Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Antonio Garcia Hurtado:

 

pr-aA, which is the traditional sole understanding of PR(H in Biblical Hebrew, in Egyptian consists of Gardiner hieroglyphs O1-O29, which are a rectangle with an opening at the bottom [signifying a house], being pr, and a column lying on its side, being aA [with a series of Egyptian words beginning aA meaning “great” in various senses].  The literal meaning of pr-aA is “great house”.

 

Prior to the New Kingdom, pr-aA referred to the palace of the king of Egypt, not to the king of Egypt himself.  In the New Kingdom, pr-aA could be used to refer to the king of Egypt, but almost always in a stock phrase in a very limited context.  Thus the Boundary Stelae at Akhenaten’s new capital city use pr-aA twice, but always as a stock phrase in a very limited context:

 

Oath of the King:

pr-aA anx wDA snb

Pharaoh may he live, prosper and be well,

 

Renewal of the oath in Year 8

pr-aA anx wDA snb aHa…

Pharaoh, may he live, prosper and be well, stood…

http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/amarna/boundary.html

 

Although Akhenaten praises himself greatly as the king of Egypt in the Great Hymn to the Aten, that Hymn never once uses the Egyptian phrase pr-aA.

 

By stark contrast, the Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives uses PR(H repeatedly to refer to the king of Egypt in all manner of different contexts, and never in a stock phrase like the Egyptian usage.  Why do you think that the Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives was so enamored of the  H-e-b-r-e-w  wording PR(H?  The Bible seems to like that Hebrew wording much more than the Egyptians themselves ever liked the Egyptian phrase pr-aA, at least in the context of functioning as a generic reference to the king of Egypt.  Why?

 

Doesn’t that suggest that the Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives has a series of intended meanings for his  H-e-b-r-e-w  wording PR(H, rather than PR(H simply being a passive Hebrew recording of the Egyptian phrase pr-aA, or PR(H somehow being a creative play by a Hebrew author on Egyptian hieroglyphs [with a Hebrew author presumably not knowing Egyptian hieroglyphs, or at least not knowing Egyptian hieroglyphs well]?

 

In my opinion, we need to focus on what four Akkadian cuneiform signs would have generated the alphabetical Hebrew wording PR(H that we see in the received alphabetical Hebrew text.  Then we should ask what layers of various meanings may have been intended by the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives, depending on which alphabetical Hebrew letters are intended to be referenced by those four Akkadian cuneiform signs.  For example, I see as significant the facts that (i) the first two Egyptian letters of the name “Akhenaten” are Ax [Egyptian aleph – Egyptian heth], and (ii) the last two Akkadian cuneiform signs that generated PR(H could easily have been intended by the early Hebrew author to signify )X:  Hebrew aleph – Hebrew heth.  We must remember in this connection that Akkadian cuneiform was utterly incapable of differentiating between the various gutturals in Hebrew or Egyptian [ayin vs. aleph;  he vs. heth].  So instead of stopping with the received alphabetical Hebrew text, which may either be mistaken or, more likely, represent only one of the various intended meanings of the four Akkadian cuneiform signs that generated PR(H, what is needed is to reverse engineer PR(H to recover the original Akkadian cuneiform signs.  From there we then ask whether one of the intended meanings of those four Akkadian cuneiform signs, which come out in the received text as PR(H, was actually P R )X, meaning [after reversing the word order]:  “A-khe-pA-ra”/“Devoted to The Ra”, which compares nicely to “A-khe-n-itn”/“Devoted to Aten”.  Although Akhenaten named his first four daughters after Aten, he named his last two daughters after Ra, and the phrase pA ra shows up in several of the nobles’ tombs at Amarna in connection with representing the royal family;  so by Year 12, Ra had supplanted Aten as Akhenaten’s preferred divine nomenclature.  As such, P R )X can be viewed as being a Biblically updated version of the historical name Akhenaten.

 

The Bible is  t-e-l-l-i-n-g  us the time period of both the Patriarchal Age and of the composition and writing down of the Patriarchal narratives, if we only have eyes to see.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois