Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Will:

 

Let’s see if we can definitively resolve the “different consonants” issue regarding PR(H/“Pharaoh”, while also taking note of the various other points you have made.  What we need to do is to start with the PR(H that we see in the received alphabetical Hebrew text, and then reverse engineer it to see how that would have been recorded in Akkadian cuneiform.  [Nothing about the Patriarchal Age could be very accurate unless it was recorded in Akkadian cuneiform, because alphabetical Hebrew was either very rudimentary, or not in existence at all, during the Patriarchal Age and for centuries thereafter.]

 

The Akkadian cuneiform signs that would produce PR(H in the received text must have been approximately the following [where I am using I as a generic vowel, since a consonant could only be recorded by being paired with some vowel in Akkadian cuneiform]:

 

1.  PI

2.  RI

3.  U

4.  XI

 

Those four Akkadian cuneiform signs could come out in alphabetical Hebrew as PR(H.  As we will see in a minute, the ayin/( could just as easily be aleph/), and the he/H could just as easily be emphatic H or heth/X or even aleph/’.  Of critical importance, there is virtually no way in Akkadian cuneiform to remove those inherent ambiguities.

 

The first two cuneiform signs obviously represent (i) peh/P resh/R as Hebrew letters, and (ii) the Egyptian consonants pr.  But as I noted before, that’s a natural pun for a Hebrew author.  Per the end of the name of Joseph’s first Egyptian master, P R in Hebrew could render pA ra in Egyptian.  But per the traditional analysis of the word that is translated as “Pharaoh”, PR could alternatively be the first two Egyptian letters in the 4-letter Egyptian word praA.  [For example, the Egyptian word wr is almost certainly a single syllable.  But the Akkadian cuneiform rendering of wr in Amarna Letter EA 129: 97 is wu ri, using two cuneiform signs.  So the presence of two cuneiform signs just means that there are two consonants in the Egyptian word, not that there are two syllables.]  In the first instance, I am saying that we should be alert to a possible pun here, or double meaning, where on one or two levels, P R in the received text for this word may be representing pA ra, whereas on one other level PR in the received text is “pr…” in Egyptian.  [Yes, the two Egyptian hieroglyphs for pA ra are totally different than the one Egyptian hieroglyph for pr, as you pointed out.  But that’s irrelevant for our purposes here, because we are talking about a Hebrew author using Hebrew letters, via Akkadian cuneiform, to render Egyptian words.  The Hebrew letters peh resh are a natural pun to render either or both of pA ra and pr.]  O.K. so far?

 

The Akkadian true vowel U could represent either aleph or ayin in Egyptian.  We know that because for the Egyptian word mAat, the two middle letters [aleph, then ayin] are rendered as UU in Amarna Letter EA 29: 12 [in the middle of the prenomen of Akhenaten’s father].  [Your point that Egyptian aleph may not be directly comparable to Hebrew aleph is interesting, but will not affect matters much, because what we’re starting with is the Akkadian cuneiform sign U, which we know from mAat could be either Egyptian aleph or Egyptian ayin.]  Since aleph and ayin were not usually distinguished in Akkadian cuneiform writing [being letters that Akkadian itself did not have], we must be alert to the possibility of the third letter in this Biblical Egyptian word being either aleph or ayin.  Still O.K.?

 

Akkadian cuneiform heth could render any one or more of the “gutturals”:  heth or he or emphatic H or aleph or ayin.  It’s what I call the “Achilles heel” of using Akkadian cuneiform to write down foreign names, because Akkadian cuneiform heth is attested as rendering a whole battery of Hebrew letters and Egyptian letters:  essentially every letter that we don’t have in English.  So here we should consider the possibility that the last Hebrew letter may be emphatic H or he/H or heth/X, or possibly even aleph/’.  Yes, alphabetical Hebrew he/H was written down, but that is just one possibility, based on the Akkadian cuneiform original, which is Akkadian cuneiform heth/X.  I hope you see where I’m going with this.  [Note for example that way back in 1897, A.H. Sayce aptly observed the converse of this phenomenon, when he noted at p. 301 of “The Early History of the Hebrews”, Kessinger Publishing, 2004 that as to the Song of Deborah:  “Had it been written in cuneiform there would have been a confusion between aleph, het and ayin, which cannot be detected in it.”  Such “confusion” among those three Hebrew and Egyptian letters and others is  d-e-l-i-b-e-r-a-t-e-l-y  here in PR(H, in my opinion.]

 

Now consider the following three possibilities for this Biblical Egyptian word, which do  n-o-t  involve “different consonants” from their Egyptian counterparts.

 

I.  pA ra aH.  Akkadian U = ayin.  Akkadian cuneiform heth = emphatic H.  aH in Egyptian means “palace”.  There are no “different consonants”.  pA ra aH = “The Ra Palace”, which is a fitting, if colorful, way to reference the king of Egypt.  [Interestingly, regular Egyptian h won’t work here, as neither ah nor Ah is an Egyptian word.  aH and Ax are Egyptian words, but not ah or Ah.]  It makes perfect sense to use aH/“palace” to refer to the king of Egypt, because aH is the main Egyptian word for “palace”, which was closely associated with the pharaohs and with the divine:  “Since the pharaoh was considered both human and divine, there was a sacred aspect to much that went on in the royal palaces;  and this is well expressed in the most important ancient Egyptian word for “palace” ‘Ah’ which can also designate the shrine of a deity….” http://monumentsinegypt.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-palaces-of-ancient-egypt.html  Since aH “can also designate the shrine of a deity”, it makes complete sense to pair aH with the name of a deity, such as pA ra. 

 

As far as I can see, your only real objection here is your unexplained assertion that pA ra aH allegedly is “not good Egyptian”.  But I disagree, because the following name/title of a personal servant of the king of Egypt, a lord-chamberlain, is historically attested:  mer aH.  Adolf Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt” (1894), at p. 69.  To me, the form looks identical to pA ra aH:  (i) first there’s a name, mer or pA ra;  (ii) there is no connecting word;  and then (iii) there’s aH.  If you’re focusing on word order here, it’s hard to object to putting the deity’s name first, as is customarily done in the cartouche names of pharaohs.

 

II.  praA.  This is the traditional interpretation.  Akkadian U = ayin.  Akkadian cuneiform heth may here =  H-e-b-r-e-w  he/H, as a Hebrew ending of this otherwise Egyptian word, where -H often is used in Hebrew for any name that ends with a vowel sound:  a mater lectionis, as you put it.  If perchance the Jewish scribe in 7^th century BCE Jerusalem who transformed the Akkadian cuneiform signs into alphabetical Hebrew was aware of how native Egyptians pronounced the Egyptian word “great house” [although to me that is unlikely, since Egyptians rarely referred to their king as praA/pra-O], he may have wanted to have Hebrew he/H represent the long vowel O ending of the post-1200 BCE Egyptian pronunciation of “great house”.  I believe that may be your theory of the case, which is a mainstream view.  Or Hebrew he/H could represent the Egyptian aleph sound, which perhaps, as you assert, was not directly comparable to Hebrew aleph.  Alternatively, Akkadian cuneiform heth could represent aleph directly.  I am not saying that this traditional view is totally wrong;  rather, what I’m saying is that it is only one level of three levels of intended meaning of PR(H.

 

III.  pA ra Ax.  Akkadian U = aleph.  Akkadian cuneiform heth = heth/X.  The unique element of Akhenaten’s name is Ax.  Although the name “Akh-n-Aten” features the divine name itn, the names of his four daughters also feature itn;  what is truly unique about Akhenaten’s name is Ax.  [Akhenaten’s name is Ax n itn, where the aleph/A as the first letter is different from the I as the first letter of itn.]  Please note that these are not “different consonants”.  (H is from the Akkadian cuneiform signs U - XI, which original Akkadian cuneiform signs could be intended to render Ax in Egyptian, with the consonants matching exactly.  Of course, pA ra has completely different consonants than itn, but each is the name of a deity, and pA ra fits Akhenaten’s mature theology better than the earlier itn, per the changing pattern of the names of Akhenaten’s daughters.  What’s unique about Akhenaten’s name are the first two letters:  Ax.  The word order here is reversed, but for a pharaoh’s name I do not see that as a problem, as the word order was often rearranged for artistic effect inside the cartouche, and in the cartouche the deity’s name customarily comes first.  Ax means “devoted to” or “spirit”, so pA ra Ax means “Devoted to The [One and Only] Ra”.  At late Amarna, that fits pharaoh Akhenaten perfectly, though it would not work in any other era [including early Amarna, for that matter].

 

I myself see all three of the above possible readings of the Akkadian cuneiform original of PR(H/“Pharaoh” as having been deliberately intended by the early Hebrew author, who lived during the Amarna Age and was the world’s greatest punster.  In this post, I have tried to show in particular that I am not positing “different consonants” than the Egyptian counterparts I am citing.  There are “different consonants” only in the sense that Akkadian cuneiform U and Akkadian cuneiform heth can represent different Hebrew letters, and hence different Egyptian letters.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois