Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Another classic example of confusion of the gutturals in exotic foreign proper names in the Patriarchal narratives is the name of Joseph’s Egyptian wife, “Asenath”.  In the received alphabetical text, that name is spelled )SNT.

 

The majority scholarly view, believe it or not, interprets this name of the daughter of the high-priest of Ra from On as meaning “she belongs to the goddess Neit”.  That of course is  i-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e , as the high priest of Ra from On would not give his daughter a name that honors the goddess Neit!  Yet that is how the leading Genesis scholar, Gordon Wenham, quotes the leading Egyptologist who analyzes Biblical Egyptian names, Kenneth Kitchen:  “ ‘Asenat’ is a good Egyptian type of name, meaning ‘she belongs to the Goddess Neit’ (Iw.s-(n)-Nt) or ‘she belongs to her father’ (Iw.s-n-’t) or ‘she belongs to you’ (fem sg., i.e., to a goddess or to her mother, Iw.s-n.t).  ‘Such names are well attested in the Middle Kingdom and Hyksos periods (c. 2100-1600 B.C.)’, K.A. Kitchen, NBD, 94.”  Gordon Wenham, “Genesis 16-50” (1994), p. 397.

 

But even Donald Redford balks at that traditional scholarly analysis, and suggests that NT in the name Asenath may be referring to nTr/netjer, a generic Egyptian reference to the divine, not the goddess Neith:  “Asenath is usually derived from a name “Belonging-to-Neith”, which is specifically attested from Greco-Roman times but belongs to a category that begins in the New Kingdom and becomes very common in the first millennium B.C.  The interpretation of the consonant cluster N + T as the goddess Neith is, however, open to question, as it could indicate nūte, the vocalization of the Egyptian word for ‘god’;  and ‘Belonging-to-(the)-goddess’ is an attested personal name in the Late Period.”  Donald B. Redford, “Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times” (1992), p. 424. 

 

But “Belonging to God” still doesn’t make good sense for the Egyptian name of Joseph’s wife.  Rather, in the context of the Patriarchal narratives, her name should emphasize that she will be “fertile”, thanks to “God”.

 

Per Genesis 48: 6, it is clear that in addition to bearing Manasseh and Ephraim to Joseph before Joseph’s father Jacob moved all the Hebrews from Canaan to Egypt, Asenath was “abundant” and bore Joseph many more sons after Jacob came to Egypt.  So the ideal meaning of the name of Joseph’s Egyptian wife would start with the Egyptian word for “abundant”, implying being abundantly fertile in being able to bear Joseph many sons, and then end with a generic reference to the divine.

 

The first letter in the received text in the name of Joseph’s Egyptian wife is an aleph, but that’s a classic case of confusion of the gutturals.  Akkadian cuneiform had no consistent pattern of distinguishing aleph from ayin [with Akkadian itself having neither aleph nor ayin].  In Egyptian names, either an aleph or an ayin could begin a name as its own separate syllable.  Either case would likely be rendered in Akkadian cuneiform by the Akkadian true vowel A, though another alternative here would be the Akkadian true vowel U.  [Per the analysis by Richard S. Hess at pp. 117-118 of “Amarna Personal Names” (1993) of the prenomen of Akhenaten’s father, in rendering the Egyptian word maat in that name, which is aleph followed by ayin, the Akkadian vowel U was used to represent each of aleph and ayin.]  Here the scribe in 7^th century BCE Jerusalem picked up that ambiguous cuneiform rendering [probably the Akkadian cuneiform sign for the Akkadian true vowel A] as intending an aleph, when in fact it was intended, as we shall see, to be Egyptian ayin.

 

The samekh which is the second letter of this name poses a somewhat different issue.  That samekh/S in the received text represents shin/$ in the original Akkadian cuneiform text.  The only two sibilants in Akkadian cuneiform are sin and shin.  At times Akkadian cuneiform shin/$ was used to represent west Semitic samekh:  “Old Babylonian…Syllables ending in samekh…  We find in the North:  A$, IZ, U$....”  Otto Neugebauer, Abraham Joseph Sachs, Albrecht Gotze, “Mathematical Cuneiform Texts” (1945), p. 146.  And of much more direct relevance, 7^th century BCE Jerusalem is known for “[t]he reception of Akkadian shin as samekh….”  James Maxwell Miller, J. Andrew Dearman, M. Patrick Graham, “The Land That I Will Show You” (2001), p. 125.  Accordingly, the samekh/S in the received alphabetical Hebrew text can represent a shin/$ in the original Akkadian cuneiform text.

 

The name of Joseph’s Egyptian wife was intended to be spelled ayin/(, followed by a letter equivalent to a shin/$, and then nun/N tav/T:  ($ NT. 

 

As to the first half of this name, the first syllable is a [Egyptian ayin].  The second syllable is $A [where Egyptian aleph, following a consonant, is not represented by its own separate letter, either in Akkadian cuneiform or in Biblical Hebrew].

 

($ = aSA = “be abundant” [in Egyptian, where capital S is used to represent shin/$, lower case a is Egyptian ayin, and upper case A is Egyptian aleph].  Thus once we restore the aleph-samekh in the received text to what it likely originally was in Akkadian cuneiform, namely ayin-shin, we see a perfect match.

 

As to the second half of this name, NT = nTr = “God/the divine”.  Analysts like Prof. Redford have recognized that NT = nTr.  As to why nTr is rendered in Hebrew as NT, rather than as NTR, the answer is that by the New Kingdom, the final R was not pronounced:  “By the end of the New Kingdom, …[t]he dental phonemes /t/ and /r/…undergo a process of lenition [softening or weakening] to /?/ at the end of a stressed syllable, and eventually to ø [silent or null] at the end of a word.”  Antonio Loprieno, “Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction” (1995), p. 38.

 

That is confirmed by the following Egyptian name in the Amarna Letters:  pa-xa-na-te.  Per Hess’s analysis at p. 122 of “Amarna Personal Names”, na-te = nTr/netjer = “God”.  Thus the complete lenition of the final R is fully-attested in the Akkadian cuneiform renderings in the Amarna Letters.  So naturally we will see the identical linguistic phenomenon in this Biblical Egyptian name, because the Patriarchal narratives started out as a written composition recorded in Akkadian cuneiform, in the same time period as the Amarna Letters.

 

All of these various Biblical Egyptian names near the end of Genesis become virtually self-explanatory, instead of being inscrutable as on the scholarly view, once we realize that the Patriarchal narratives were written down in Akkadian cuneiform 4 years after Year 14, and not transformed into alphabetical Biblical Hebrew until late 7^th century BCE Jerusalem.  Accordingly, confusion of the gutturals is par for the course in these Biblical Egyptian names.  Yet in all other ways each Biblical Egyptian name is letter-for-letter perfect in terms of what Hebrew letters we would expect to be used to render the underlying Egyptian words in these names as of Year 14.

 

The reason why these Biblical Egyptian names near the end of Genesis are so exciting is because the confusion of gutturals in these names helps show that the Patriarchal narratives are  m-u-c-h  older as a written text than university scholars realize, having been recorded in Akkadian cuneiform in the late Amarna time period.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois