Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Will Parsons:

You make a very good point, as to which I will need to revise my analysis accordingly.  I stand corrected:  you are right that emphatic H in Egyptian normally comes over into Hebrew as Hebrew heth/X, not as Hebrew he/H.

But my further point, as to which you have not yet directly commented, still stands.  Akkadian cuneiform heth in final position could represent any one or more of the following alphabetical Hebrew letters:  regular h or emphatic H or heth or aleph or ayin.  Thus in Akkadian cuneiform, the last letter in “Pharaoh” is Akkadian cuneiform heth, which could represent regular h or emphatic H or heth or aleph.

When the Jewish scribe in 7^th century BCE Jerusalem chose to render that Akkadian cuneiform heth [which had been written down on a clay tablet in the mid-14th century BCE, with such original clay tablets still being safe in the Temple from the days of King David until the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians] as alphabetical Hebrew he/H for this Egyptian-based Hebrew word, he might possibly have viewed that he/H the way you noted in your first post on this thread:  “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 [parʿo] or something similar).”  That was the pronunciation of praA after 1200 BCE, which is how that Jewish scribe would have heard it.  Yet also recall that praA in fact is quite rare in Egyptian documents as a reference to the king of Egypt;  the first place where you see PR(H frequently as a reference to the king of Egypt is the Bible, not in Egypt, so that such Jewish scribe was not necessarily reacting to the rare Egyptian use/pronunciation of praA.

Moreover, by choosing Hebrew he/H, that Jewish scribe may have intentionally wanted the reader to realize that other possibilities for the last letter here were Egyptian emphatic H and Egyptian heth, both of which would be rendered by Akkadian cuneiform heth, and both of which could, with a bit of stretching, be thought to be redolent of Hebrew he/H.

The more important point here, though, is that if the last letter in “Pharaoh”/PR(H was originally an Akkadian cuneiform heth [which is my key assertion], then we have the three possibilities I have set forth [regardless of how that Jewish scribe in 7^th century BCE Jerusalem personally interpreted this matter]:

1.  Akkadian cuneiform heth could be Egyptian emphatic H, in which case the last two letters are aH in Egyptian, meaning “palace” in Egyptian, and then the first two Hebrew letters, P R, represent pA ra in Egyptian.  The meaning is:  “Palace of The Ra”.

2. Akkadian cuneiform heth could represent either the Egyptian vowel O or Egyptian aleph [directly or, more likely, indirectly], in which case the last two letters are aA in Egyptian, and then the first two Hebrew letters, PR, represent pr in Egyptian, with the Egyptian word then being in full:  praA.  The meaning is:  “Great House”.

3.  Akkadian cuneiform heth could be Egyptian heth/x, in which case the last two letters are ax or a-khe in Egyptian, meaning “devoted to” or “spirit” in Egyptian, with this being the distinctive element of the name “Akhe-n-Aten”.  Then the first two Hebrew letters, P R, once again [as in #1] represent pA ra in Egyptian.  The meaning is:  “Devoted to The [One and Only] Ra”, being an updated version of the name “Akhe-n-Aten”/"Devoted to Aten", now that Akhenaten had come to prefer, by Year 12 or so, the name “Ra” to the name “Aten”/itn.

All three are in play, don’t you think?  And the Jewish scribe’s choice of Hebrew he/H may have been designed to allow an astute reader to surmise that all three were deliberately meant to be in play by the original early Hebrew author.

Will, thank you so much for your apt observation that normally Hebrew heth/X, not Hebrew he/H, would be expected to represent Egyptian emphatic H.  Although I agree with that specific point, and although I even agree that alphabetical Hebrew he/H could represent a final Egyptian long vowel O [or aleph], if a bit indirectly, nevertheless I myself see all three of the options I have set forth on this thread as being open.  I see the early Hebrew author as deliberately playing off the inherent ambiguity of Akkadian cuneiform heth in final position to create another one in a very long series of clever puns that appear throughout the Patriarchal narratives.

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois