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OT: Settling the issues on "Ethio-Sabean" connections, "Habashat", and the related
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Yom: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Clyde Winters: [QB] The origin of the Semitic speakers is very important. The archaeological and textual evidence make it clear that Mesopotamia was the not homeland of the Semitic speakers. This evidence make it clear that the first settlers of this area spoke Sumerian and Ubadian, not Semitic.[/QUOTE]I'm not informed enough about this to make an educated comment, but Mesopotamia does contain the earliest known examples of Semitic writing, though this is not in itself enough to say that Semitic languages evolved there. [QUOTE]The first Semites to leave textual evidence are the Akkadians. The Akkadians and the Ethio-Semitic languages have shared archaism. This feature indicates the ancient morphology and grammar of a Semitic language. We can infer that if this was the norm for the most ancient form of Semitic, other Semitic languages possessing this character probably are closely related to the original spoken/written Semitic language. We can further infer that since Ethio-Semitic, possesses these linguistic characteristics, and other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic do not, the later languages must be relatively young in age.[/QUOTE]Shared archaisms show that Ethio-Semitic is closer to proto-semitic in some instances, but not a closeness to Akkadian. Language groupings are determined by [b]shared innovations[/b], not shared archaisms. There exist also a number of proto-A-A features in Ethio-semitic not found in other semitic languages and some features previously thought to be due to Agaw influence but found in Modern South Arabian as well. The Urheimat of Afrasan in the Eastern Sahara or Ethiopia is also a large piece of evidence for the hypothesis of an Ethiopian origin for Semitic languages. There are 6 or 7 branches of A-A: Semitic, Cushitic, Berber, Omotic, Chadic, Egyptian, and Beja, though Beja is sometimes classified into Cushitic. 4 of those are found in Ethiopia (Beja only very marginally, but solidly if you include Eritrea which has historically been part of Ethiopia). Also, Ongota, tentatively classified as Omotic may actually form an independent branch of Afro-Asiatic, bringing the number to 5. [QUOTE]In your post you claim that Ethio-Semitic is a young language. This is false, as indicated by archaic linguistic features Akkadian and Ethio-Semitic share.[/QUOTE]It depends on what you call "young." Ge'ez is much older than English and French, but Akkadian predates Ge'ez by a millenium or more. [QUOTE]The historical evidence support an old presence of Ethio-Semitic in Africa. For example, the Axumite Empire was founded by the Habashan. the habashan are mentioned in a 3rd or 4th century Himyarite inscription from South Arabia, which refers to an alliance between Gadarat King of the Habashan or Habashat.[/QUOTE]It's 3rd c., ca. 200 AD. [QUOTE]Some of the people of Punt were probably Tigrinya speakers, who call their language habesha, i.e., Abyssinian par excellence. The term Habesh, seems to represent an old name for Abyssinia and may be connected with the Amharic word washa 'cave or cavern', and may refer to the" cave dwellers" who once served as the principal traders along the Ethiopian coast. The ability of the Ethiopians as sailors, is supported by the title bahr nagash, "ruler of the maritime province" or Eritrea.[/QUOTE]Tigrinya didn't exist back then. Any language before the first millenium BC would have been proto-Ethiosemitic, proto-Ethiopic, proto-Ge'ez or something similarly named. Where do you get the name "habesha" for the name of a language from? The term in Tigrinya and Amharic is -inya, while the term in Ge'ez is -yist. or -wist. (emphatic t.). I doubt Habesha is etymologically connected to "washa," though the linguistic patterns for such a shift do exist (loss of h sound, e.g. Haddis -> Addis, and b->w, e.g. Ge'ez Sab'a 'person' -> Old Amh. 'seb' -> Modern Amh. 'sew'). The "cave dwellers" wouldn't make sense for this etymology if you are connecting it to the coast, however, as the mountains are several tens of miles inland (though the tradition of "cave-dwelling" exists for monks and formerly for some peoples in Gurage-land. The control of a coastal province doesn't show significant naval skill. A couple good examples would be the repel of an Egyptian attack on Adulis in 640 and the sacking of Jeddah in 702. [QUOTE]In addition, some of the earliest Sabean/Thamudic inscriptions have been found in Ethiopia, and not South Arabia. For example, Dr. Doresse has found Sabean cursive writing on a sceptre that indicates that the Habashat/Axumite empire had writing.[/QUOTE]True on the first. The second was not Sabaean cursive but a Ge'ez script and Ge'ez language inscription of king "GDR" of Aksum. I don't see why Aksum having a writing system is all that surprising. We've been talking about writing systems in Ethiopia that predate Aksum by 1000 years for this whole thread. [QUOTE]These Habashan are mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions of the 18th Dynasty (1709-1320) in connection to the land of Punt. ]Given the Egyptian association of the Habashan with Punt, I call the speakers of the Ethio-Semitic languages: Puntites.[/QUOTE]I believe it was actually during Hatshepsut's expedition, but see my comments at the "Land of Punt:Ethiopia" thread: [QUOTE]Yom: I've heard of this before. Walter W. Muller disagrees, with reason, I believe. [QUOTE]Since the time of Eduard Glaser, it has been repeatedly claimed that the hieroglyphic egyptian [i]ḫbstjw[/i], indicating a foreign people from incense-producing regions, is connected with the Ḥabašāt. The name [i]ḫbstjw[/i] is first recorded in the Punt inscriptions of Queen Hatshepsut, ca. 1460 B.C. With regard to the enormous temporal difference of a millenium or more, it is hardly acceptable that the Ḥabašāt have anything in common with this mythical people from a southern region.[/QUOTE]Note that the first letter of the Egyptian name is "ḫ" (transliterated sometimes as "kh" or "ch" like in "Channukah"), while the first letter in the Ethiopian one is "ḥ" (i.e. a pharyngeal h like that in Ahmad and Muhammad). Plus, the first known use of Ḥabašāt is ca. 200 AD, much later than Hatshepsut. An inscription with something similar to Ge`ez or Ag`azi might be relevant however, as it's attested to 700 B.C. Whose first use was the form YGʿḎYN in the royal inscriptions of Dʿmt (in the form, "{{KINGNAME}}, the victorious king, he of [the tribe] YGʿḎ," etc. Note that ḏ is pronounced like "th" in "the" (but not like "th" in "thing") and merged into "z" in Ge'ez (incidentally, the letter for "Z" in Ge'ez is the same as the letter for ḏ in Sabaean, but distinct from the Sabaean letter for "z").[/QUOTE][QUOTE]We have Egyptian evidence of trade missions to Punt as early as PepiII in 2400 BC and Mentuholep IV and IV. The vizier Amenemhat, of Mentuholep IV is said to have established a port near Safaga. the most famous mission to Punt was sent by Queen Hatshepsut, and is recorded at deir el Bahri. Since the Habashan are mentioned in Egyptian documents they were in existence long before the Arabic speakers.[/QUOTE]True on everything but the last sentence; see above. [QUOTE]The evidence of shared archaism for Akkadian and Ethio-Semitic indicate that the speakers of these languages probably shared many linguistic features when they separated. It also suggest that thespeakers of these languages probably separated in Africa, since the Ethio-Semitic speakers have long been established in their present home, as supported by the Egyptian inscriptions. The Ethio-Semitic speakers have maintained these features due to the relative stability of these languages. You can find out more about the stability of African languages in my article "Linguistic Continuity and African and Dravidian languages", International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 23 (2), (1996) 34-52. We must conclude that the Semitic languages originated in Africa.[/QUOTE]See my earlier comments. Also, note that an ethnic name doesn't necessarily denote the language spoken unless the name comes from a specific language, and may even then be misleading [/QB][/QUOTE]
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