Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:58:11 +0200 (CEST) From: Ugo Bessi To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: AEL an ethimological question Dear Egyptians, thee are some egyptian words which look like words in other languages; usually the dictionary of Hannig gives the ethimology, but not for the words below, either because they are too obvious or too wrong. Can any of you tell me whether the ethimologies below are obviously right or obviously wrong? I know that these ethimological questions are very complicated and the amateur shouldn't touch them; but some of these words look so ancient that one cannot help wondering. st which means seat: the english seat or the latin sedes. tmam, which means mat: the english mat, late latin matta. shma, with ayn (the stretched arm) which means thin: the german Schmal. hru, which means day: the latin hora. wau, which means wave: the english wave, the german welle, the french vague. hmaut, which means artisan: arabic hamila, to work. tau, which means wind: german duft. akr, the god of the fields: the latin ager, the german acker. ba, soul: the arabic soul balun (I must confess that I don't know arabic, so the arabic words are really third-hand information...) sma, to kill: english smite; also from third-hand information, in hebrew there should be a verb shamad, which means to utterly destroy. Hannig says it is a causative, s+latin morior, but the coincidence with english is too nice to accept this prosaic explanation. mwt, the mamma: german mutter. iit, to come: the latin ire. ta, earth: greek de-metra. ndjm, sweet: arabic nouam, sweet, easy. st, woman: arabic siti, lady, or sid, wife. s, man: hebrew ish, man: ish hadumoth, vir desideriorum. idn, lieutenant, written with the ideogram of the ear: wden is ear in arabic. aa, ass: ass in english, dahas in arabic, esel in german. hwt, house: the english hut. saw, guardian: the german sehen. wah, to lay, to put: in arabic there is the expression wada al yad, to lay the hands. And naturally nn, not. These two are in the realm of the obviously false: wbn, the sun that raises in the sky: german heben. nkht, victorious, courageous: the greek nike. Thank you very much for any help! Best regards, Ugo. ============================================================================== From: Rhio Barnhart To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 09:06:36 -0700 Ugo, A good place to start would be Aayko Eyma's page: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/4482/AEloans.html An excellent overview. Regards, RHB ============================================================================== From: "mluban@netzero.net" Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:10:05 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question Dear Ugo, The question is not an easy one. I think nobody can deny that Egyptian has its cognates with Semitic languages. Also, because of so much interaction between Near Eastern peoples, loan words might have been adopted both ways in antiquity. Probably, forms of Egyptian terms can be found in Egyptian Arabic and it's not hard to understand why. But Egyptian terms found in other, non-Semitic, languages is more problematic. Aayko Eyma keeps a list of those that have very likely crept into English here: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/4482/AEloans.html Sanskrit is an old Indo-European language and an Indian Egyptophile once told me he had found some similar terms between Egyptian and Sanskrit. At any rate, Indo-European had found its way into ancient Egyptian and certain of those words have been identified. On the whole, it is often hard to say if a word is from Egyptian or not. I think the word "mirror" might be from "mAA Hr" ["see the face", Hannig, p. 315 column one] through French, [which did not adopt the Latin term, as some other cultures, like the Germanic did, although one would think mirrors would have been introduced by the Romans] but cannot prove it. You may have your etymological theories, as well, and others theirs--but we may not be standing on firm ground. Regardless, the ever-evolving science of DNA is showing that there were earlier contacts among geographically distant [a relative term] peoples than was previously thought and therein lies a can of worms, too. Plenty of surprises there, such as the DNA of American president Thomas Jefferson revealing an ancestor with an allele to whom the closest modern match is a man from Egypt! But I digress. Marianne Luban Author of "The Exodus Chronicles: Beliefs, Legends & Rumors from Antiquity Regarding the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt", Second Edition, New and Revised (2008) http://tinyurl.com/5kbywp ==============================================================================