Ancient Egyptian Linguistic Heritage in Hebrew: New Evidence 2022
ByLetizia Cerqueglini Tel Aviv University
Cerqueglini, Letizia. 2022. « Ancient Egyptian Linguistic Heritage in Hebrew: New Evidence ». Bulletin De l’Académie Belge Pour l’Étude Des Langues Anciennes Et Orientales 1011 (février):325-33. https://doi.org/10.14428/babelao.vol1011.2022.65003.
When Modern Hebrew speakers say kaparato their beloved friends, wish them a happy Ḥanukka, or praise their mom’s ḥaroset, they are actually pronouncing Ancient Egyptian words. These are some of the Egyptian linguistic traces preserved in He-brew over the millenniaandstill present today.The Ancient Egyptian lexical heritage detected in Hebrew so far consists of approximately onehundred nouns (units of measures, raw materi-als, natural elements, technical tools, ritual instruments and procedures, among others1) and sometwenty personal names of central biblical characters (especially related to Moses’sfamily and the Levites2). Regardless of whether the contact took place or not as written in the Patri-archs’ stories3,the presence of Ancient Egyptian loanwords in Hebrew attests to the existence of multilingualism and language contact in antiquity, much like the sociolinguistic situation of the Middle East today, where Modern Hebrew is spoken alongside Arabic, Russian, English,and several other languages. According to studies carried out by Yahuda and Noonan4and his-torical and archaeologicalevidence5, the contact of ancient Hebrew speakers with Egypt was sustained and culturally meaningful. The sociopolitical contact resulted in a linguistic proximity between different phases of Hebrewand Egyptian stretching back to the Egyptian conquest of Canaan during the New Kingdom (1549–1069 BCE), until the Late Period (7thcentury BCE). I discuss here the hypothesis of the presence of some further Ancient Egyptian loanwords in Hebrew (Egy. dp.t‘ship,’ ḥbš‘person of eastern African origin,’ pḥr‘ampoule for medical ointment,’ and ḥnwkk‘dedication, gift’), a possible Egyptian influence in the Hebrew colorterm ḥūm, a case of semantically similar lexical items(Hb: beʔer‘to clarify, to explain’/bāʕar‘to burn, to glow’), whose phonological differences in Hebrew maybe due to both regular de-velopment from the Afroasiatic lexical stock and contact with Ancient Egyptian, and a new interpretation of the word raʕūʕ‘fresh, newborn,’ inlight of Ancient Egyptian data. Words that originated independently in Egyptian and Hebrew from common Afroasiatic roots [6] are outside the scope of this contribution.
_____________________________________________
[6] Israel Oriental Studies 20, 2002, 227-264 THE EGYPTIAN CONNECTION: EGYPTIAN AND THE SEMITIC LANGUAGES Helmut Satzinger
posted
^ It makes me wonder why there is so much doubt or skepticism in regards to the historicity of ancient Hebrew presence in Egypt. According to scriptural tradition the Hebrews were in Egypt for approximately 430 years, whether they were literal slaves or simply a servant class of workers. Not to mention the centuries afterward in which the Levant was under Egyptian New Kingdom rule.
The confusion of nonHebrews who adopted TaNaKh for their scriptures is they don't understand or scoff at Jewish interpretation of the Jewish book because they arrogantly claim to know better than what Hebrews themselves know.
יב וַיְהִי הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ לָבוֹא, וְתַרְדֵּמָה נָפְלָה עַל-אַבְרָם; וְהִנֵּה אֵימָה חֲשֵׁכָה גְדֹלָה, נֹפֶלֶת עָלָיו. 12 And it came to pass, that, when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, a dread, even a great darkness, fell upon him.
יג וַיֹּאמֶר לְאַבְרָם, יָדֹעַ תֵּדַע כִּי-גֵר יִהְיֶה זַרְעֲךָ בְּאֶרֶץ לֹא לָהֶם, וַעֲבָדוּם, וְעִנּוּ אֹתָם--אַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת, שָׁנָה. 13 And He said unto Abram: 'Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;
יד וְגַם אֶת-הַגּוֹי אֲשֶׁר יַעֲבֹדוּ, דָּן אָנֹכִי; וְאַחֲרֵי-כֵן יֵצְאוּ, בִּרְכֻשׁ גָּדוֹל. 14 and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance.
טו וְאַתָּה תָּבוֹא אֶל-אֲבֹתֶיךָ, בְּשָׁלוֹם: תִּקָּבֵר, בְּשֵׂיבָה טוֹבָה. 15 But thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.
טז וְדוֹר רְבִיעִי, יָשׁוּבוּ הֵנָּה: כִּי לֹא-שָׁלֵם עֲוֺן הָאֱמֹרִי, עַד-הֵנָּה. 16 And in the fourth generation they shall come back hither; for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full.'
code:
A select Hebrew chronology comparing A.M. and B.C.E. dates
Anno Mundi Before Common Era Event
2048 1713 Yisshhaq is born ("your seed shall be a stranger"; start 400 years) 2216 1545 Yosef is sold (begin the Bondage) 2238 1523 Yisrael's yarden (Israel enters EGYPT) 2448 1313 Exodus (end of Bondage; 400 years up
Iirc the Talmud lists Hebrew words of Egyptian origin, the primary one being the first person singular nominative I. Later the question "What kind of word is anokhi?" was answered "It's an Egyptian word." Tanhuma B.Yitro 16.
posted
^ I was going by Sunday school memory saying they were in Egypt for 430 years. You know the Torah better than me. I don't know if the 430 is symbolic or what or you are using pardes exegesis.
All I know is that traditions say Hebrews were in Egypt a good while where they no doubt acquired a lot of knowledge not to mention linguistic influence.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26267 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Yes Sunday school is Christian while Cheder (link) is Jewish.
Seder `Olam is the Jewish work tying dates to events in Torah Nebi'iym and Ketubiym.
Besides that over 20 years ago I sat down and personally used all the years of the lives of Torah entities to painstakingly 'vet' the Order of the World.
BTW current secular studies indicate a people Israel was never in Egypt but were malcontents under combined Canaan/Egypt suzerainty tat fled to the highlands. Archaeology speaking there's little if at all any evidence of a conquest of Canaan and adjacent territories as in the book Yehoshu'a.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ It makes me wonder why there is so much doubt or skepticism in regards to the historicity of ancient Hebrew presence in Egypt. According to scriptural tradition the Hebrews were in Egypt for approximately 430 years, whether they were literal slaves or simply a servant class of workers. Not to mention the centuries afterward in which the Levant was under Egyptian New Kingdom rule.
Probably because the Assyrians / Babylonians bad mouthed Egypt? It was them who did the enslavement and that's documented.
quote:And it shall come to pass that on that day, the Lord shall continue to apply His hand a second time to acquire the rest of His people, that will remain from Assyria and from Egypt and from Pathros and from Cush and from Elam and from Sumeria and from Hamath and from the islands of the sea.
quote:"Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?"
quote: So shall the king of Assyria lead the captivity of Egypt and the exile of Cush, youths and old men, naked and barefoot, with bare buttocks, the shame of Egypt.
quote:"The earliest certain link with Egypt is 664 B.C., the date of the Assyrian sack of the Egyptian capital at Thebes. Although it is often possible to locate earlier events quite precisely relative to each other, neither surviving contemporary documents nor scientific dating methods such as carbon 14, dendrochronology, thermoluminescence, and archaeoastronomy are able to provide the required accuracy to fix these events absolutely in time."
quote:This chapter in the Jewish diaspora, however, never has been really written, for the Hebrews deported from Israel seem to have blended in with Assyrian society and, by the time Nebuchadnezzar II conquers Judah (587 BC), the southern kingdom of the Hebrews, the Israelites deported by Sargon II have disappeared nameless and faceless into the sands of northern Mesopotamia.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ I was going by Sunday school memory saying they were in Egypt for 430 years. You know the Torah better than me. I don't know if the 430 is symbolic or what or you are using pardes exegesis.
All I know is that traditions say Hebrews were in Egypt a good while where they no doubt acquired a lot of knowledge not to mention linguistic influence.
430 years is the stated case in Exodus 12: 40 and 41. There have been various rabbinic debates, adding more or less to a overall base of approx 400 years. In the Jewish Bible Quarterly link below multiple rabbinic arguments and calculations are examined in detail and the writer concludes that the 430 years as stated in Exodus 12 may likely be the most reasonable figure. No doubt others have other figures including arguments for as short as 210 years. https://jbqnew.jewishbible.org/jbq-past-issues/2016/443-july-september-2016/long-sojourn-egypt-210-430-years/
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
| IP: Logged |
Ancient Egyptian Linguistic Heritage in Hebrew: New Evidence 2022
ByLetizia Cerqueglini Tel Aviv University
Cerqueglini, Letizia. 2022. « Ancient Egyptian Linguistic Heritage in Hebrew: New Evidence ». Bulletin De l’Académie Belge Pour l’Étude Des Langues Anciennes Et Orientales 1011 (février):325-33. https://doi.org/10.14428/babelao.vol1011.2022.65003.
When Modern Hebrew speakers say kaparato their beloved friends, wish them a happy Ḥanukka, or praise their mom’s ḥaroset, they are actually pronouncing Ancient Egyptian words. These are some of the Egyptian linguistic traces preserved in He-brew over the millenniaandstill present today.The Ancient Egyptian lexical heritage detected in Hebrew so far consists of approximately onehundred nouns (units of measures, raw materi-als, natural elements, technical tools, ritual instruments and procedures, among others1) and sometwenty personal names of central biblical characters (especially related to Moses’sfamily and the Levites2). Regardless of whether the contact took place or not as written in the Patri-archs’ stories3,the presence of Ancient Egyptian loanwords in Hebrew attests to the existence of multilingualism and language contact in antiquity, much like the sociolinguistic situation of the Middle East today, where Modern Hebrew is spoken alongside Arabic, Russian, English,and several other languages. According to studies carried out by Yahuda and Noonan4and his-torical and archaeologicalevidence5, the contact of ancient Hebrew speakers with Egypt was sustained and culturally meaningful. The sociopolitical contact resulted in a linguistic proximity between different phases of Hebrewand Egyptian stretching back to the Egyptian conquest of Canaan during the New Kingdom (1549–1069 BCE), until the Late Period (7thcentury BCE). I discuss here the hypothesis of the presence of some further Ancient Egyptian loanwords in Hebrew (Egy. dp.t‘ship,’ ḥbš‘person of eastern African origin,’ pḥr‘ampoule for medical ointment,’ and ḥnwkk‘dedication, gift’), a possible Egyptian influence in the Hebrew colorterm ḥūm, a case of semantically similar lexical items(Hb: beʔer‘to clarify, to explain’/bāʕar‘to burn, to glow’), whose phonological differences in Hebrew maybe due to both regular de-velopment from the Afroasiatic lexical stock and contact with Ancient Egyptian, and a new interpretation of the word raʕūʕ‘fresh, newborn,’ inlight of Ancient Egyptian data. Words that originated independently in Egyptian and Hebrew from common Afroasiatic roots [6] are outside the scope of this contribution.
_____________________________________________
[6] Israel Oriental Studies 20, 2002, 227-264 THE EGYPTIAN CONNECTION: EGYPTIAN AND THE SEMITIC LANGUAGES Helmut Satzinger
^^This overall should not be surprising and lends some weight to the idea of extensive interchange between Egyptian and certain Semitic speakers, among others. The exact context is a mix- conquest, nomadic entry into Egypt etc. etc. There may have been more than one group of Semitic speakers in Egypt. The one that has most distinctly come down to us today is the one that would come to be called "Hebrews" and later "Israel."
