Will:
Let’s see if we can definitively resolve the “different consonants” issue
regarding PR(H/“Pharaoh”, while also taking note of the various other
points you have made. What we need to do is to start with the PR(H that we
see in the received alphabetical Hebrew text, and then reverse engineer it to
see how that would have been recorded in Akkadian cuneiform. [Nothing
about the Patriarchal Age could be very accurate unless it was recorded in
Akkadian cuneiform, because alphabetical Hebrew was either very rudimentary,
or
not in existence at all, during the Patriarchal Age and for centuries
thereafter.]
The Akkadian cuneiform signs that would produce PR(H in the received text
must have been approximately the following [where I am using I as a generic
vowel, since a consonant could only be recorded by being paired with some
vowel in Akkadian cuneiform]:
1. PI
2. RI
3. U
4. XI
Those four Akkadian cuneiform signs could come out in alphabetical Hebrew
as PR(H. As we will see in a minute, the ayin/( could just as easily be
aleph/), and the he/H could just as easily be emphatic H or heth/X or even
aleph/’. Of critical importance, there is virtually no way in Akkadian
cuneiform to remove those inherent ambiguities.
The first two cuneiform signs obviously represent (i) peh/P resh/R as
Hebrew letters, and (ii) the Egyptian consonants pr. But as I noted before,
that’s a natural pun for a Hebrew author. Per the end of the name of Joseph’
s first Egyptian master, P R in Hebrew could render pA ra in Egyptian.
But per the traditional analysis of the word that is translated as “Pharaoh”
, PR could alternatively be the first two Egyptian letters in the 4-letter
Egyptian word praA. [For example, the Egyptian word wr is almost certainly
a single syllable. But the Akkadian cuneiform rendering of wr in Amarna
Letter EA 129: 97 is wu ri, using two cuneiform signs. So the presence of
two cuneiform signs just means that there are two consonants in the Egyptian
word, not that there are two syllables.] In the first instance, I am saying
that we should be alert to a possible pun here, or double meaning, where
on one or two levels, P R in the received text for this word may be
representing pA ra, whereas on one other level PR in the received text is
“pr…” in
Egyptian. [Yes, the two Egyptian hieroglyphs for pA ra are totally
different than the one Egyptian hieroglyph for pr, as you pointed out. But
that’
s irrelevant for our purposes here, because we are talking about a Hebrew
author using Hebrew letters, via Akkadian cuneiform, to render Egyptian
words. The Hebrew letters peh resh are a natural pun to render either or both
of pA ra and pr.] O.K. so far?
The Akkadian true vowel U could represent either aleph or ayin in
Egyptian. We know that because for the Egyptian word mAat, the two middle
letters
[aleph, then ayin] are rendered as UU in Amarna Letter EA 29: 12 [in the
middle of the prenomen of Akhenaten’s father]. [Your point that Egyptian
aleph may not be directly comparable to Hebrew aleph is interesting, but will
not affect matters much, because what we’re starting with is the Akkadian
cuneiform sign U, which we know from mAat could be either Egyptian aleph or
Egyptian ayin.] Since aleph and ayin were not usually distinguished in
Akkadian cuneiform writing [being letters that Akkadian itself did not have],
we must be alert to the possibility of the third letter in this Biblical
Egyptian word being either aleph or ayin. Still O.K.?
Akkadian cuneiform heth could render any one or more of the “gutturals”:
heth or he or emphatic H or aleph or ayin. It’s what I call the “Achilles
heel” of using Akkadian cuneiform to write down foreign names, because
Akkadian cuneiform heth is attested as rendering a whole battery of Hebrew
letters and Egyptian letters: essentially every letter that we don’t have in
English. So here we should consider the possibility that the last Hebrew
letter may be emphatic H or he/H or heth/X, or possibly even aleph/’. Yes,
alphabetical Hebrew he/H was written down, but that is just one
possibility, based on the Akkadian cuneiform original, which is Akkadian
cuneiform
heth/X. I hope you see where I’m going with this. [Note for example that
way back in 1897, A.H. Sayce aptly observed the converse of this phenomenon,
when he noted at p. 301 of “The Early History of the Hebrews”, Kessinger
Publishing, 2004 that as to the Song of Deborah: “Had it been written in
cuneiform there would have been a confusion between aleph, het and ayin,
which cannot be detected in it.” Such “confusion” among those three Hebrew
and Egyptian letters and others is d-e-l-i-b-e-r-a-t-e-l-y here in PR(H, in
my opinion.]
Now consider the following three possibilities for this Biblical Egyptian
word, which do n-o-t involve “different consonants” from their Egyptian
counterparts.
I. pA ra aH. Akkadian U = ayin. Akkadian cuneiform heth = emphatic H.
aH in Egyptian means “palace”. There are no “different consonants”. pA
ra aH = “The Ra Palace”, which is a fitting, if colorful, way to
reference the king of Egypt. [Interestingly, regular Egyptian h won’t work
here,
as neither ah nor Ah is an Egyptian word. aH and Ax are Egyptian words, but
not ah or Ah.] It makes perfect sense to use aH/“palace” to refer to
the king of Egypt, because aH is the main Egyptian word for “palace”, which
was closely associated with the pharaohs and with the divine: “Since the
pharaoh was considered both human and divine, there was a sacred aspect to
much that went on in the royal palaces; and this is well expressed in the
most important ancient Egyptian word for “palace” ‘Ah’ which can also
designate the shrine of a deity….”
_http://monumentsinegypt.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-palaces-of-ancient-egypt.html_
(http://monumentsinegypt.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-palaces-of-ancient-egypt.html)
Since aH “can also designate
the shrine of a deity”, it makes complete sense to pair aH with the name of a
deity, such as pA ra.
As far as I can see, your only real objection here is your unexplained
assertion that pA ra aH allegedly is “not good Egyptian”. But I disagree,
because the following name/title of a personal servant of the king of Egypt,
a lord-chamberlain, is historically attested: mer aH. Adolf Erman, “Life
in Ancient Egypt” (1894), at p. 69. To me, the form looks identical to pA
ra aH: (i) first there’s a name, mer or pA ra; (ii) there is no
connecting word; and then (iii) there’s aH. If you’re focusing on word
order
here, it’s hard to object to putting the deity’s name first, as is
customarily done in the cartouche names of pharaohs.
II. praA. This is the traditional interpretation. Akkadian U = ayin.
Akkadian cuneiform heth may here = H-e-b-r-e-w he/H, as a Hebrew ending
of this otherwise Egyptian word, where -H often is used in Hebrew for any
name that ends with a vowel sound: a mater lectionis, as you put it. If
perchance the Jewish scribe in 7th century BCE Jerusalem who transformed the
Akkadian cuneiform signs into alphabetical Hebrew was aware of how native
Egyptians pronounced the Egyptian word “great house” [although to me that
is unlikely, since Egyptians rarely referred to their king as praA/pra-O],
he may have wanted to have Hebrew he/H represent the long vowel O ending of
the post-1200 BCE Egyptian pronunciation of “great house”. I believe that
may be your theory of the case, which is a mainstream view. Or Hebrew
he/H could represent the Egyptian aleph sound, which perhaps, as you assert,
was not directly comparable to Hebrew aleph. Alternatively, Akkadian
cuneiform heth could represent aleph directly. I am not saying that this
traditional view is totally wrong; rather, what I’m saying is that it is only
one
level of three levels of intended meaning of PR(H.
III. pA ra Ax. Akkadian U = aleph. Akkadian cuneiform heth = heth/X.
The unique element of Akhenaten’s name is Ax. Although the name “Akh-n-Aten
” features the divine name itn, the names of his four daughters also
feature itn; what is truly unique about Akhenaten’s name is Ax. [Akhenaten’s
name is Ax n itn, where the aleph/A as the first letter is different from
the I as the first letter of itn.] Please note that these are not “
different consonants”. (H is from the Akkadian cuneiform signs U - XI, which
original Akkadian cuneiform signs could be intended to render Ax in Egyptian,
with the consonants matching exactly. Of course, pA ra has completely
different consonants than itn, but each is the name of a deity, and pA ra fits
Akhenaten’s mature theology better than the earlier itn, per the changing
pattern of the names of Akhenaten’s daughters. What’s unique about Akhenaten’
s name are the first two letters: Ax. The word order here is reversed,
but for a pharaoh’s name I do not see that as a problem, as the word order
was often rearranged for artistic effect inside the cartouche, and in the
cartouche the deity’s name customarily comes first. Ax means “devoted to”
or “spirit”, so pA ra Ax means “Devoted to The [One and Only] Ra”. At
late Amarna, that fits pharaoh Akhenaten perfectly, though it would not work
in any other era [including early Amarna, for that matter].
I myself see all three of the above possible readings of the Akkadian
cuneiform original of PR(H/“Pharaoh” as having been deliberately intended by
the early Hebrew author, who lived during the Amarna Age and was the world’s
greatest punster. In this post, I have tried to show in particular that I
am not positing “different consonants” than the Egyptian counterparts I
am citing. There are “different consonants” only in the sense that
Akkadian cuneiform U and Akkadian cuneiform heth can represent different
Hebrew
letters, and hence different Egyptian letters.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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