Antonio Garcia Hurtado:
pr-aA, which is the traditional sole understanding of PR(H in Biblical
Hebrew, in Egyptian consists of Gardiner hieroglyphs O1-O29, which are a
rectangle with an opening at the bottom [signifying a house], being pr, and a
column lying on its side, being aA [with a series of Egyptian words beginning
aA meaning “great” in various senses]. The literal meaning of pr-aA is “
great house”.
Prior to the New Kingdom, pr-aA referred to the palace of the king of
Egypt, not to the king of Egypt himself. In the New Kingdom, pr-aA could be
used to refer to the king of Egypt, but almost always in a stock phrase in a
very limited context. Thus the Boundary Stelae at Akhenaten’s new capital
city use pr-aA twice, but always as a stock phrase in a very limited
context:
Oath of the King:
pr-aA anx wDA snb
Pharaoh may he live, prosper and be well,
Renewal of the oath in Year 8
pr-aA anx wDA snb aHa…
Pharaoh, may he live, prosper and be well, stood…
_http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/amarna/boundary.html_
(http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/amarna/boundary.html)
Although Akhenaten praises himself greatly as the king of Egypt in the
Great Hymn to the Aten, that Hymn never once uses the Egyptian phrase pr-aA.
By stark contrast, the Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives uses
PR(H repeatedly to refer to the king of Egypt in all manner of different
contexts, and never in a stock phrase like the Egyptian usage. Why do you
think that the Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives was so enamored of
the H-e-b-r-e-w wording PR(H? The Bible seems to like that Hebrew wording
much more than the Egyptians themselves ever liked the Egyptian phrase
pr-aA, at least in the context of functioning as a generic reference to the
king of Egypt. Why?
Doesn’t that suggest that the Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives
has a series of intended meanings for his H-e-b-r-e-w wording PR(H, rather
than PR(H simply being a passive Hebrew recording of the Egyptian phrase
pr-aA, or PR(H somehow being a creative play by a Hebrew author on Egyptian
hieroglyphs [with a Hebrew author presumably not knowing Egyptian
hieroglyphs, or at least not knowing Egyptian hieroglyphs well]?
In my opinion, we need to focus on what four Akkadian cuneiform signs
would have generated the alphabetical Hebrew wording PR(H that we see in the
received alphabetical Hebrew text. Then we should ask what layers of various
meanings may have been intended by the early Hebrew author of the
Patriarchal narratives, depending on which alphabetical Hebrew letters are
intended
to be referenced by those four Akkadian cuneiform signs. For example, I
see as significant the facts that (i) the first two Egyptian letters of the
name “Akhenaten” are Ax [Egyptian aleph – Egyptian heth], and (ii) the last
two Akkadian cuneiform signs that generated PR(H could easily have been
intended by the early Hebrew author to signify )X: Hebrew aleph – Hebrew
heth. We must remember in this connection that Akkadian cuneiform was
utterly incapable of differentiating between the various gutturals in Hebrew
or
Egyptian [ayin vs. aleph; he vs. heth]. So instead of stopping with the
received alphabetical Hebrew text, which may either be mistaken or, more
likely, represent only one of the various intended meanings of the four
Akkadian
cuneiform signs that generated PR(H, what is needed is to reverse engineer
PR(H to recover the original Akkadian cuneiform signs. From there we then
ask whether one of the intended meanings of those four Akkadian cuneiform
signs, which come out in the received text as PR(H, was actually P R )X,
meaning [after reversing the word order]: “A-khe-pA-ra”/“Devoted to The Ra”
, which compares nicely to “A-khe-n-itn”/“Devoted to Aten”. Although
Akhenaten named his first four daughters after Aten, he named his last two
daughters after Ra, and the phrase pA ra shows up in several of the nobles’
tombs at Amarna in connection with representing the royal family; so by
Year 12, Ra had supplanted Aten as Akhenaten’s preferred divine nomenclature.
As such, P R )X can be viewed as being a Biblically updated version of the
historical name Akhenaten.
The Bible is t-e-l-l-i-n-g us the time period of both the Patriarchal
Age and of the composition and writing down of the Patriarchal narratives, if
we only have eyes to see.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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