Another classic example of confusion of the gutturals in exotic foreign
proper names in the Patriarchal narratives is the name of Joseph’s Egyptian
wife, “Asenath”. In the received alphabetical text, that name is spelled
)SNT.
The majority scholarly view, believe it or not, interprets this name of
the daughter of the high-priest of Ra from On as meaning “she belongs to the
goddess Neit”. That of course is i-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e , as the high priest
of Ra from On would not give his daughter a name that honors the goddess
Neit! Yet that is how the leading Genesis scholar, Gordon Wenham, quotes
the leading Egyptologist who analyzes Biblical Egyptian names, Kenneth
Kitchen: “ ‘Asenat’ is a good Egyptian type of name, meaning ‘she belongs to
the Goddess Neit’ (Iw.s-(n)-Nt) or ‘she belongs to her father’ (Iw.s-n-’t)
or ‘she belongs to you’ (fem sg., i.e., to a goddess or to her mother,
Iw.s-n.t). ‘Such names are well attested in the Middle Kingdom and Hyksos
periods (c. 2100-1600 B.C.)’, K.A. Kitchen, NBD, 94.” Gordon Wenham, “
Genesis 16-50” (1994), p. 397.
But even Donald Redford balks at that traditional scholarly analysis, and
suggests that NT in the name Asenath may be referring to nTr/netjer, a
generic Egyptian reference to the divine, not the goddess Neith: “Asenath is
usually derived from a name “Belonging-to-Neith”, which is specifically
attested from Greco-Roman times but belongs to a category that begins in the
New Kingdom and becomes very common in the first millennium B.C. The
interpretation of the consonant cluster N + T as the goddess Neith is, however,
open to question, as it could indicate nūte, the vocalization of the
Egyptian word for ‘god’; and ‘Belonging-to-(the)-goddess’ is an attested
personal name in the Late Period.” Donald B. Redford, “Egypt, Canaan and
Israel in Ancient Times” (1992), p. 424.
But “Belonging to God” still doesn’t make good sense for the Egyptian
name of Joseph’s wife. Rather, in the context of the Patriarchal narratives,
her name should emphasize that she will be “fertile”, thanks to “God”.
Per Genesis 48: 6, it is clear that in addition to bearing Manasseh and
Ephraim to Joseph before Joseph’s father Jacob moved all the Hebrews from
Canaan to Egypt, Asenath was “abundant” and bore Joseph many more sons after
Jacob came to Egypt. So the ideal meaning of the name of Joseph’s Egyptian
wife would start with the Egyptian word for “abundant”, implying being
abundantly fertile in being able to bear Joseph many sons, and then end with
a generic reference to the divine.
The first letter in the received text in the name of Joseph’s Egyptian
wife is an aleph, but that’s a classic case of confusion of the gutturals.
Akkadian cuneiform had no consistent pattern of distinguishing aleph from
ayin [with Akkadian itself having neither aleph nor ayin]. In Egyptian names,
either an aleph or an ayin could begin a name as its own separate
syllable. Either case would likely be rendered in Akkadian cuneiform by the
Akkadian true vowel A, though another alternative here would be the Akkadian
true
vowel U. [Per the analysis by Richard S. Hess at pp. 117-118 of “Amarna
Personal Names” (1993) of the prenomen of Akhenaten’s father, in rendering
the Egyptian word maat in that name, which is aleph followed by ayin, the
Akkadian vowel U was used to represent each of aleph and ayin.] Here the
scribe in 7th century BCE Jerusalem picked up that ambiguous cuneiform
rendering [probably the Akkadian cuneiform sign for the Akkadian true vowel A]
as
intending an aleph, when in fact it was intended, as we shall see, to be
Egyptian ayin.
The samekh which is the second letter of this name poses a somewhat
different issue. That samekh/S in the received text represents shin/$ in the
original Akkadian cuneiform text. The only two sibilants in Akkadian
cuneiform are sin and shin. At times Akkadian cuneiform shin/$ was used to
represent west Semitic samekh: “Old Babylonian…Syllables ending in samekh… We
find in the North: A$, IZ, U$....” Otto Neugebauer, Abraham Joseph Sachs,
Albrecht Gotze, “Mathematical Cuneiform Texts” (1945), p. 146. And of much
more direct relevance, 7th century BCE Jerusalem is known for “[t]he
reception of Akkadian shin as samekh….” James Maxwell Miller, J. Andrew
Dearman, M. Patrick Graham, “The Land That I Will Show You” (2001), p. 125.
Accordingly, the samekh/S in the received alphabetical Hebrew text can
represent a shin/$ in the original Akkadian cuneiform text.
The name of Joseph’s Egyptian wife was intended to be spelled ayin/(,
followed by a letter equivalent to a shin/$, and then nun/N tav/T: ($ NT.
As to the first half of this name, the first syllable is a [Egyptian
ayin]. The second syllable is $A [where Egyptian aleph, following a
consonant,
is not represented by its own separate letter, either in Akkadian cuneiform
or in Biblical Hebrew].
($ = aSA = “be abundant” [in Egyptian, where capital S is used to
represent shin/$, lower case a is Egyptian ayin, and upper case A is Egyptian
aleph]. Thus once we restore the aleph-samekh in the received text to what it
likely originally was in Akkadian cuneiform, namely ayin-shin, we see a
perfect match.
As to the second half of this name, NT = nTr = “God/the divine”.
Analysts like Prof. Redford have recognized that NT = nTr. As to why nTr is
rendered in Hebrew as NT, rather than as NTR, the answer is that by the New
Kingdom, the final R was not pronounced: “By the end of the New Kingdom, …
[t]he dental phonemes /t/ and /r/…undergo a process of lenition [softening or
weakening] to /?/ at the end of a stressed syllable, and eventually to ø
[silent or null] at the end of a word.” Antonio Loprieno, “Ancient
Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction” (1995), p. 38.
That is confirmed by the following Egyptian name in the Amarna Letters:
pa-xa-na-te. Per Hess’s analysis at p. 122 of “Amarna Personal Names”,
na-te = nTr/netjer = “God”. Thus the complete lenition of the final R is
fully-attested in the Akkadian cuneiform renderings in the Amarna Letters. So
naturally we will see the identical linguistic phenomenon in this Biblical
Egyptian name, because the Patriarchal narratives started out as a written
composition recorded in Akkadian cuneiform, in the same time period as the
Amarna Letters.
All of these various Biblical Egyptian names near the end of Genesis
become virtually self-explanatory, instead of being inscrutable as on the
scholarly view, once we realize that the Patriarchal narratives were written
down
in Akkadian cuneiform 4 years after Year 14, and not transformed into
alphabetical Biblical Hebrew until late 7th century BCE Jerusalem.
Accordingly, confusion of the gutturals is par for the course in these
Biblical
Egyptian names. Yet in all other ways each Biblical Egyptian name is
letter-for-letter perfect in terms of what Hebrew letters we would expect to
be used
to render the underlying Egyptian words in these names as of Year 14.
The reason why these Biblical Egyptian names near the end of Genesis are
so exciting is because the confusion of gutturals in these names helps show
that the Patriarchal narratives are m-u-c-h older as a written text than
university scholars realize, having been recorded in Akkadian cuneiform in
the late Amarna time period.
Jim StinehartEvanston, Illinois
_______________________________________________
b-hebrew mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
