Hi Jim, On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:58:31 -0400 (EDT), [email protected] wrote: > > The scholarly view of PR(H/“Pharaoh” is that (i) it’s only meaning > is praA in Egyptian [where the last two Egyptian letters are > a/ayin/‘/(, and A/aleph/’/)/3], meaning “great house”, and (ii) the > he/H at the end of the Hebrew rendering of this word in the Bible is > inexplicable, since on the scholarly view such letter allegedly > should be aleph/):
Not necessarily. The he at the end of the Hebrew word may simply be graphic, a mater lectionis for the preceding /o/, (which would imply that the Egyptian word was heard as [parʿo] or something similar). > “Par‘oh, ‘the Pharaoh, king of Egypt’. The original form of this > Pr-‘3 [where “3” is an alternative to capital A in transliterating > Egyptian aleph], ‘great house’, Copt. (p)erro, used as early as the > Old Kingdom as a designation of the Egyptian ruler. As Steindorff > and Ranke have already pointed out, the word occurs in cuneiform > transcription as pir’u, reflecting a contemporary Eg. *per‘o3. The > date of the borrowing is somewhat difficult to determine since the > Egyptian form was doubtlessly approx. *per‘a3 for a considerable > period of time before c. 1200 B. C. and per‘o after that date. If > the form were borrowed as *per‘a3, one would expect *per‘a(’) or the > like ….” Thomas O. Lambdin, “Egyptian Loan Words in the Old > Testament”, in “ Journal of the American Oriental Society”, Vol. 73, > No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1953), at p. 153. > austinbiblechurch.com/download/file/fid/9520 It might even have been borrowed twice, first in the form *perʿa(ʾ), and later reformed on the basis of contemporary Egyptian pronunciation. > But on the b-hebrew list, we can figure out why this Biblical word > ends with Hebrew he/H, not Hebrew aleph/), and we will also discover > that PR(H has three intended meanings, not just one intended > meaning. > Egyptian has both regular H, transliterated as h, and emphatic H, > transliterated as H. Biblical Hebrew makes no such distinction, and > can only represent these two kinds of H in Egyptian by he/H. I don't follow your thinking here - it seems to me that Hebrew he and heth would be good matches to Egyptian h and ḥ. respectively. > The first intended meaning of Biblical PR(H is that the Hebrew he/H > was intended to render emphatic Egyptian H [not regular Egyptian h]. And why wouldn't an emphatic Egyptian ḥ be represented by heth rather than he? It seems like you're positing an unattested Egyptian title on the basis of the Hebrew spelling and a questionable correspondence. > The second half of this word can now be seen to be aH, that is, > Egyptian ayin-Egyptian emphatic H. aH means “palace” in Egyptian. > [Only in initial position, as here, does Egyptian ayin/a need to be > rendered by its own separate Hebrew letter: Hebrew ayin/(.] Why only in initial position? If, as generally accepted, both Egyptian ʿ and Hebrew ʿayin represented a consonant, why wouldn't ʿ be represented by ʿayin in non-initial position? > (H in Hebrew = aH in Egyptian = “palace” in Egyptian. As to the P R > beginning of this word P R (H, we’re all familiar with P R from the > end of the name of Joseph’s initial Egyptian master, “Potiphar”/P W+ > -Y- P R/pA wAt -Y- pA ra, where everyone agrees that P R in Hebrew > at the end of that name renders pA ra in Egyptian, meaning “The Ra”. You're ignoring the fact that the Egyptian spelling is pr-ʿ3, and that's represented in Hieroglyphs [pr][ʿ3], where the bracketed letters represent single, bi-consonantal hieroglyphs. The [pr] hieroglyph, in particular, functions as an ideograph for "house", in addition to its phonetic value. Egyptian p3-rʿ would *not* be represented by [pr]. > So the first intended level of meaning of the Biblical word P R (H > is “ Palace of The Ra”: pA ra aH. That’s a sensible, if colorful, > generic reference to the king of Egypt. Rather than the final > Hebrew he/H being inexplicable, as on the scholarly view [which > thinks the last Hebrew letter should be aleph/)], we see that > viewing Hebrew he/H as rendering emphatic Egyptian H makes perfect > sense. Every pharaoh proudly bore the title sA ra, so it makes > sense to refer to the king of Egypt as pA ra aH : P R (H : “Palace > of The Ra”. It's sensible for Hebrews to refer to the king of Egypt by an Egyptian title *p3-rʿ-ʿh that as far I know doesn't exist in Egyptian? > But we’ve still got two more intended levels of meaning to go in > analyzing P R (H. I can't wait. -- Will Parsons _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
