From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
To: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>, <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Goshen
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:49:48 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
To: fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr ; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2010 8:39 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Goshen
Dr. Arnaud Fournet:
1. You wrote: “In my humble opinion, it is near doubtless impossible that
Goshen could be this place in Egypt. It is clearly written Q S with an
emphatic Qoph.”
The Egyptian Q in Qis is a hieroglyph that looks like a curvy triangle. See
here:
http://hieroglyphs.net/000501/cgi/lookup.pl?ty=en&ch=q&cs=0
That curvy triangle is hieroglyph N29, it is transcribed Q, and it is
described as “K pronounced in the back of the throat”.
http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html What is of critical importance here is that we see that identical curvy
triangle as the first letter at item #104 on the mid-15th century BCE
Thutmosis III list of places in Canaan, where Gezer/GZR is written in
Egyptian as follows: QDR. [The D is underlined, indicating a Z-type
sound.]
So an Egyptian curvy triangle, transliterated as Egyptian Q, is the first
letter in GZR/Gezer, having as its Biblical Hebrew equivalent gimel/G. Thus
the first letter in Qis in Egyptian matches the first letter in G%-N in
Biblical Hebrew perfectly, in a Late Bronze Age context.
***
Yes I agree that Gezer is indeed rendered as <q d_ r>.
Logically <q d_ r> should be something like <q tz r> in Hebrew,
so the conclusion is that the modern reading as Gezer must be a dialectal
highly divergent pronunciation, where emphatics surface as voiced phonemes.
The regular pronunciation of Egyptian q appears in Qadesh with q.
It can be noted that Egyptian <Q s> is unsurprisingly rendered as Arabic <Q
(u:) s y (a)> with initial <Q>.
There is no doubt no g at all in that place name.
A.F
***
2. You wrote: “In addition Latin, Greek and Arabic are coherent with the
first vowel being a long /u:/ and the next /a/. So it sounded something
like /Qu:sa/”
There are no vowels in the unpointed Masoretic text in original defective
spelling, prior to exilic times. No one knows what the vowel sound is. As
to referencing Greek, the Septuagint indicates an E, not a long U. Note
that each of Qesy and Gesa has E for the vowel, which matches the
Septuagint. The Egyptian hieroglyph suggests I for the vowel.
***
There is no I at all in Egyptian.
Egyptian is clearly <Q s>
In addition I completely disagree with that approach you have of dismissing
Masoretic vowels.
These are the vowels we have.
I see no reason to think they are wrong or do not represent the original
vowels or an evolved continuation of the original vowels.
Dismissing Masoretic vowels is only a procrustean leeway you are offering
yourself for interpretations that conflict with the only vowels we have.
I definitely disagree with that unsupported and undiscussed dismissal.
Anything that conflicts with Masoretic vowels should **first** explain why
it moves away from Masoretic vowels.
A.F
***
3. You wrote: “In addition Arabic has emphatic s, but this does not appear
in Egyptian /s/.”
The Egyptian hieroglyph is S29 (per the above-noted cites), and it’s
pronounced S. This hieroglyph appears at item #44 on the T III list, KNT
JSN. Egyptologist Paul James Cowie sees the Hebrew equivalent as being
GT )$N. If so, then this Egyptian hieroglyph is sin/shin in Biblical
Hebrew.
4. You wrote: “So not a single letter matches.”
Au contraire, there are only two letters to match, G and %, and both of them
match the Egyptian hieroglyphs [N29 and S29] in Qis perfectly, per the T III
list. [The other Egyptian hieroglyphs in Qis are vowel-type sounds, which
were not recorded in early Biblical Hebrew defective spelling.] An early
Hebrew author trying to write down Egyptian Qis would be expected to write
down G%, and then add a standard west Semitic suffix -N. The linguistic
match is p-e-r-f-e-c-t.
***
No
there is utterly no match at all.
Egyptian is <Q s> with vowels u:_a.
Logically Hebrew should be Qu:s(^)a.
This has nothing to do with Goshen.
Nothing.
Irremediably nothing.