Learning, the unending battle against paradox

I use my own personal models in order to understand things rather than merely adopting the exact model of another (ie. blind rote learning). I believe it's only by allowing oneself to freely explore and question within one's personal models of things that one can learn more rapidly and gain a deeper understanding of things. After an interesting discussion with a commenter about my model of Egyptian vocalism, we uncovered some small inconsistencies in my theory. Of course, there were inconsistencies in his account of things too. Despite being a zealous Peust fanboy, Peust's theories apparently weren't enough for him to reconstruct the Egyptian word for 'man' with any confidence (whether *zī, *zij or *zijV; I'd wager *ziˀ or *zaˀ). While he seems to insist there's some sort of "consensus" out there for Egyptian reconstruction, the undetermined vowels in Woodard and Loprieno's representation of Egyptian shows that there are still large gaps in the field. Let's not be deluded.

So since not all is written on this subject and we all have something to learn here, this online discussion helps us get our bearings straight on where we each need to improve. I can certainly take a few things from this exchange, myself. I've been inspired as of late to begin keeping stricter notes on the Coptic language in my personal offline database. It can't hurt, and it's already helped me gain a clearer picture.

One of the inconsistencies that popped up in the discussion was my understanding of the pattern of Egyptian noun-plus-possessive forms such as nb.f 'his lord' and rn.f 'his name'. I now perceive that Middle Egyptian nouns with long vowels must have drawn stress to themselves in these possessives, away from a penultimate default. So, while *rin 'name' with short *i leads to *ranífa 'his name' (nb. the preservation of Pre-Egyptian oblique case marker *-i correlating with that in Proto-Semitic), a word like *nība 'lord' must lead to *nībafa 'his lord' with accent on the long vowel of the first syllable (nb. the original vowel quality of the petrifact oblique marker is reduced in unstressed syllables). This seems to work well. For example, I account for the cuneiform-rendered personal name Bukurninip with *Boˀka-n-Ranífa [ˈbɔˀkn̩ɾəˌnɪfə] 'Servant-of-his-Name' (from an earlier *Bāˀka-na-Ranífa).

Another question I came face to face with as we were talking was: How precisely do vowels evolve from a Loprieno-derived model like mine to Coptic proper. After sitting on this for a few days while looking at a number of Coptic examples of my sound changes at work, I see that just a few minor modifications can fix things.

Let's say, as before, that by the 1st millennium BCE only Middle Egyptian long *ā leads to Proto-Coptic *o (nb. no phonemic length anymore) mirroring the contemporaneous Canaanite Shift in North-West Semitic languages. I maintain that short *a simply must have remained a in Sahidic in at least some cases, judging by how MEgy *sanáwi 'two' (rendered directly in cuneiform as ši-na-ah-wu in EA 368) became Sahidic snau. The AA cognates of this numeral only add to this likelihood. With *ā becoming a Late Egyptian *o, the selection of either omikron or omega in Sahidic (a matter of phonemic quality, not phonemic length) should depend only on whether the syllable was closed or open at the time, respectively. The presence of nasal stops just adds a slight twist by raising *o further to ou /u/, as in Sahidic noute 'god' < *note and moui 'cat' < *moya.

Likewise, as long *ī and *ū merge to *e (with loss of length contrast) this vowel must have similarly split into either eta (/e/) or iota (/i/) based on the openness of the syllable. However, in contradiction to my previous version of things in the commentbox, I now realize that I have it backwards. Sahidic i appears to correlate with *closed* syllables while ē (a front-high /e/ without phonemic length) matches best with open syllables in a later stage of the language^[1]. This then necessitates some interesting tweaks.

For Proto-Coptic *CéC (closed syllable), we then have:

• MEgy *pasīj 'nine' > PCop *pset > Sahidic psis
  (Note EA 368 pi-ši-iṭ in cuneiform.)
• MEgy  *maḥīt 'north' > PCop *mxet > Sahidic mxit 

For Proto-Coptic *Cé (open syllable):

• MEgy *mūˁat 'truth' >  PCop *méˀe > Sahidic mēē
• MEgy *rīˁa 'sun' >  PCop *réˀa > Sahidic rē 
• MEgy *mūḏa 'ten' > PCop *méta > Sahidic mēt

Now this seems nicer and more regular (cross fingers). Just the way I'd like to keep it - facts willing! Of course this makes me think up new questions about the exact processes of the language. My understanding is, as always, a work in progress. One way or another, however, I'm determined to figure out those undetermined vowels because I've always loathed wildcard symbols in reconstructions. It's the principle of it all, you understand.

NOTES
^[1] I botched that up again! So sorry. I wrote "Sahidic i appears to correlate with *open* syllables". Please read the opposite. Sigh. Of all the typing mistakes, I make the most confusing one. LOL!

A matter of the Egyptian heart

The Egyptians placed a lot of importance on the heart and it was believed to be the seat of the mind and the soul. In the English-speaking world, we usually treat "heart" as a symbolism of the feelings but for ancient peoples around the Mediterranean, it was instead the seat of reason and essence. They didn't realize yet the significance of the brain in that regard and of the bodily organs that Egyptian mummifiers traditionally preserved in their sacred rites, the brain wasn't one of them.

Considering how central the heart was to the ancient Egyptian perception of the soul, one would think we'd know how to pronounce the word by now. In hieroglyphs, it's represented only in consonants and we write this in standard orthography as ỉb. This unfortunately gives the false impression that we should just assume a pronunciation of /ib/. Indeed, Antonio Loprieno does reconstruct */jib/ and compares it directly with Semitic *libb- assuming in turn an Afro-Asiatic reconstruction of *lib (see Ancient Egyptian: A linguistic reconstruction [1995], page 31). So isn't that our answer?

I'm beginning to think it isn't. For one thing, this reconstruction could only work for the earliest stage of Egyptian before all instances of word-initial *y- were nullified in the language. Since the reed leaf symbol came to represent a glottal stop as a result, by the time of Middle Egyptian, we could only have had *ib at best. So isn't this our answer then?

To be honest something still seems off. The related Cushitic branch seems to instead point to *lub- with a rounded back vowel. If we derived an expectation of the Egyptian form from that piece of external data, we'd arrive at *ub, not *ib! Adding to the difficulty is that Coptic has replaced the word for "heart" with a completely different word, hēt (from ḥȝty). No clues there.

So what can we rely on to decide the matter? I finally came across the Hebraicized name Ḥophraˁ, the name of a pharaoh of the sixth century BCE. The original Egyptian form is represented in hieroglyphic writing as wȝḥ-ỉb-rˁ. It suggests that ỉb was at that point pronounced like the -oph- in Ḥophraˁ, causing me to want to side with the Cushitic reconstruction. Therefore *ub seems far more sensible than Loprieno's *(y)ib.

I'm curious about this word lately and want to get it right because of the parallel Proto-Berber form reconstructed as *ulβ. I wonder then if this might suggest that Proto-Berber had coloured the prothetic vowel with the original quality of the root vowel now lost between the two surviving consonants. If so, I have no clue how to account for the *i in Semitic *libb- however. The Semitic vocalism of the root now becomes the outlier.

Changes in Pre-Egyptian vocalism

Lately I've been reflecting on what Loprieno says about the early Egyptian vowel system on page 55 of Ancient Egyptian: A linguistic introduction (1995):

"In our discussion of phonology (section 3.4.3), we saw that one of the major features of Egyptian in its early stages was the presence of a strong expiratory stress, which eventually caused a reduction to /ø/ of short vowels in open syllables in posttonic position, with the resulting change from the Dreisilbengesetz to the Zweisilbengesetz (**saḏimat > *saḏmat 'she who hears')."

While Loprieno speaks of reduction to zero, I've long been thinking more along the lines of a Pre-Egyptian system of *a, *i and *u being reduced to *schwa* wholesale in all unstressed positions. To begin with, long vowels were only to be found in stressed positions in Pre-Egyptian, at least if the comparison with Proto-Semitic is trustworthy, and this length contrast in stressed positions clearly remained in Egyptian, as still evidenced by Coptic. I therefore choose to write all of these reduced, unstressed monophthongs of Pre-Egyptian as *a (to be implicitly understood as [ə]). Furthermore diphthongs *Vy and *Vw (*V = any vowel) then become *i [əj] and *u [əw] respectively. This has worked very well for me for a while now. The result is an Egyptian vowel system that still looks on the surface much like Proto-Semitic with long vowels restricted to stressed syllables and unstressed positions having only short *a, *i and *u. Yet since the system has been notably altered, we find a curious incongruence nonetheless between the vowels of Proto-Semitic and those of Egyptian.

We can also avoid a lot of the wildcard symbols Loprieno and others occasionally use in the unstressed syllables this way since my theory makes this pointless: Only *a can exist in these positions unless accompanied by a written semivowel y or w in which case the appropriate short high vowel is selected. It appears that the matter of whatever the original vocalism may be is an issue for Pre-Egyptian reconstruction, not Egyptian proper. Loprieno's */'ri:ʕuw/ (> */'ri:ʕə/) 'sun' becomes my *rīˁa.

There are further reasons why I'm dwelling on this, but I've divided it up into subsequent posts.

Egyptian vowel reconstruction and other gripes

Occam's Razor is a valuable tool to the student and scholar. It forces us to think hard about the assumptions we hold on to and whether they are absolutely justified or whether there's room for doubt. Linguistics seems to be one of those studies where this methodical principle is still not respected to the level that it should be and, as a result, there are many ancient languages being reconstructed with too much artistic flair to properly reflect the data.


Diversity of plausible theories or diversity of empty opinion?

I've been very busy collecting data on Ancient Egyptian after growing dissatisfied with the lack of profound discussion or clarity on its vocalism. Egyptologists constantly write words with only their consonantal values to reflect how the Egyptians themselves wrote these words. This is how it's always been. However I find that it often does more to obstruct and obscure the proper reading of these texts than aid us. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Egyptians themselves wouldn't have thought of words purely in terms of consonants. Some of the clever word puns exhibited in Egyptian texts require our knowledge of the vocalism too in order to grok its fullest meaning and pattern. After centuries of Egyptomania, why is there no clear consensus on the Ancient Egyptian vowel system? What's the hold up? Are we interested in Egyptian or not?

To illustrate the point, let's take the word for 'cat' which may be represented consonantally as mỉw. Here is the mountain of possible reconstructions for the utterly confused outsider to select from:

• Albright *mắȝĕʔ
• Callender *máȝejvw
• Garnot *mṓȝei̯
• Smieszek *må̆ȝjᵉw
• Vergote *māȝuy

Obviously they can't all be correct. Notice that a lot of these scholars seem to delight in masking their representation of the language with a bunch of unnecessary diacritics. (I've ranted against this before many times.) To aid in our investigation, we see that the plural form of the word is reflected in the Greek name Πανομιευς which represents the Egyptian phrase *pȝ-(n)-nȝ-mȝj.w 'He of the cats'. Of course, Egyptian shares with Arabic the use of broken plurals and so the plural vocalism is not necessarily the vocalism of the singular. In order to keep my sanity, I find myself forced to develop my own testable opinions on the matter with a conciliatory reconstruction of *māya /'mɑ(ː)jə/ for the period around 1500 BCE and it seems sufficient to account for later Coptic form moui agreed upon by Sahidic, Bohairic, Akhmimic and Fayyumic dialects.

Back to Occam's Razor, one thing that frustrates me when I see this kind of diversity of opinion and no consensus is that the reasons why these individual scholars have arrived at their differing ideas appears to be grounded less in linguistic science and more in artistic whim. To me, phonotactic analysis is unavoidable in this task. We need to be absolutely conscious about how syllables are put together in our language of interest, not just the individual phonemes. We need to start with the most universally commonplace rules and meet each contradiction with adaptation from a simple and commonmost state to a more complex and exotic one, not vice versa. Sadly linguists often don't demonstrate this rigour but it's vital in creating a coherent theory that obeys the KISS principle (ie. Keep It Simple Stupid). So, to me, the diversity of opinion in the example of 'cat' is not so much the result of coherent theories clashing for competition, but a bunch of lazy theories made by scholars ignoring Occam's Razor in their idiosyncratic ways.


And how to handle those unstressed syllables?

Focusing just on how different scholars treat unstressed syllables Egyptian, there doesn't appear to be a justification for how one decides which vowel it is, aside from appealing to outside branches of Afro-Asiatic like Semitic. Callender for example reconstructs *pAsīḏaw for 'nine' with wildcard symbol A whereas Loprieno chooses *pisī́ɟvw (nb. Loprieno's i = Callender's A) with yet another wildcard symbol v in the final unaccented syllable. In this case, Proto-Semitic having only *tišˁu has no equivalent cognate to enlighten our efforts on the matter.

Neither the Babylonian inscription EA 368 which records pi-ši-iṭ nor the later Sahidic Coptic form psis gives us much evidence of what the first vowel was because an unstressed vowel is often less audible than a stressed one. Coptic has already dropped the vowel while, for all we know, the Babylonians interpreted a garden-variety schwa as a lax -i-. I still search for precise evidence that justifies this need for more than one vowel quality in unstressed positions. Until I do, I reconstruct *pasiḏa /pə'siɟə/ where unstressed *a is nothing other than the generic schwa /ə/ which we would find in all unstressed positions. Notice too that I choose to avoid unnecessary diacritics like the plague, as I believe we all should if we strive to be good little linguists.

Naturally if there is indeed unambiguous evidence of other possible vowel qualities in unaccented syllables, I'd love to hear about it. But until I do, Occam's Razor must be my guide.

Haider's transcription of the Minoan medicinal text

Eureka! I've finally nabbed a detailed photo of the previously mentioned Minoan spell text. With all the silly errors I discovered being committed by Etruscologists alone, I suspected that a photo might reveal similar errors in the transcription of this text too. Sure enough, I'm reminded that many have a lazy eye.

Our Minoan text is written on lines 6 and 7 from right to left (see picture below).

I can see quite clearly now that in Minoan deities in an Egyptian medical text (2001), published in Aegaeum 22, Peter Haider's transcription is dreadfully loose. One word that begins sȝ-b-w-j-ȝ-jj-... is demonstrably inaccurate. The above text (upper left corner specifically) shows that there's an extra symbol between the b (foot) and the w (coil). Why and how was this overlooked?

It goes on. Haider's alleged god name Razija or Razaja is concocted out of the seventh line which shows only r-...-ȝ-y^DEITY. The intervening gap could conceivably be anything but the author indulges in wishful thinking to connect with some Linear A fragment showing RA₂-TI. Any gain from even bothering to associate these two things is hopelessly unproductive in my view. I'm also having trouble mapping his alleged *humekatu to the correlating portion in the picture, but then again my hieratic could be rusty.

And why would the Minoan text be broken up here by an interloping Egyptian phrase *pa wūra 'the great' (which he transcribes as pȝ-ȝ wr). Something is surely wrong with the overall handling of this text but it appears this will be a long-term ball of yarn for me to unravel.


UPDATES
(27 Sep 2011) I've deleted my confused/confusing statement: "A sure error however is in the reading of Ameja itself where Haider reads a trailing eagle glyph (the final ȝ in his ˀa-m-ˁ-j-ȝ) where it's visibly a different glyph, reused in fact on the next line in case there's any doubt of its true shape." This is unfair of me considering that I misread the sparrow (representing wr) as an owl (representing m), thereby assuming the sequence that Haider reads as Ameya starts sooner. Even still, I'm completely at a loss as to how he obtained Ameya out of this sequence because then the "m" is where a gap lies. Still problematic and confusing.

Revisiting the lily

Looking back at my personal notes and some previous online conversations concerning the common words for 'lily' or 'flower' that spread across the Mediterranean, I believe there's still some unfinished business.


A conflict arises

Under Hittite alel-, Jaan Puhvel lists off related forms in a multitude of languages showing that this word must have been an important "culture word" since olden times. I surmised and still surmise that Egyptian is the one ultimate source behind all of this. I eventually reasoned to myself that the Ancient Egyptian feminine noun written only as ḥrr.t was once pronounced *ḥalūrat (~  *ḥarūrat) guided in part by the Coptic forms with vowels explicitly written in a Greek-based alphabet.

Everything seemed fine until I started to question when exactly Egyptian *ū evolved into *ē and how. Foreign texts from the Amarna period seem to suggest that a vowel-sound like *ū must still have been spoken at about 1350 BCE. The cuneiform inscription labeled EA 368 records the numeral mu-ṭu (the Egyptian word for 'ten'), leading therefore to Callender's *mūḏaw (whose orthography I simplify to *mūḏu). Clearly the eventual change to *mēḏ- (Sahidic Coptic mēt) hadn't yet taken place.


The Minoan perspective

Meanwhile, the hypothetical Minoan loan *aléri 'lily' had emerged out of the illuminating conversations I had with Minoan Language Blog's Andras Zeke. With the former Egyptian form I've attempted, I can't sensibly explain the connections Zeke had alluded to between a certain Cretan Hieroglyphic plant glyph known as CHIC 031 and its later derivative Lin AB 27 which has been given the value of RE. (See John Younger's The Cretan Hieroglyphic Script: A review article in Minos 31-32, 1996. It's mentioned in the middle of page 397.) A Mycenaean loan from Minoan can cleanly explain later Classical Greek λείριον (léirion) 'lily' and so this serves to doubly assure the term *aléri.

Surely the phonetic value of CHIC 031 and Lin AB 27 reflects the actual Minoan word for a flower or lily but to get *aléri out of *ḥalūrat, I would have to assume that the word was loaned only by the **closing of the 2nd millennium BCE** when the Egyptian vowel shift in question must have taken place! Ironically this is when the Minoan language was also becoming extinct (if not already moribund as the Achaeans swept through). It could never explain the said Cretan Hieroglyph dated to as early as the 17th century BCE.

Ground control, we have a problem.


Everything's coming up roses (or Egyptian lilies)

This all seems remedied however if I simply ammend the Egyptian 'flower' term to *ḥalīrat. Given that, the Egyptian term must be borrowed into Minoan around or before 1700 BCE. Minoan *aléri would acquire a new specialized meaning of 'lily' as well. The Cretan hieroglyphic lily symbol is subsequently created, understandably employed to write LE ~ RE ("l" and "r" not being distinguished in both Linear A and Linear B scripts) since this is afterall the stressed syllable of the surmised word. Sahidic hrēre should also be accounted for in the same way that Egyptian *rīʕa 'sun' likewise produces rē.

At any rate, this is one confusing little word but who knows what new weeds I might yet dig up in this untamed flower garden.

Tidings from Arzawa

Written by J. David Hawkins, The Arzawan letters in perspective (2009) covers some interesting facts concerning the history of the region of Arzawa such as the Amarna letters recording correspondences between the ruler of Arzawa, King Tarhundaradu, and the concurrent Egyptian king referred to as Nimuwaria (ie. Egyptian *Nib-Muˀˁat-Rīˁa = Amenhotep III). It's frustrating that more isn't known about this region and time period but the article is a good read for those interested.

The sun and the lion

Here's a seemingly simple question: How do you pronounce Egyptian rw 'lion'? Coptic has laboi 'lioness'^[1] and isn't a direct descendent of rw; it can't guide us. William Albright had suggested a pronunciation *ruw^[2][3] based on very little. To help us backtrack, we have additional data from surrounding languages and language groups and it all shows that this word travelled far and wide across the seas.

• Indo-European: Greek λέων, Latin leō.
• Semitic: Akkadian aria, Hebrew arī.
• Aegean: Etruscan leu.
• Egyptian: rw.

The reason why I'm pondering this now is because of my latest reflection on the Etruscan reflex. It's easy to dismiss the question of its origin by setting it beside Greek λέων and assuming that the Greeks gave them the word. It's not impossible from a purely linguistic standpoint afterall since there are a few Etruscan terms that have once ended in -un only to lose the trailing nasal over time - eg. Petru 'Petron', Χaru(n) 'Charon', θu(n) 'one', etc. However we should ask ourselves why the Etruscans would have borrowed the 'lion' word from the Greeks when the animal's habitat lies in Africa.^[4][5] One would think that Etruscans would adopt the word from Africans themselves. It's not as if Etruscans were unfamiliar with Africans (hint: Carthaginian trade).

So the hypothesis I've held onto for a while, is that leu could be inherited, thereby indicating earlier Proto-Aegean *lau, assuming a raising of Old Etruscan a to e before resonants, as with Old Etruscan clan 'son' > Late Etruscan clen. With the direct antecedent of Etruscan in Lydia, an Egyptian source for this word is the only thing sensible.

However, I'm beginning to ponder a more extensive idea - perhaps it's not so much Proto-Aegean *lau as *liwa. Then Etruscan leu is the result of an aforementioned Cyprian Syncope as well as the lowering of i to e. This also better explains the god mentioned in the Aleksandu Treaty, Apaliunas, whose complex name defies attempts at etymology although it's the stuff of long essays by overspecialized Hittitists.

As far as I'm concerned, Apaliunas is only understandable in Aegean terms and grammar. With the new reconstruction above we have: *apa 'father' (cf. Etruscan apa 'father') + *liwa-na 'leonine, of lions, lion-like' < *Apa-Liwana 'Lion Father'. This is apt for a sun god who would later become Greek Apollon. Unlike my former root *lau, this new form accounts more directly for the -i- in Apaliunas.

Yet there's perhaps another bonus. It's finally dawned on me that while the lion is a common sun symbol in the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE, the Egyptian language holds the key to it through simple word pun. Based on the ideogram value r` and Coptic rē, the word for 'sun' was undoubtedly once *rīʕa. The consonantal value for 'lion' is known to be rw but its vowels are harder to reconstruct because the word has not survived into Coptic times. Since I know Egyptian scribes couldn't resist good puns, I wonder if the sun was associated with lion for the simple reason that the two words shared the same vocalic matrix. Could the word then have been *rīwa? A pun between *rīʕa and *rīwa could clarify a lot.

The Semitic reflexes too seem to justify this Egyptian reconstruction since they reflect *ʔarīwu ~ *ʔarīyu. The -y- also replaces expected -w-, a typical preference of North-West Semitic languages. Glück published this very assessment.^[6] I'm sure this word is yet another Egyptian loan. The only problem is the prothetic vowel. Where is it from? The obvious answer would be from Egyptian. And so, we might want to tweak *rīwa to *arīwa. (The stress accent remains on the long vowel.)

If Egyptian contains this "prothetic vowel", should we then consider Aegean *alíwa instead of *liwa? Does this still work? Apparently so. As I said before, unstressed initial *a- is regularly dropped in Etruscan. An *Apa-Alíwana manages to keep aligned to Luwian Apaliunas. Regardless, I figure that Greek λέων must be somehow based on Minoan *(a)líwa.

Reconstructing Egyptian n(n)egation

This is what Antonio Loprieno says about Ancient Egyptian negation on page 127 of Ancient Egyptian: A linguistic introduction (1995):

"From an etymological point of view, nn is presumably the result of the addition of an intensifier to the nexal nj, much in the same way in which similar predicate denial operators developed in Indo-European languages: Latin non < *ne-œnum 'not-one,' English not, German nicht < *ne-wicht 'not-something,' etc."

From the immediate sound of it, I'd gather that Loprieno's use of "presumably" introduces a theory that the author himself considered possible but unverified. (The direct comparison with Latin non is naturally not to suggest that Egyptian and Indo-European negation are somehow related.) However this comparison still strikes me as awkward, perhaps because the direct comparison of the intensifying -n of Latin non with a merely implied suffix *-n in Egyptian nn is just *too* conveniently similar to me.

I also question that this transliterated nn properly reflects the intentions of the Egyptian scribes to write two instances of actual /n/. The simultaneous use of a negation nj suggests another interpretation to me. I find that in a wide number of languages, a negational morpheme will have both full and reduced variants which may share a common etymology. In French, for example, there is both unbounded non (when answering questions or negating adjectives, for example) and the reduced form ne used before verbs (normally with added pas, plus, guère or jamais after the verb, of course).

So can I get away with imagining something like Middle Egyptian *anī with reduced *ani behind spellings nj and nn respectively? How have others reconstructed this word? In this view, the terminating -n in the latter transliteration would not be actually phonetic but rather the byproduct of the lenient rules of the Egyptian writing system in how speech sounds are expressed. Consider that the Egyptian writing system evolved not just pragmatically as a writing system but also as a kind of sacred art form with much room for artistic creativity. As we see by how negation was often written (see image above), the second glyph (water symbol) may simply be meant to reinforce the /n/ already represented by the double-arms. And when we find, for example, the negational double-arms followed by not one but two water symbols, does this really prove two literal /n/'s? Or is it meant as a clever rebus showing a "dualized" /n/, thereby to be read nj (nb. the dual marker happened to be -j)?

Loprieno does in fact confess back on page 125:

"[...] the second one shows the same logographic sign accompanied by the phonogram n /n/ [...] and is conventionally transliterated nn, although it probably exhibited just a single /n/; [...]"

When I think about it more, these choice of glyphs to write negation in hieroglyphs is likely to have come about simply to disambiguate from the word 'of' which was already written as a single n. In actual speech, the difference between words 'of' and 'not' then should depend only on the choice of accompanying vowels surrounding the single /n/.

If so, Loprieno's example of Latin non and the suggestion of an alleged intensifying suffix amounts to a bit of a distraction from a likelier reality, as far as I can piece this together so far.

UPDATES
(2011 June 20) I repaired a teensy error I just noticed in my post, "the masculine dual marker happened to be -j", which I corrected to "the dual marker happened to be -j" since technically the masculine dual in all was properly -wj while it was -tj in the feminine dual.

Minoan ostrich eggs from Africa

A great testimony to how extensive and elaborate trading networks were in the ancient world is the presence of wildly foreign objects like elephant tusks and ostrich eggs in ancient Crete. This might seem astonishing on the surface but it gives us a clue that the Minoans had an appetite for these items to the far south and the Egyptians were in a position to take advantage of this commerce.

The use of the ostrich egg as a drinking cup or rhyton is an interesting subject elaborated on in The Fashioning of Ostrich-Egg Rhyta in the Creto-Mycenaean Aegean at the Thera Foundation website. It provides many details about their adornment and repurposing into vessels. It can be easily concluded that the prized eggs must have ultimately come from Sudan since the geographic distribution of ostriches are limited. Obtaining them through Egyptian trade seems like the most efficient path of acquisition.

One thing that I notice the article doesn't go into is the significance of the eggs to the Minoan. We must ask why they needed such eggs in the first place since they could surely fashion vessels in many other more efficient ways not involving long-distance trade. The egg however is a symbol of the cosmos and creation, present even later in Greek symbolism, and stemming from Egyptian beliefs. The 'adorning' of the egg is interesting because in Greek, at least, κόσμος 'natural order, cosmos' also meant more fundamentally 'adornment'. The adorning of the egg is as if the artist is adorning the cosmos. It's the imitation of the godly act, it seems to me.

The picture above, by the way, is from Stelios now has a blog... where the author shares his criticisms of some Greek museums and the way they showcase their material to the general public, with little to no helpful explanations. I have to agree that more passion is needed. History's awesome, people! :o)

Isis dethroned

In Klaus Kuhlmann's Throne (2011), I see some debatable claims that seem rooted in a naive literalism and lack of larger vision beyond the details he labours on.


Games of semantics

• "None of the many Egyptian terms referring to the 'throne' imply the 'regal' or 'religious' connotation the word carries today."

This first statement crumbles swiftly once we realize that 'throne' is not the only way to translate these words. Given the semantics he describes, English already has a good equivalent in 'seat' - at once secular and religious, regal and commonplace. The language differences he points to are selective, imaginary and misleading.


Denying cultic reverence in the throne

• "As an object, which could be desecrated (for example, by usurpation), the Egyptian throne underwent purification rites. There is no evidence, however, of it ever having received cultic reverence or having been deified (as the goddess Isis)."

His determination to diminish the widely known historical importance of the cultic throne^[1] is odd. Whether Isis is a deified throne anthropomorphized or goddess as throne is moot; the effect is the same. Despite the many ways one might perceive this object or instrument of devotion, the rites pertaining to kingship and throne remain the same nonetheless. Isis undeniably became related to the notion of authority no matter what the origin of her cult.

This cult too extended far beyond Ancient Egypt into neighbouring cultures. It would be ignorant to deny that cultic thrones were present all around the surrounding Mediterranean, among the Minoans, Mycenaeans, Hittites, and Phoenicians. An Etrusco-Punic artifact known as the Pyrgi Tablets suggests a derivative of these earlier Egyptian traditions. The artifact replaces the Egyptian goddess with fitting foreign equivalents, Etruscan Uni and Punic Ashtarte. In that inscription, it's explicitly explained that Thefarie Viliana was raised by Uni-Ashtarte's very hand to rule the city of Caere. Both Caere and Carthage share the very Egyptian theme that Kuhlmann seems to downplay: Isis as deified throne, Isis as granter of authority. To add, consider Hattic Halmasuit, a contemporaneous "throne goddess" to Egypt's north. How well versed is Kuhlmann in surrounding non-Egyptian history?

Could he be seriously dismissing the role of Isis in kingship altogether?


Goddesses and the granting of power

• "It was mainly Ra, Atum, Amun, Geb, and Horus who confirmed pharaoh's rightful claim to power by saying 'to thee I give my throne...' (e.g., Sethe Urk. IV: 563, 571)."

Listing only male deities as those who mainly "confirm pharaoh's rightful claim to power" strikes me as a bit chauvinistic. According to Egyptian legend, Isis had resurrected the divine first king of Egypt, Osiris, from death so that he may become ruler in the underworld. As Osiris represents the mortal king, Isis acts as the source and embodiment of his authority,^[2] directly shown in her active will to restore Osiris as god-king. Consider too Cleopatra's later self-association with Isis, effectively then empowering female rule as well as male.

So if this overwhelming evidence shows that Isis granted power to the ruler and gave support to his authority, why does Kuhlmann not list Isis too as a confirmer of pharaoh's right to power? Because Isis is female? Among the matrilineal Minang people of Indonesia, property is inherited through the female line. It should not then be so unusual that it's a female granting power to male rulers. The absence of Isis in his list then is an odd gap. Is there a Victorian belief at work here enforcing an outdated notion that only male entities can ever grant males power in societies?


The false dichotomy between writing and symbol

• "The block-throne sign on the head of Isis (3st: HCE) is not a symbol but 'writing' (= s/se). It allowed the identification of iconographically undifferentiated female deities just as other hieroglyphic signs like [see symbol in article] or [see symbol in article] on the head of other goddess denoted a 'reading' as 'Nephthys' or 'Nut', respectively."

Since writing is transparently symbolic in itself, Kuhlmann's pedantics grows mildly vexing. By lumping the main female deities into a big hazy pile of confusion, he artificially incubates a different artistic analysis of the female deities compared to the male ones, imposing a sexist bias. One could equally muse that the feather atop the god Shu's head is likewise "merely writing", not a full-fledged symbol, and only used to differentiate him from a cloud of vague male gods too then. In what way can Kuhlmann prove that Egyptian goddesses are, to quote his wording, "undifferentiated" - that is, in what way are female Egyptian deities as a whole any *more* undifferentiated than male Egyptian gods as a whole? I'm not as yet convinced of a difference.


So by the end of the article, Kuhlmann is making many confident statements but which have no relevance or basis to the issues he raises. Is this consistent pattern of inventing false dichotomies to write about deliberate (ie. writing vs. symbol, the semantics of 'throne' vs. that of Egyptian terms, representation of male gods vs. the allegedly more undifferentiated female goddesses, goddess as throne vs. throne deified, etc.)? Or was it accidental that he authored this big ball of hanging threads and contrary claims?

NOTES
[1] Botterweck/Ringgren, Theological dictionary of the Old Testament, vol 7 (1995), p.240 (see link): "The throne of Pharaoh was deified at an early date in a development comparable to the deification of the 'throne seat' (ḫalmašuit) in the Old Hittite period of Boghazköy. The same hieroglyph represented both the throne and the goddess Isis."
[2] Botterweck/Ringgren, Theological dictionary of the Old Testament, vol 7 (1995), p.241 (see link): "The so-called identity theory holds that Isis as the personification of the ruler's throne represents the personified power of the throne. Jürgen Osing and Kuhlmann, however, reject any etymological, morphophonemic, or semantic connection between ś.t 'throne,' and ȝśt, 'Isis,' on the grounds that the name of the goddess derives from the root wȝś (< *ȝś) and means 'the one who has sovereign power, powerful influence.' The throne symbol depicted on Isis's head represents merely a graphic aid to identification, although even the Greek Isis areatologies already interpreted this symbol as identifying the throne and Isis."; McCabe, An examination of the Isis cult with preliminary exploration into New Testament studies (2008), p.103 (see link): "A possible connection with Ra could also be illustrated by the hieroglyphic name of Isis, meaning 'seat' or 'throne' (thereby demonstrating 'her association with sovereignty')."

Did Ancient Egyptians believe in an "end-time"?

Elsewhere in webspace, a commenter sparked in me a neat idea. In Ancient Egyptian there was a phrase for the beginning of time, *θāpa tapī (normally transcribed as zp tpy). The word for 'time' is *θāpa and the adjective *tapī 'foremost, beginning, head' follows the noun as in French. The adjective is built on the word *tap (tp) meaning 'head' and so it can be translated as 'first' in the sense that it precedes everything else.

When directly pondering the phrase though, I started wondering about a hidden calendrical interpretation of the adjective since Babylonian calendar terminology describes the beginning of the year as the 'head' of the year. Is it possible that Egyptians too considered creation as merely the 'head' of a cosmic age? Here then may be implied the notion of cyclical creation and destruction. This tips me off to an implied destruction prophecy lurking about. Did the Egyptians believe in an end to time in order to balance the stories of its beginning?

Geraldine Pinch in Handbook of Egyptian mythology says 'yes' on page 89: "In Book of the Dead spell 175, Atum declares that after millions of years he will destroy everything that he has made 'and the land will return into the Deep, into the Flood, as it was before (creation).'" Note that 'million' in Egyptian was *ḥaḥ (ḥḥ) and could also refer to 'an uncountable number' or 'infinity'. Remember too that Atum is the god of the setting sun, harking back to a connection between grand cosmic cycles and the daily and yearly solar cycle. It implies that, though there would be an end, a new beginning was also inevitable to the faithful Egyptian.

This additionally helps me reconcile similar Etruscan beliefs in cosmic creation, destruction and rebirth encoded in their own concept of saecula (alluded to by Roman commentators and relayed in dumbfounded confusion by modern specialists) with what appear to be this Egyptian foundation of cosmology. Answering your own silly questions sure pays off!

The death taboo as a form of protection

An interesting observation is made in The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day (2008)^[1]:

"The idea behind such euphemisms involved more than not speaking ill of the dead: an effort was made not to even speak of a person's death at all. People who are called simply 'dead' in Egyptian religious contexts often seem to be the damned or unhappy dead. To mention death would be confirm death's power over the departed, so we today euphemistically speak of 'the departed' or say that someone has 'passed away.'"

I suppose this is also true for expressions for death in Etruscan which likewise speak of 'crossing over' (lup) rather than overt death. Are any of the words that we assign to death in these inscriptions true words for death and dying or are they all circumlocutions? How might we tell if we've found the *genuine* word for 'death' in Etruscan amidst all these superstitions and euphemistic circumlocutions?


NOTES
^[1] Faulkner/Andrews/Wasserman, The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day (2008), p.150 (see link).

What sort of 'soul' is the Egyptian ka?

Oddly enough, all this latest talk in my commentbox of the European Urnfield culture and Etruscan cremation practices led me to thinking about Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife. I suppose that lacking comprehensive resources on the Etruscan concept of death and afterlife, something which I doubt exists yet, I look to the Egyptians for even a shade of insight, particularly since there are so many connections to be made. (Remember that the Etruscans used scarabs as tomb offerings directly proving that they were affected by Egyptian beliefs in some form or fashion.)

Now, as I understand it, the Egyptian spirit is often said to be divided into three parts: the ka, the ba and the akh . These names are modern Budgisms based on the vowelless spelling of the Egyptians but I gather that they were pronounced more like *kuˀ, *baˀ and *ˀaḫ respectively at around 1500 BCE. I notice the Wikipedia under Egyptian soul currently claims there are five components of the Egyptian soul but then piles on even more concepts in its schizophrenic, multi-author account. Added is the sheut 'shadow' (or rather *šawīt), the ib 'heart' (*ˀib) and the ren 'name' (more accurately *rin), helping to thoroughly confuse the reader rather than elucidate. I consider these last three related but incidental to the fundamental Egyptian notion of 'soul'. In the following I want to explore a new idea that came to me.

The ka is sometimes translated 'soul', sometimes 'image' and sometimes 'double'. Many other translations are also attempted. Yet I wonder recently if this odd translation confusion exists because this term wasn't just referring to the spirit itself as modern theologians might understand it but instead to the containment of the spirit in a vessel, a vessel such as a body or statue. If so, this gives a whole new nuance to the *Ḥáˀat-Kuˀ-Patáḥ, a famous temple in the city of Memphis. It would then suggest that this temple wasn't just housing the 'soul of Ptah' (*kuˀ Patáḥ) but that it was so named because it was believed, at least by its cult leaders, to be the temple in which the very body *and* soul of Ptah was present. This gives me a vision of a grand building within which an impressive, monumental statue of Ptah sits, around which rituals were enacted by its devout priesthood as if he were the living article, all for the wonder of the entranced commonfolk. Such a subtle notion of the word *kuˀ would emphasize this particular temple's central importance to the worship of this god of death and resurrection. Why go to just any temple of Ptah when one can experience Ptah's holy spirit 'in the flesh'? It would certainly have been great temple marketing if my perception here is realistic.

Also by reconceiving of the ka as the 'soul' specifically when contained in its physical manifestation rather than just 'soul' proper, contrastively then the ba must be the spirit itself, particularly when it was separate from the *ẖīˀat or body. It would be the ba, I think, that is most appropriately translated as the English-speaking notion of 'soul'. So maybe we can get away with thinking of the ba as a *subset* of the ka rather than on a par with it.

This theoretical structure of an ancient belief system leads me to wonder if the akh was in turn yet another subset (of the ba, that is). In the resulting reinterpretation, the soul really isn't divided into three parts, or even five. Instead the soul is composed of three layers with the akh, as 'life-force' or 'will', being the innermost of the three metaphysical strata. In this ontology, the 'will' (akh) is a component of the 'soul' (ba) which is further merely an ingredient in the union of body and soul (ka).

I'll have to explore this idea further and see what evidence is in its favour or against it.

Pondering on the phrase 'capite velato'

In Latin, there's a phrase capite velato meaning literally 'with covered head'. The term is used in Roman religious contexts to refer to the act of covering the head with a veil when performing sacrifices. It's said that the Etruscans by contrast did things 'Greek-style' (ie. capite aperto 'with bare head').

Meanwhile, Fay Glinister has made a great article that seeks to smash apart what she identifies as a dogmatic belief by modern historians in Veiled and unveiled: Uncovering Roman influence in Hellenistic Italy (2009). Reading through it, I'm impressed by her daring push beyond facile analyses here. To paraphrase, she says that the act of capite velato can't be viewed as a strict ethnic marker and that it extends beyond just Roman culture. Further, the practice may be appropriate to some rites but not necessarily others. She explains that Etruscans too must have done rites in capite velato and that this shouldn't be assumed a priori to be from Roman dominance.

My interest was piqued by this phrase lately, however, due to something specifically linguistic. I've already been suspecting that despite some unconvincing attempts by Indoeuropeanists to make these words native terms, it seems to me that both Latin caput 'head' and Latin velo 'to veil' are both Etruscan borrowings.

We should reject Julius Pokorny's Indo-European root *kaput which is poorly justified both phonetically and distributionally. The only plausible cognates for 'head' are found in Italic and Germanic branches (ie. only in Western IE dialects and with difficulties in sound correspondence) while the Indo-Iranian words propped up as relevant comparisons are a desperate ploy to legitimize a terrible reconstruction. I've already theorized Etruscan *caupaθ 'head' motivated in part by Latin caput and Germanic *haubidaz (see Paleoglot: Edward Sapir and the Philistine headdress) and also motivated by a Minoan cognate *kaupada (see A hidden story behind Cybele the Earth Mother?). There is also enough evidence I think to reconstruct Etruscan *vel 'to hide' considering the comparison of Etruscan *Velχan 'Volcanus', lit. 'Hidden One', with similar epithets in Greek Ἅιδης 'Hades' (< *Awidēs 'Unseen') and Egyptian Amon, also literally 'The Hidden One'.

Most strange of all is that this Latin phrase can in theory be provided an almost identical Etruscan counterpart, despite differences in grammar: *caupaθe velaθ. Here, the first word ends in the Etruscan locative -e and the second word is an intransitive participle in -aθ modifying the preceding noun.

So I wonder: Is it possible that this phrase was originally an Etruscan saying, cleverly borrowed into Latin with parallel terms and grammatical endings?

The saga of the sea-faring house

I can't help but notice that the word for 'house' has traveled far and wide around the Eastern Mediterranean in the earliest times:

• Egyptian par 'house' (written pr)
• Hattic wel 'house' (< Proto-Hattic *pel ?)
• Hittite pir 'house'
• Luwian parnas 'house'

My spidey senses tell me that it all stems from the Egyptian language. I suspect the word also entered Proto-Aegean as *par hence some attested nouns in Etruscan that I interpret as likely temple-related derivatives: parχ (TLE 169) and parniχ (TLE 131).

One may wonder why such a word would travel so far and wide or why it would emanate specifically from the Egyptians, but 'house' may often refer also to a politico-religious building or institution, eg. a 'temple-house', 'White House', 'House of Representatives', etc. The Egyptians often used 'house' to refer to temples, as was the association among the Luwians^[1]. If I interpret the historicity of this word correctly, then it emphasizes the influence of Egypt on religious faith throughout the 2nd millennium BCE. Even the name Egypt, a Greek name, was adapted (probably via Minoan *Aikupita) from the name for a prominent temple in Memphis, the *Ḥáʔat-Kuʔ-Patáḥ. 'House of the spirit of Ptah'. Note in this latter etymon, we have yet another word for 'house' being used in Egyptian to convey 'temple': *ḥáʔat (written ḥȝ.t).




NOTES
^[1] Huxley, Crete and the Luwians (1961), p.26 (see link).

The scarab rises in Etruria

The Greek scholar Hesychios of the 5th century CE claimed that the word for the beetle (= Greek κάνθαρος) among the Tyrrhenoi (ie. Etruscans) was βύρρος (burros) in his work Glossai. This teases my curiosity for a number of reasons but I'm surprised that Etruscanists, as far as I've read, haven't picked up on what I'm about to explore here. Etruscanists will typically quote Hesychios' gloss blindly but offer no further insights.

As is well known, the beetle was a reknowned symbol of the sun god as he rose from the netherworld and, by extension, a symbol of the eternal human soul after death. This symbol was not just worshipped in Egypt, but judging by the archaeological finds, the icon had also spread into Minoan Crete^[1] and even into later Etruria through the migration of the Etruscans and their culture where we find yet more scarabs^[2], particularly as funerary offerings, testimony to a widespread heliocentric faith.

The beetle was a widely worshipped animal for a very specific reason that can be firmly traced back to the Egyptians and their language. The source of the symbolism was pure word-play since in Egyptian, the word for 'to become' was *ḫāpar (> Sahidic ϣⲱⲡⲉ) while the symbol for 'beetle' contained the same consonantal skeleton, ḫpr, but presumably with different vowels. The rising sun was subsequently known by his holy epithet, Khepri 'The Becoming One' (written in Egyptian only as ḫprỉ). His name came to be written by scribes with the similar-sounding 'beetle' ideogram and even envisioned by Egyptian artists as a man with a beetle's head.


Given that we can be certain of the Egyptian origin of scarab iconography, it stands to reason that Etruscans borrowed the symbolism from them somehow, probably during the 2nd millennium BCE when Proto-Etruscans were still in the environs of Cyprus and Southern Turkey. The question I must pose however is: What was the vocalism of the Egyptian word for 'beetle', and is the above gloss by Hesychios a hint to its original pronunciation?

I'll dare to offer a hypothesis for the sake of debate and to connect dots that I believe need to be connected. Is it possible that the Egyptian word for 'beetle' was pronounced *ḫapúri? (Unfortunately Coptic gives me no hints on this.) Such a term could then have entered Proto-Aegean or later dialects before 1500 BCE in the form *apúri. By way of Cyprian Syncope which crops up in many other words on a regular basis, this yields *pur with which we might assign the Etruscan name for 'beetle', thereby addressing Hesychios' claim and tying everything together into a neat package.


NOTES
^[1] Aruz, Marks of distinction: Seals and cultural exchange between the Aegean and the Orient (ca. 2600-1360 B.C.) (2008), p.56 (see link).
^[2] Scarisbrick, Historic rings: Four thousand years of craftsmanship (2004), p.19 (see link).

A Mediterranean flute wanderword

Here's a quick note about a wanderword that I noticed. It starts with a quote from Festus, 403 which equates Latin tibicen 'flute player' with an alleged Etruscan word subulō 'flute player'. What first has to be realized is that this is surely a Latinized form of the original word and so I've had *supulun logged in my database as a suggestion.

Now I found the term sb.t 'flute' written in Ancient Egyptian, leading me to wonder about its exact vocalism and its connection to the Etruscan word. A quick gander in Crum's Coptic Dictionary shows the same word in Sahidic as sēbe 'reed (of a flute)' which points me to an Egyptian form *sūbat, curiously similar to the Etruscan. The word relates to sbȝ 'to play a flute' which in turn is cognate with Semitic *zamāru 'to play music', suggesting Afro-Asiatic heritage. If the Etruscan word is related, there's no question then that the word is ultimately Egyptian. The next question is how this word would have travelled to Italy.

Relating to this caper is another word I've discovered recently in Greek: συβήνη 'flute-case, quiver' (Myc *subānā ?). This is pretty coincidental, I think. The same root *sub- appears to be present as in Etruscan and Egyptian and we even may be seeing an Aegean derivational suffix *-na attached. Is an Eteocretan or Minoan term *supana in order? Is the word for 'flute' in Etruscan then *sup?

A Minoan word for red dye

Here's an interesting set of reflexes for discussion. It hints at yet another Wanderwort possibly eminating out of Minoan Crete regarding materials used for red dye:

• Hittite midis ~ mi[d/t]as 'red'
• Mycenaean *miltos 'red mineral' (> Gk μίλτος 'red chalk')
• Egyptian mnš.t 'red ochre'
• Latin minium 'red lead'

The second syllable of the Hittite form alternates between -i- and -a- and the internal stop is sometimes written out in the script as -t- (/d/) or -tt- (/tʰ/). Its large variation in spelling might hint at a post-Proto-Anatolian borrowing. The Mycenaean reflex is attested in a feminine adjective spelled out in Linear B as mi-to-we-sa 'red-painted' and combined with later Classical Greek μίλτος points to the root *milto-. The vocalism of the Egyptian word is unattested due to the nature of its script but if we reconstruct *mīnašat, it agrees better with the Hittite and Mycenaean material while still resembling the Latin reflex enough to pursue this hypothetical relationship further. Finally, it's impossible for Latin to have acquired a Minoan word directly but if Etruscan brought related cognates to Latin, we have here a full package of evidence pointing to a general Aegean word describing minerals used for bright red or red-orange dye. Given the ambivalence of the exact mineral, we might surmise that it was the colour that was most important in the word's semantics and not the chemical structure (something the ancients could hardly know about anyway). Thus, whether red lead (Pb₃O₄) or red ochre (Fe₂O₃), the word must have described any mineral which could be used to make bright-red or red-orange dye.

Now if we accept that there is a Minoan word here, what is its likeliest form? This has got me thinking hard and long because while there appears to be a relationship between the above words, finding a common etymon behind them all is tricky. For me, Hittite, Egyptian and Mycenaean all point to a general structure of *miN(T)- (N = resonant, T = coronal). The Latin word, which we might assume is from Etruscan, strangely doesn't reflect the expected coronal. At this point, it's understandable that one might decide to abandon this idea altogether due to a lack of consistency. However, for the sake of brainstorming, I thought of one elaborate possibility.

Let's suppose that there was an Aegean root *minyu 'red-orange mineral dye'. From this, let's also suppose that Minoan added an optional suffix *-zo (cf. Etruscan diminutive *-za), thus Minoan *mĩyuzo. This can then yield all of the Hittite, Egyptian and Mycenaean reflexes at once. In Etruscan however, inherited *miniu, without suffix, would yield Latin minium 'red lead'. Now we just might be able to explain this whole package of possible substrate. Maybe outlandish but it was worth a shot.