On Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:54:46 -0400 (EDT), [email protected] wrote: > > 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 (3) is wrong and (4) is iffy (see below). > 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.] I think you're making the wrong conclusion here. You're taking the cuneiform transcription <mua> for Egyptian m3ʿt to assume that the U represents the Egyptian ʿ, but I think it's more likely that the U simply represents the first vowel and the ʿ is not represented at all, i.e., <mua> represents something like /muʿa/. > 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.? Well, I'm not sure I accept your theory of transmission via Akkadian, but I won't go into that aspect. > Akkadian cuneiform heth could render any one or more of the > “gutturals”: heth or he or emphatic H or aleph or ayin. I agree with you that it could do multiple service, though I *doubt* that it could represent an aleph. (I'd like to see evidence that it did, at any rate. But since I don't think that the "expected" spelling of פרעה should necessarily end in an aleph anyway, I don't think it matters for the present discussion. Or are we talking about another aleph?) And although I think a /ʿ/ *might* be represented by an Akkadian ḫ, it also could be completely left out of the transcription, as evidenced by the example of /muʿa/ cited above. (Interesting that we can take the same bit of evidence and come to quite different interpretations.) > 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. You are right in one respect - Egyptian had the contstruct of indicating a genitive relationship between two nouns by juxtiposing them without a connecting word, completely parallel to the construct common in Biblical Hebrew. But the order of words is significant. I can't readily find how <mr-ʿḥ> was spelled in hieroglyphs, so I can't be sure, but since one meaning of <mr> in Eguptian is "friend", I imagine this title means something like "Friend of the Palace". So what would rʿ-ʿḥ mean? "Re of the Palace"? In Egyptian (like Hebrew), the governing noun must precede the noun governed. There is no equivalent in Egyptian to "The George Washington Monument". > 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. This is purely written phenomenon. The fact the hierogplyph for "Re" comes first in the written form of the name of Pharaoh nb-m3ʿt-rʿ "Neb-Maat-Re" doesn't mean that the pronunciation was affected, as indicated by the Akkadian transcription "Nibmuaria" (from which we have gotten the 18th dyn. vocalizations of /muʿa/ for m3ʿt and /riʿa/ for rʿ). > 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 won't address questions of Akhenaten's theology, since I feel far less capable of doing that than in addressing the liguistic issues. > 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. -- Will Parsons μη φαινεσθαι, αλλ' ειναι. _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
