a -- Egyptian heth/x], more informally transliterated as:  a-khe.  But please save Hebrew heth/X for an updated Biblical version of the name “Akhenaten”, which features Egyptian heth/x.  [Will, you’re threatening to spoil the big surprise.  We haven’t gotten to Egyptian heth/x yet!]  Right now we’re talking about Egyptian regular h and Egyptian emphatic H, and there’s only one alphabetical Hebrew letter to represent both of those two distinct Egyptian letters:  Hebrew he/H.

 

5.  You wrote:  “Why only in initial position? If, as generally accepted, both Egyptian ‘ and Hebrew ‘ayin represented a consonant, why wouldn't ‘ be represented by ’ayin in non-initial position?”

 

In initial position, Egyptian ayin/‘ must be represented by its own separate alphabetical Hebrew letter, namely Hebrew ayin/(.  So for ax or a-khe, we’ll see (X in alphabetical Hebrew.

 

But in interior or final position, Egyptian ayin/‘ is generally not represented by any Hebrew alphabetical letter at all.  Look at Amarna Letter EA 292: 36 written by the successor of evil Yapaxu [the “iniquitous Amorite” at Genesis 15: 16] at Gezer in the Ayalon Valley in late Year 14.  He writes “ri-a-na-ap”, where ri = Egyptian ra.  In Egyptian, ra is spelled R-ayin, but in the Amarna Letters, including this Amarna Letter from the part of Canaan where the first Hebrews sojourned, ra is spelled with the Akkadian cuneiform sign ri, which is R plus generic vowel.  There’s no ayin.  It’s true that invariably in the Amarna Letters, either -a [as here] or -ia [which is the more ordinary situation] follows ri.  But as I noted before, when that happens with the prenomen of either Akhenaten or his father Amenhotep III regarding ra, Richard Hess at pp. 116 and 118 of “Amarna Personal Names” (1993) says that such following -a or -ia is “a hypocoristic suffix”.  The Akkadian cuneiform of the Amarna Letters does  n-o-t  use ayin [which would be rendered by Akkadian cuneiform heth] after R in writing down the name Ra, even in Amarna Letter EA 1: 2 from Amenhotep III himself!

 

6.  You wrote:  “You're ignoring the fact that the Egyptian spelling is pr-‘3, and that's represented in Hieroglyphs [pr][‘3], where the bracketed letters represent single, bi-consonantal hieroglyphs.”

 

I’m not ignoring that.  University scholars are baffled at why there’s no Hebrew aleph/) at the end of PR(H, where instead we see Hebrew he/H.  University scholars are expecting to see Hebrew peh/P-Hebrew resh/R for Egyptian [pr], and Hebrew ayin/(-Hebrew aleph/) for Egyptian [‘3].  I’m not ignoring anything.  Rather, I am simply pointing out that on one level of meaning, the last letter in PR(H represents Egyptian emphatic H, with the last two Hebrew letters, (H, then representing aH in Egyptian, which is the Egyptian common word for “palace”.  Nifty!  [But we’ve got two more levels of intended meanings to go.  So please hold off on praA for now.]

 

I hope you don’t think that the Patriarchal narratives are copying Egyptian hieroglyphs.  Not.  Rather, the early Hebrew author is accurately reflecting the sounds of these Egyptian words, but in the world of Late Bronze Age Canaan, the  o-n-l-y  way to write such things down in a sophisticated composition such as the Patriarchal narratives was through the rather clumsy device of Akkadian cuneiform.

 

7.  You wrote:  “The [pr] hieroglyph, in particular, functions as an ideograph for "house", in addition to its phonetic value. Egyptian p3-r’ would *not* be represented by [pr].”

 

You’re right on both counts, but that’s totally irrelevant.  When we get to praA in my next post [and we haven’t gotten there yet!], we will in due course see PR in Hebrew render pr in Egyptian, meaning “house”.  But in  H-e-b-r-e-w  [unlike in Egyptian], the Hebrew letters P R could just as easily represent pA ra in Egyptian.  It’s a natural pun in  H-e-b-r-e-w  [using Egyptian words] that the early Hebrew author was able to exploit, as we’ll see in my next post.  You’re getting ahead of me here.

 

I agree that in  E-g-y-p-t-i-a-n  hieroglyphs, pA ra would never, for heaven’s sake, be represented by [pr].  That’s for sure!  But just as surely, the two  H-e-b-r-e-w  letters peh/P – resh/R can represent either or both of the following two Egyptian words or phrases:  pA ra or pr.  It’s a punster’s paradise!  But you’re way ahead of me, because I have not even presented PR(H as praA yet;  that’s for my next post.

 

8.  You wrote:  “It's sensible for Hebrews to refer to the king of Egypt by an Egyptian title *p3-r ‘-‘h that as far I know doesn't exist in Egyptian?”

 

The last element is aH [with an emphatic Egyptian H].  There is no ah [with a regular Egyptian h] in Egyptian.  You know pA ra in Egyptian.  pA ra aH works beautifully in Egyptian to describe Pharaoh during the Amarna era:  “Palace of The Ra”.  The component words pA ra and aH are well-attested, though the particular phrase pA ra aH was likely coined by the Hebrew author.  Likewise, the component words )B and R and HM are all well-attested, as well as the names )BRM and )B -Y- RM and Ra, though the name )B R HM was coined by the Hebrew author.  If you’re subtly suggesting that the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives was the greatest wordsmith of all time, I’ll second that emotion.

 

9.  In response to my statement that “But we’ve still got two more intended levels of meaning to go in analyzing P R (H”, you wrote:  “I can't wait.”

 

Me neither.  Fire up for some real excitement!

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois