Will Parsons:
As to my assertion that the Late Bronze Age Egyptian city of Qis, just
southwest of Amarna, is Biblical Goshen, you wrote: “As indicated above, I
don't think the [linguistic] match is "perfect", but it's reasonable provided
we dispose of that pesky final nun in the Hebrew form. But even if we do
that, we end up by comparing two Hebrew consonants with three Egyptian
consonants, and that's a frail basis for making a conclusion that qỉs = גשן.”
In analyzing the 119 geographical place names in Canaan on the mid-15th
century BCE Thutmose III list, one notes that some version of -N, usually but
not always in the form of -na, is the most common ending, appearing on 27
geographical place names. That means that in old west Semitic/Canaanite,
some form of -N was a natural ending for a geographical place name.
Moving now to Biblical Hebrew, many Biblical place names in Joshua end in
-WN, where such ending does not seem to be a part of the root. For
example, “Ekron” at Joshua 13: 3 is (QRWN, ending in -WN, and it’s usually
thought that the root is (QR, with -WN being an ending. “Eglon” at Joshua 10:
3
is the same, where (GL is seen as the root of (GLWN, with -WN being an
ending.
By contrast, the Egyptians themselves did not use a west Semitic -N or -na
or -WN, etc. ending for the names of their own cities. So I see Biblical
G$N as being a Semiticized version of the Egyptian city name G$/Qis. The -N
ending is an early, defective spelling version of what often later appears
as -WN endings on Biblical geographical place names in Joshua. Moreover,
adding the west Semitic -N to this Egyptian city name could have the
implication of “place”, as opposed to focusing on the city itself, thus
meaning
that the early Hebrews tended Pharaoh’s livestock near, but not in, the
Late Bronze Age Egyptian city of Qis, in nome #14 just southwest of Amarna.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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