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
| IP: Logged |
Geez *Note: Ge'ez has two extra letters (not displayed here) that do not match up with the Semitic languages, and are thought to come from Cushitic influence.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26267 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
Ancient Egyptian Linguistic Heritage in Hebrew: New Evidence 2022
ByLetizia Cerqueglini Tel Aviv University
Cerqueglini, Letizia. 2022. « Ancient Egyptian Linguistic Heritage in Hebrew: New Evidence ». Bulletin De l’Académie Belge Pour l’Étude Des Langues Anciennes Et Orientales 1011 (février):325-33. https://doi.org/10.14428/babelao.vol1011.2022.65003.
[6] Israel Oriental Studies 20, 2002, 227-264 THE EGYPTIAN CONNECTION: EGYPTIAN AND THE SEMITIC LANGUAGES Helmut Satzinger
Can you explain why the Lachish aren't mentioned in this paper?
quote:Lachish is one of the key sites in the Bible’s account of the Israelite conquest of Canaan.
[...]
The plan of this Canaanite temple at Lachish seems to have originated in Egypt. Similar temples have been uncovered at Deir el-Medina near Luxor, and also at Tell el-Amarna. Deir el-Medina was the village of the ancient Egyptian workmen who cut the tombs of the Pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings. At Deir el-Medina, Chapel G, among others, consists of an antechamber, main hall with two central columns and a cella; the entrances and their staircases are aligned along a central axis. Various other characteristic features in our Canaanite temple at Lachish were adopted from the Egyptians—the octagonal columns, the shapes of the column bases and capitals, the staircase and its parapet, the brick-paved floor and the painted plaster. In short, our Canaanite temple at Lachish (as well as the contemporaneous Canaanite temple at Beth-Shean) displays strong Egyptian influence.
quote:Before the discovery of the inscription, experts believed that writing might have been brought by Egyptians to the Levant, as archaeologists often referred to an area that includes modern Israel, Palestinian territories, parts of Lebanon, and Jordan.
“In the Late Bronze Age, between 1550 and 1200 BCE, the region was under the Egyptian empire,” said Höflmayer. “The Egyptians imposed their administrative system and their own writing, and many experts thought that the early alphabet might have been introduced in this context. But now we can see that it was already in use at least by the 15th century BCE, when there was not such large-scale Egyptian domination.”
Höflmayer said that even though the letters identified on the sherd bear names and compose words that might sound familiar to a modern Hebrew speaker, the alphabet was not the Hebrew alphabet, but rather an alphabet from which the Hebrew one would evolve centuries later.
The inscription bears letters that the researchers identified as ayin, bet and daled, (e-v-d) forming a word that can be “eved” – which back then, as well as in modern Hebrew, means “slave.” The second word deciphered on the sherd features nun-peh-tav, (n-p-t) or “nectar.”
“All alphabets have somewhat evolved from hieroglyphs, the Phoenician one, the Hebrew one, the Greek one, the Latin one and so on,” Höflmayer said. “Now we know that the alphabet was not brought to the Levant by the Egyptian rule. Although we cannot really explain yet how it happened, we can say that it was much earlier and under different social circumstances.”
quote:Lachish was one of the most important cities of the Biblical era in the Holy Land. Situated southwest of Jerusalem, it is represented today by a huge, impressive mound, named Tel Lachish or Tell ed-Duweir.
[...]
During the Late Bronze Age it was a large Canaanite city-state, and a few letters from Lachish were found in the fourteenth century royal Egyptian archives at El-Amarna. Lachish played a major role in the story of the Israelite conquest of Canaan as related in Joshua 10.
[…]
Three decorative columns stood along the eastern wall of the main hall, to the left of the staircase, and their round stone bases were found in situ. The columns were attached to the walls, each forming a kind of pilaster. The broken stone columns were discovered near the side entrance. They were tapering and octagonal and they were crowned by square capitals. Similar stone bases, columns and capitals were fashionable in Egypt; thus our columns form another indication of the Egyptian influence at Lachish during that period.
The rich equipment of the temple was robbed or smashed prior to the destruction of the building by fire. A small room which opened into the central hall served as a storeroom, and most of the finds were found there. They included pottery stands and bowls, fragments of imported Mycenaean vessels as well as Egyptian alabaster and faience vessels, beads and pendants, a decorated stone cover, a bronze chisel, many gold leaves and broken ivory plaques and, finally, pieces of oxidized iron—a metal which was still rare during that period.
posted
^ Yes Lachish was a major trade city in Canaan with commercial ties to Egypt but the people themselves despite showing metric affinities to Egyptians were shown not to be related to Egyptians based on both non-metric and genetic features.
But more to the topic, I came across an interesting paper on the ostracon found in Theban Tomb 99 a.k.a. TT99 The Theban Tomb TT99 is located in Sheikh Abd el-Qurna. It forms part of the Theban Necropolis, situated on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor. The sepulchre is the burial place of the ancient Egyptian noble, Senneferi. It has been worked on by an expedition from the University of Cambridge since 1992
As Easy as ABC?: A Review of Thomas Schneider’s Study of the TT99 ..In his initial publication, Haring suggested that first four entries on the front of the ostracon were Egyptian words arranged according to the halaḥam alphabetic sequence known primarily from Ethiopia and South Arabia. This sequence is named after its first four letters, h-l-ḥ-m, and differs considerably from our a-b-c-d order (see Figure 1). More recently, Thomas Schneider has advanced a new and potentially ground-breaking interpretation of the ostracon. He suggests that the first four entries on the back of the ostracon represent Semitic words arranged according to the better known abgad alphabetic sequence, the ancestor of our modern a-b-c-d order. If Schneider’s interpretation proves correct, then the TT99 ostracon preserves the earliest evidence of the abgad alphabetic sequence and thus bears witness to the longevity of our alphabetic tradition. In this article, I will review and critique Schneider’s proposal, highlighting both its strengths and weaknesses. I will then propose an alternative interpretation of the ostracon that avoids some of the problems with Schneider’s analysis.
h l ḥ m ś r s q b t ḫ n ˀ k w ˤ z y d g ṭ ṣ ḍ f Figure 1: An example of the halaḥam alphabet from Ethiopia
Anyway, the paper isn't that long to read but based on its conclusions there are two very fascinating points.
1. The TT99 ostracon could very well be the oldest example of a halaḥam letter found outside of South Arabia and Ethiopia.
2. Egyptic language(s) is spatially and genetically intermediate between Semitic and Cushitic, and coincidentally Cushitic was the language group originally spoken in the Horn before Semitic and possibly in South Arabia as well (Militarev's theory).
There's a possible third point that's theoretical but I'll have to look into more.
Posts: 26267 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
HLHM Ostracon (Halaham Inscription) By the Editors of the Madain Project The HLHM ostracon or Halaham Inscription, found during the excation of an ancient Egyption tomb in Thebes, is a a fragment of limestone inscribed on the two sides with lines of hieratic and hieroglyphic characters in blank ink. The flake of limestone (ostracon) inscribed with an ancient Egyptian word list of the fifteenth century BCE turns out to be the world's oldest known
The words have been arranged according to their initial sounds, and the order followed here is one that is still known today. This discovery by Ben Haring (Leiden University) with funding from Free Competition Humanities has been published in the October issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies. On one side of the flake is the transliteration into cursive Egyptian writing of the sounds that signify the beginnings of today’s Hebrew alphabet (Aleph, Bet, Gimel). On the other, a contemporary, though now lesser-known letter order, called “Halaḥam,” which was deciphered in 2015, on the same limestone flake, by Leiden University’s Dr. Ben Haring. ) The limestone piece is dated to the Egyptian 18th dynasty, from the excavation of Theban Tomb 99 from the necropolis on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor, known as the Tombs of the Nobles. Director of the Cambridge Theban Tombs Project Dr. Nigel Strudwick found the object back in 1995, in what he calls “a later tomb shaft,” dating to about 1450 BCE.
“The ostrakon is, however, of roughly the same date as the tomb to judge from the handwriting style. So it could have been lying around somewhere in that area of the necropolis for 3,000+ years before it ended up where we found it,”
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic