Subject: Re: Where, oh where has ANE gone? etc.
From: James Petts
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 20:08:10 +0100
In article , Sara Moore
writes
>It was discontinued without notice, to my disappointment. Can't exactly
>remember what date.
> - Sara
No. It was discontinued *with* notice, but with no appeal.
ON JULY 23, 1996 THE ANE LIST WAS CLOSED. THE FINAL MESSAGE POSTED
ON THE LIST WAS AS FOLLOWS:
It is clear, after slightly more than three years of service, that the
ANE list no longer serves the function for which it was intended.
Consequently, we have decided to close it pending a reassessment of the
means by which we might again provide a useful, interesting and
productive means of communicating ideas and information on the ancient
Near Eastern world
It is virtually certain, at this point, that any successor to ANE from
the Oriental Institute in Chicago will be moderated in a number of ways
at both the subscription and the posting levels. It is, however,
premature to discuss any other details of the configuration of such a
successor.
In the meantime, any information on the status of ANE or successors will
be posted at the ANE page on the Web server at the Oriental Institute:
http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/OI_ANE.html
As always, we will be happy to hear any thought you may have, or any
suggestions you may care to offer.
-Chuck Jones- [ANE-owner] cejo@midway.uchicago.edu
-John Sanders- [Majordomo-owner] js47@midway.uchicago.edu
--
James
"I'd rather fall off Ilustrada than ride any other horse!"
Subject: Re: The Minoan Linear A Language?
From: ayma@tip.nl
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 02:05:12 GMT
souris@netcom.com (Henry Hillbrath) wrote:
>> And has anyone tried to work out where grapes were first grown
>>for wine and when grape-growing reached other places?
>I just happened to have run across something on that recently, but, I
>don't know where. As I recall, it said that there are two kinds of
>wine/grape words in Greek, and someone had speculated that one set was
>"Greek" and the other loan words which indicated that there were already
>grapes in Greece, but of "inferior type" and that the loan words came
>with better kinds. But, it seemed highly speculative to me, so I forgot
>about it. Mostly.
>Henry Hillbrath
Yes, there was a recent publication on the oldest known case of wine
making, and it was in Iran; do not have the source, sorry.
But also before that, the first growing of grapes was via finds
already located in that stretch of Anatolia-Iran.
So the biblical tradition of atributing this form of aggriculture to
the Armenian area seems not to have been far of mark...
As to the Indo-European words for wine [ Latin 'vinum', Greek 'oinos',
Armenian 'gini', Hittite 'wayana'] they are borrowed from a Kaukasian
word ''woino" [Georgian "gwino"], again showing that vineculture
rose in that area below the Black and Caspian Seas, and spread over
the Middle East, and from there to the Aegean.
The Semitic word ['*wainu', Hebr 'yayin', Arab "wain", Assyr 'inu']
is in the same way derived from the Kaukasian word.
[Source of most of the above: ethymological dictionairies]
Interestingly, the sign for 'wine' in Linear A is derived from the
Egyptian hieroglyph for wine ['irp']; whether this means that the
Cretans learned about new viniculture via Egypt rather than via
Anatolia, I wouldn't dare say.
But the above shows, I think, that the word 'wine', so broadly loaned,
is not a usefull measure of how the language in which it was used,
should be classified.
You further asked about European work on Linear A, well I can assure
you that Gordon is most definitely not the only one who thinks it was
used to write a Semitic language, as the many footnotes and references
in the following books might show:
J. Best & F. Woudhuizen - Ancient Scripts from Crete and Cyprus,
Brill Publ 1988, ISBN 90.04.08431.2
J. Best & F. Woudhuizen - Lost Languages from the Mediterranean
Brill Publ 1989, ISBN 90.04.08934.9
Best identifies [in the footsteps of, and elaborating on, Gordon's
results] the languages of the Linear A and some of the Cyprian scripts
as being a Northwestern Semitical dialect [Old-Phoenician if you
want]. So if the Gordon books cannot be acquired, you will find the
above ones a good replacement, I believe.
What remains open for debate, I think:
Does a Semitic tongue in Linear A means that
a] Crete had a major Semitic component in its population? After all
Lin A appears at the time of the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt.
or
b) Was the language only used as a lingua franca for trade and
by scribes? (While the population just used it's own native
[Anatolian??] language.] In the same way as Akkadian, and later
Aramaic, was used in the chancelleries of the Middle East.
I hope this was of some help,
regards,
Aayko Eyma
.
Subject: Re: Ethnicity of Ancient Kemetians
From: ayma@tip.nl
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 02:05:16 GMT
KUSH wrote:
>No its not. I think *you* need to do some back research. The Elamites, as
>well as the other ancient peoples of that region whoes ancestral language
>is that of the Afro-Asiatic linguistic superfamily, which includes all
>semitic languages, including Hebrew, Egyptian, Chadic, Amharic, Berber,
>and others.
****Elamite does NOT belong to the Afro-Asiatic superfamily!!!
It is related to Dravidian! This is really very certain.
And Dravidian is an independent linguistic family according to every
authorative linguistic source!!
For a nice overview about proto-Elamite-Dravidian, see
Mallory - In Search of the Indo-Europeans, p.43-45
ISBN 0-500-27616-1
and also
David Crystal - The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, p.327
Dravidian is still 'black' - but not African and not 'black' as in
'Afro-American'..... USA Revisionists like to brush that all on one
pile - THEIR pile....
>There are two dominating theories for the origins of the
>linguistic superfamily, both of which mind you state African origins.
****'Dominant"?
Why are you leaving out the two other theories, as there are four
theories and not one is 'dominant' [and all are speculative anyhow]:
1] Syria
2) North Africa
3) Southern Arabia
4) Ethiopia
no 3 and 4 are the least 'dominant', as far as I know.
All Semitic evidence [Ugarit, Akkadian] points to area 1.
So let's agree that 'proto-Semitic' originated [took shape] there in
the NWern part of the Middle East, and that 'proto-Hamitic' took
form/originated in the Sahara [to make you happy].
Then there is still 50% chance that the ancestor of both groups
'proto Hamito-Semitic' [aka Afro-Asiatic. ca. 7000 BC] came from the
Sahara and 50% that it came from the Middle East....
Actually, as non of the Semitic speekers are black and the Egyptians
nor the Berber were black either [:)] it is obviously that the odds
are rather 10% resp 90%.....
> One states that it originated 10-15,ooo years ago in the Sahara region
>which was then a drying savana. The people it originated with were the
>same people who can be seen on the various realistic rock paintings that
**Same people??? How can you tell? The paintings didn't have text
balloons I hope? Why are they not Niger-Congo or Nilo-Saharan
speekers - all fine *African* language groups!
>also date 10-15,000 years ago. The people presented in the paintings in
>this *North African* Sahara region are black. There is no question or
>debate concerning this reality.
**not that they were black, no
> The other theory states a Southern Sudan-Ethiopian origin for the
>Linguistic family. Either way, It cannot be manipulated or denied. The
>original speakers of all semitic languages were black Africans. And it is
>these same black African who first populated the region known to us all as
>the Near East.
****I suppose it would not be polite to laugh?? :)
> This is not to say that the nomadic Indo-Europeans did not come to settle
>amongst the (at that point)indigenous, sedentary, and technologically
>superior blacks. For this *is* what occurred. And what we have now,
>phenotypically, is basicly a mulatto people who share both African and
>Indo-European ancestry. This goes for the entire Middle East.
***It is nice to give the non-european cultures their due, high time!
But the black revisionists go totally overboard - making every culture
and important person around 'Black', and of course 'Superior' [see
Kush above] - the same uncanny thing as the Europeans in the bad old
days did, turned everything into White [like Zimbabwe as the mines of
Solomon]. Note how most revisionists write Black with capitals [like
in: White Power] and Africa is a sort of mother Atlantis [like in:
Blut und Boden]. And as to historical facts....Sigh. Revisionists are
the worst advocates of their own course.
kind regards,
Aayko
Subject: Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: ayma@tip.nl
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 02:05:23 GMT
saida@aol.com (Saida) wrote:
>Apropos of the ongoing (but haphazard) discussion about whether the
>ancient Egyptian language has any bearing on English, I would like to
>point out some Egyptian words for trees that were either growing in Egypt
>or imported for their wood:
***That word 'imported' is vital. A lot of the goods you name are
import goods, and very often such items kept the indiginous name, and
all the people who got it by trade just used that word. So if item Y
was called X in Egyptian and X in Greek, then that does not establish
a relation between those two languages, just shows the fact that both
people were trading the same goods. See my posting on the word 'wine'
elsewhere in this newsgroup.
>sycamore -- nehiti
** nht =nehet=sycomore,
nh.wt = nehut=sycamores [plural]
>cypress--kebes (make the "c" a hard one and substitute "p" for "b" and
>you can get kebes out of cypress)
**** No, the r is still there....
>cedar-- ash (I wonder where our word "ash" for a certain tree
>originated)
***Egyptian 'sh =ash, esh
***1) Different kind of trees.
2) Different non-similar words. For the english word stems from an
older form which has a hard -k at the end [germanic *askia], which has
a solid indoeuropean origin [cf.Greek oxue].
>myrrh-- tesher
>gum or resin-- gemiit (the actual gum being "gemi") Greek, "gummi"
A tradegood; and yes, the Greeks ['kommi'] kept the Egyptian name!
That's certain, as any dictionary will tell.
>acacia-- shentch
>tamarisk--iser (I always thought "acer" was a kind of tree in English
>but couldn't find it in my dictionary. It seems to show up in crosswords.
> I recall the "acer" means "sharp" in Latin, though).
Hmm, the Hebrews called a tamarisk 'eshel'. and as you will know, the
Egyptians used the 'r' for foreign names that had a 'l'. So my guess
would be that they borrowed the word from a semitic language, as there
was plenty of trade with Palestine. Stricly my own guess, but i would
say highly likely.
>ebony-- iban
****Again one of these famous tradegoods!
In Egyptian: hbnj = hebeni
which was borrowed by the Greeks and Romans
as 'ebenos'/'ebenus' from which derives English ebony.
Again a certain Egyptian loanword in English!
See any dictionary.
And as that song says: ebony and ivory
***Egyptian: 3b = ab, eb = elephant
Borrow by the Romans as ebur = 'ivory',
from which our English ivory stems.
i would say: Egyptian loanword 3!
Again a famous tradegood, and again via Greek and Latin
into European languages.
[I must confess I invented this on the spot; no dictionary gave the
origin of Latin ebur; but as ivory and elephants come from Africa,
it seems a educated guess, not?]
>juniper-- war
>palm-- yam (perhaps with the Egyptian definite article "pa" it becomes
>pa yam and then "palm"
**sorry, that is unacceptable Stevetymology :)
>persea -- ishet
>olive-- ba'ak
>incense tree-- senter (I believe this word is allied to "incense" and
>"censer", a vessel for burning incense
***sentjer is better
>BTW, in Egyptian the word for "plant" or growing things was "rut" with a
>long u and even the little creature that buzzes among flowers and plants,
>the bee, was called "beet".
The bee was in Egyptian bj.t = bi, beje
My first guess [Okham's razor] would be that the Indo-europian and the
Egyptian are independent, both formed after the sound of the *B*zzzing
insect?
Yours was an interesting posting though!
It is always nice to see one is not alone in one's excentric
hobbies, like ethymology and ancient tongues. :)
To add som botanical terms from Egypt:
d3b = figs
dgm = a treek
k3mw=vinyard
hrrt=flower
mnw=trees
'ntjw=myrrh
j3rrt=grapes
kind regards,
Aayko Eyma
Subject: Re: Egyptian junkie pharaohs
From: Saida
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 1996 13:07:58 -0500
ic wrote:
> There was a program on the tv (channel 4) about this tonight, called
> (with some light-heartedness) "the Cocaine Mummies of Egypt", or
> something like that. It was a forensic scientist in Germany who discovered
> these high levels of nicotine, and cocaine in the hair and other tissues
> of some egyptian mummies in the collection of Ludwig I of Bavaria. The
> program discussed whether these mummies were 19th cent fakes. But the
> same scientist (elderly German woman?) took samples from European
> skeletons of the prehistoric period, and ancient Chinese ones too: all
> these displayed levels of Nicotine, lower that the Egyptian, but still
> higher than the average level for a modern smoker apparently. The level
> found for the Egyptians was off the scale: I would have thought life
> threatening (there was discussion of whether it could have been used in
> the mummification process: I can't remember whether this was rejected or
> not).
>
> The scientist was accused of falsifying the results or allowing some
> obvious contamination. I'm afraid I cannot remember all the
> rest of the details, but the program did discuss the possibility that
> Roman vessels reached Brazil (the finds of amphora in the Bay of Jars)
> etc, and thus imported the stuff. They interviewed a number of
> scientists and archaeologists of various universities. One of these
> suggested that there might have been tobacco plants (or plants
> producing/containing nicotine etc) in Africa or Asia in those far off
> days, which like other flora and fauna had become extinct by modern time.
That is very interesting, but I wonder in what form the ancient Egyptians got their
nicotine fix. Perhaps they chewed the tobacco, even though I have not seen anybody
represented with a noticeable bulge in his cheek. Besides, they didn't even know how to
play baseball--did they?? The Egyptians weren't an inhibited folk and seemed to have
shown persons engaging in most of the ordinary vices, so I can't imagine them not
depicting people smoking tobacco in a pipe of some sort, etc., had this activity
actually taken place.
Subject: Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: Saida
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 1996 13:28:17 -0500
ayma@tip.nl wrote:
>
> saida@aol.com (Saida) wrote:
>
> >Apropos of the ongoing (but haphazard) discussion about whether the
> >ancient Egyptian language has any bearing on English, I would like to
> >point out some Egyptian words for trees that were either growing in Egypt
> >or imported for their wood:
>
> ***That word 'imported' is vital. A lot of the goods you name are
> import goods, and very often such items kept the indiginous name, and
> all the people who got it by trade just used that word. So if item Y
> was called X in Egyptian and X in Greek, then that does not establish
> a relation between those two languages, just shows the fact that both
> people were trading the same goods. See my posting on the word 'wine'
> elsewhere in this newsgroup.
>
> >sycamore -- nehiti
>
> ** nht =nehet=sycomore,
> nh.wt = nehut=sycamores [plural]
>
> >cypress--kebes (make the "c" a hard one and substitute "p" for "b" and
> >you can get kebes out of cypress)
>
> **** No, the r is still there....
Hi, Aayko, welcome to the discussion--but hold on there! My theory is
that the ancient Egyptian "r" was a very weak consonant--so weak that
foreigners often did not even hear it, as we have seen in Akkadian
transliterations of Egyptian names. Perhaps, when the Egyptians
borrowed a word that contained an "r", they didn't even bother to
include it.
>
> >cedar-- ash (I wonder where our word "ash" for a certain tree
> >originated)
>
> ***Egyptian 'sh =ash, esh
>
> ***1) Different kind of trees.
> 2) Different non-similar words. For the english word stems from an
> older form which has a hard -k at the end [germanic *askia], which has
> a solid indoeuropean origin [cf.Greek oxue].
>
> >myrrh-- tesher
> >gum or resin-- gemiit (the actual gum being "gemi") Greek, "gummi"
>
> A tradegood; and yes, the Greeks ['kommi'] kept the Egyptian name!
> That's certain, as any dictionary will tell.
>
> >acacia-- shentch
> >tamarisk--iser (I always thought "acer" was a kind of tree in English
> >but couldn't find it in my dictionary. It seems to show up in crosswords.
> > I recall the "acer" means "sharp" in Latin, though).
>
> Hmm, the Hebrews called a tamarisk 'eshel'. and as you will know, the
> Egyptians used the 'r' for foreign names that had a 'l'. So my guess
> would be that they borrowed the word from a semitic language, as there
> was plenty of trade with Palestine. Stricly my own guess, but i would
> say highly likely.
>
> >ebony-- iban
>
> ****Again one of these famous tradegoods!
> In Egyptian: hbnj = hebeni
> which was borrowed by the Greeks and Romans
> as 'ebenos'/'ebenus' from which derives English ebony.
> Again a certain Egyptian loanword in English!
> See any dictionary.
>
> And as that song says: ebony and ivory
>
> ***Egyptian: 3b = ab, eb = elephant
> Borrow by the Romans as ebur = 'ivory',
> from which our English ivory stems.
> i would say: Egyptian loanword 3!
> Again a famous tradegood, and again via Greek and Latin
> into European languages.
> [I must confess I invented this on the spot; no dictionary gave the
> origin of Latin ebur; but as ivory and elephants come from Africa,
> it seems a educated guess, not?]
>
> >juniper-- war
> >palm-- yam (perhaps with the Egyptian definite article "pa" it becomes
> >pa yam and then "palm"
>
> **sorry, that is unacceptable Stevetymology :)
What? Why?
>
> >persea -- ishet
> >olive-- ba'ak
> >incense tree-- senter (I believe this word is allied to "incense" and
> >"censer", a vessel for burning incense
> ***sentjer is better
>
> >BTW, in Egyptian the word for "plant" or growing things was "rut" with a
> >long u and even the little creature that buzzes among flowers and plants,
> >the bee, was called "beet".
>
> The bee was in Egyptian bj.t = bi, beje
> My first guess [Okham's razor] would be that the Indo-europian and the
> Egyptian are independent, both formed after the sound of the *B*zzzing
> insect?
Maybe, but you would be surprised how differently different cultures
spell out the sounds of animals. The crowing of the rooster is a good
example.
>
> Yours was an interesting posting though!
> It is always nice to see one is not alone in one's excentric
> hobbies, like ethymology and ancient tongues. :)
Aayko Eyma
Subject: Re: Early Scripts and Tokens
From: souris@netcom.com (Henry Hillbrath)
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 18:27:01 GMT
piotrm@umich.edu (Piotr Michalowski) writes:
>In article <32342A93.319C@PioneerPlanet.infi.net> Saida writes:
>>(Not a heckuva lot, as you can see). Piotr, you have given us not even
>>a token of a script in this thread--or is it just my server? You are a
>>"no nonsense" guy, I would believe, but you are becoming a man of all
>>too few words :) Co robisz?
>Niestety mialem problem z maszyna. It was just a token posting. Seriously, I
>typed in some bibliography into a file and tried to paste it into a message,
>but it would not work. I don't have the time to type it all again, as I
>have to read some texts hat weere just found in Turkey, so if you have the
>capacity to post a received message, I could email it to and you could post
>it. Send me a message to piotrm@umich.edu and I can send it.
From piotrm@umich.edu Mon Sep 9 10:27:19 1996
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From: Piotr Michalowski
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To: Henry Hillbrath
Subject: Re: Early Scripts and Tokens
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Status: RO
Some informed reviews of Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing.
University of Texas Press, 1992.
Dalley, Stephanie, The Times Literary Supplement 4673:7-8, Oct 23 1992
Zimansky, Paul, Journal of Field Archaeology 20:513-17 Winter 1993
Englund, Robert K., Science 260:1670-1 Jun 11 1993
Michalowski, Piotr, American Anthropologist 95:996-9 Dec 1993
There was also an extremely important review in Bibliotheca Orientalis
that takes her to task for her complete misunderstanding of the numerical
notations of early writing, but it is buried somewhere in a pile on my
desk. If you are going to read one review, I would suggest Zimansky,
which is the most comprehensive. It is also the most devastating. I have
also written in passing on this theory in two other articles on early
writing systems and literacy.
-
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Piotr Michalowski Office phone: 313-764-0314
Dept. of Near Eastern Studies Fax: 313-936-2679
3074 Frieze Building Home page: www.umich.edu/
University of Michigan ~neareast/pages/faculty/
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285 michalow.htm
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
There you be!
:>)
Henry
Subject: Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: Troy Sagrillo
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 18:20:23 GMT
Saida wrote:
>
> Troy Sagrillo wrote:
> >
> > Saida wrote:
> > >
> > > Apropos of the ongoing (but haphazard) discussion about whether the
> > > ancient Egyptian language has any bearing on English, I would like to
> > > point out some Egyptian words for trees that were either growing in Egypt
> > > or imported for their wood:
> >
> > [note: since "on-the-fly" transliteration of Egyptian is a bit confusing, I am
> > using the standard computer transliteration system in the Manual de Codage; you
> > can see it at:
> >
> > http://131.211.68.206/names/rules.html
> >
> > Expections: I will use /`/ for `ayn, and /3/ for the "alif"-vulutre (the a/A
> > distinction tends to get lost, and some tend to mistakenly treat them as
> > vowels)]
>
> Hi, Troy! Well, I know many find this system helpful, but I am dead
> against it. I would rather be in error here and there and have
> Egyptian, which to me is and always has been a living language look like
> that.
Fair enough Saida, but I had difficulties finding the Egyptian original in
various dictionaries because I couldn't "reconstruct" the Egyptian you
intended. With 4 kinds of "h"s to deal with, and the Latin letter "a" being
used to represent both the `ayn and the "alif" vulture, IMO we need some
sort of standard system that is clear to all. Moreover, some letters are
frequently rendered as vowels in the Latin alphabet, but they were *not*
vowels in Egyptian (such as "a" for `ayn). Lastly, Egyptian is not a living
language (not even Coptic is used as a daily language anymore), and
pronunciation in Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian (not to mention demotic and
and the various dialects of Coptic) are all different. If we don't know the
vowels (or only have vague clues), any vocalised rendering is going to be at
least somewhat circumspect. If you are interested in the reconstruction of
Egyptian vocalisations, I highly recommend (though they aren't exactly fun
reads ;) ):
Loprieno, Antonio. 1995. Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vycichl, Werner. 1990. La vocalisation de la langue egyptienne. Volume 1: La
phonetique. Bibliotheque d'Etude 16. Cairo: Imprimerie de l'Institut
francais d'Archeologie orientale.
> > > cypress--kebes (make the "c" a hard one and substitute "p" for "b" and
> > > you can get kebes out of cypress)
> >
> > According to the OED, from the Greek /kuparissoi/; I beleive this word shares a
> > common root with the Greek word for Cyprus (the island), but someone with more
> > resources than I would have to check.
>
> The Island of Cyprus was called "Ay Nibinaitet enti em her ib Wat Ur" or
> "The Island of Cyprus which is in the midst of the Great Green (i.e. the
> sea). "Ay" isn't a far cry from "isle" and "Wat Ur" certainly is
> evocative of "water".
Except that your "Wat Ur" is /w3D wr/ (normally vocalised today as "wadj
wer", but was probably pronounced in Old/Middle Egyptian as *wa:Rij wu:r;
the /R/ is the "thick "r" (sort of half way between a normal "r" and "l"
(often used in Japanese); Loprieno discusses this issue in detail)). BTW, /
w3D wr/ was applied to the Mediterranean (as you note), the Red Sea, Lake
Moeris, and the "celestial" ocean of the Netherworld.
>
> > > cedar-- ash
> > Egyptian /`S/ is *not* cedar, but some type of yellow-wooded conifer or fir (or
> > the entire class of such trees); in certain circumstances it refers to the
> > lumber from such trees. You might want to look at:
> >
> > Loret, Victor. 1916. "Quelques notes sur l'arabe a^ch." Annales du Service des
> > Antiquites de l'Egypte 16:3351.
> I haven't read the sources you cite, but "ash" used to be considered
> "cedar" and I don't know how it's been determined that it's not so. I
> can only say that "ash" is written with the little ovoid sign for
> something odiforous and cedar certainly has its distinctive smell.
You are right, it did *used* to be considered "cedar", because /`S/ wood was
imported from Lebanon (the whole Cedars of Lebanon business). Unfortunately,
as Loret discusses, in paintings /`S/ wood (`ash if you must) is light
yellow in colour, not red. In most modern translations the term "conifers"
is now used. The question now is, what is the Egyptian term for "cedar"?
> > > myrrh-- tesher
> >
> > The word "myrrh" is Semitic in origin, borrowed via Greek /murra/; Semitic
> > examples include Arabic /murr/ and Hebrew /mor/.
> >
> > Egyptian for "myrrh" is /`ntyw/ not "tesher"(?)
>
> You are certainly right about "myrrh" being Semitic. I am not familiar
> with "ntyw". "Anti" was a commonly used word for myrhh--the "shemsi
> anti" being a ceremony involving the offering of this substance.
We're talking about the same thing here. You missed my little tick /`/ for
the `ayn in /`ntyw/. ;)
> "Kher"
> was perhaps also myrrh and must have been commonly used because it
> survived into the Coptic "kal" (another example of my theory that the
> Egyptian "r" was a weak consonant).
> >
You are absolutely right about the /r/ coming down into most Coptic dialects
as /l/. Now imagine what kind of vowel shifts must have been going on as
well and you can see how difficult it is to reconstruct ancient Egyptian as
a spoken language...
> > > juniper-- war
> >
> > "war"???
>
> Yes. Juniper is presumably from Latin, again, but perhaps it did have
> its origin in Egyptian with something like "tscha'au pensh em war",
> meaning the seedy berries coming from the "war" tree.
Please help me out here. I am guessing your "war" is /w3r/ (or /w`r/?), but
I have been unable to find such a word meaning "juniper" in either Faulkner
or Lesko. Are you using another source? Oh, wait, I found it in Budge's
dict. in typically Late Egyptian orthography. It is /w`r/ (with the `ayn),
and Budge notes it as being questionable. Since this is Budge, it would be
best to check the Worterbuch on this, IMHO. Anyhow, the medial `ayn needs to
be accounted for (though by the time Egyptian "becomes" Coptic, it was
apparently lost).
> This is
> speculative, but a better example of Latin from Egyptian might be the
> word for "ivory", pronounced variously "ab", "abu" or "yab".
Just a point of discussion (not an attack): how do you know this? At what
point in the history of the language (Old, Middle, New, &c.;) is /3bw/
vocalised in such ways? Unfortunately I don't have either Crumm's or Cerny's
Coptic dictionaries here, but that would be a place to start.
The
> Egyptians liked to say "pure as the ivory" like we do "pure as the
> driven snow". Ivory in Latin is "eboreus". We have been doing this on
> the sci.arch for a while now and it seems to me that, at the very least,
> we are beginning to see that those exotic things not commonly known to
> northern climes have found their way into Anglo-Saxon via a route of
> languages going straight back to Egyptian.
> >
> > > palm-- yam (perhaps with the Egyptian definite article "pa" it becomes
> > > pa yam and then "palm"
> >
> > "yam"?
>
> Yup. "Bener" is a good palm word, too, denoting the "dum" palm which
> flourished best in the southern part of Upper Egypt.
Ahh, found it in Budge as /imi/ and /im3/; again questioned by Budge, and
ought to be checked in the Worterbuch. Lesko's Late Egyptian dict. gives /
im3w/ and /i3mw/ (same orthography as Budge's) as "wood, tree". Faulkner
gives /im3/ "a tree" and cites p. Wilbour 31 as '*not* date-palm'.
> >
> > > persea -- ishet
> > >
> > > olive-- ba'ak
> >
> > Egyptian /b3q/ for "olive tree" is not at all certain; it most likely the
> > moringa tree and its oil. The Egyptian word for "olive" and "olive oil", /Ddt/,
> > is a loan-word from Semitic (cognates include Arabic /zayt/; Ugaritic /zt/;
> > Phoenician /zt/; Syriac /zayta/; Ethiopic (Ge`ez) /zayt/.
>
> I am not too sure about olive tree, either. "Ba'aq" is found in the
> Book of the Dead, for example.
I did some checking on this. Olive trees are not reperesented until late
Dyn. XVIII and the Semitic loan word /Ddt/ does not show up until Dyn. XIX
(when a huge number of Semitic loanwords start showing up in Egyptian). /
b3q/ is the moringa tree (and its oil) -- Lucas & Harris (Ancient Egyptian
Materials & Industries) comment that "references to olive trees, olives, and
olive oil in translations of Egyptian texts are to be treated with
caution...since in many cases it is the Egyptian words for the moringa tree
and ben oil that have been incorrectly interpreted as olive" (4th ed., p.
333).
> > > incense tree-- senter (I believe this word is allied to "incense" and
> > > "censer", a vessel for burning incense
> >
> > Egyptian /s.nTr/ is a nominal form of the causitive verb "to make
> > god-like".
>
> That well may be. How about the word "scent"?
> >
> > > BTW, in Egyptian the word for "plant" or growing things was "rut" with a
> > > long u
> > > and even the little creature that buzzes among flowers and plants,
> > > the bee, was called "beet".
> >
> > Egyptian /bit/ is the subject of a recent word study, and is from a known Afro-
> > asiatic root:
> >
> > Schneider, Thomas. 1993. "Zur Etymologie der Bezeichnung "Ko"nig von Ober- und
> > Untera"gypten". Zeitschrift fu"r A"gyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde
> > 120:166118.
>
> I am happy with this thread because, disagreements and all, I think we
> are getting to the bottom of something, separating the wheat from the
> chaff, linguistically, and I am not hearing a unanymous "Egyptian
> couldn't possibly have anything to do with English" any longer. Putting
> our heads together is the way it should be done.
I have my doubts, but I was taught that Egyptian /dSr.t/ "red land" comes
into English as "desert". Personally I think this is unlikely (there is a
Latin root /deserere/ "to leave, forsake"), but who knows, seeing that /kmt/
"black land" (Coptic "keme"/"kheme") *may* come into English via Arabic via
Greek as "alchemy".
Subject: Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: Troy Sagrillo
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 19:25:49 GMT
Saida wrote:
>
> Loren Petrich wrote:
[snip]
> > First off, how does one figure out the vowels? Egyptian writing
> > was very deficient in representing vowels.
>
> Good question! Just as the "i" and "u" are represented in Hebrew, so
> they .are shown with signs in Egyptian. The "i" is a reed and the "u" a
> chick. The "a" is represented oftentimes as well. So that leaves the
> "e" and the "o" to be guessed at. It seems it has been determined that
> the "o" sound was rarely used in Egyptian. The situation with the
> vowels is not nearly as bad as people seem to believe.
Sorry, I really have to disagree with this. First of all, Egyptian has a very
long life as a spoken language and was constantly changing. The Egyptian
spoken during the Old Kingdom was substantially different than that of the
Saite Period (Dyn. XXVI), not to mention Coptic. Secondly, the orthography
(writting) changed as well. In Late Egyptian the signs for /i/ and /w/ are
often used as visual space fillers.
This brings up a second important point: /i/ and /w/ in Egyptian are weak
consonants not vowels. Yes, they *may* have been used as **long** vowels as
well (as "ya'" and "waw" are in Arabic are), but this is not a given fact.
The /i/ for example in /imn/ "right side, west" (southern orientation) is
likely related to Semitic /ymn/ "right side, south" (eastern orientation),
but Egyptian /iwn/ "colour" (prob. pronounced in Middle Egyptian as *'awin
(note the glottal stop)) is likely cognate with Semitic *lawn.
For Old & Middle Egytian, as best can be known from Semitic loan words,
Egyptian writings of Semitic toponyms and personal names, and Egyptian words
in Semitic texts -- Coptic is less useful here -- it seems that the Egyptian
vocalic phonemes included a, i, u (all both short and long), but not e, o, or
schwa. In Late Egyptian it seems there was schwa, short a, short e, long i,
long e, and long o. For example, it is thought that Horus was pronounced as *
Ha:ruw in Middle Egyptian but *Ho:re (e = schwa here; the H is emphatic) in
Late Egyptian -- yet the spelling is the same (we know they were pronounced
differently thanks to cuneiform sources).
And none of this deals with the issue of how the *consonants* changed in
pronunciation.....
I mentioned them in another post, but you might want to take a serious look
at these sources if you are really interested in Egyptian phonology:
Loprieno, Antonio. 1995. Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vycichl, Werner. 1990. La vocalisation de la langue egyptienne. Volume 1: La
phonetique. Bibliotheque d'Etude 16. Cairo: Imprimerie de l'Institut francais
d'Archeologie orientale.
Also, you might be interested in "group writting" (also called "syllabic
writing") -- which was the Egyptian system for transcribing foreign words and
names into Egyptian orthography -- as it *may* have indicated vowels to a
certain degree, though it also evolved over time. Take a look at:
Albright, William Foxwell. 1934. The Vocalization of the Egyptian Syllabic
Orthography. American Oriental Series 5; eds. William Norman Brown, John K.
Shryock, and Ephraim Avigor Speiser. New Haven: American Oriental Society.
Hoch, James Eric. 1994. Semitic Loan Words in Egyptian Texts of the New
Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Schneider, Thomas. 1992. Asiatische Personennamen in a"gyptischen Quellen des
Neuen Reiches. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 114; ed. Othmar Keel. Freiburg
and Go"ttingen: Universita"tsverlag Freiburg and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.