Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 09:54:40 -0400 (EDT) To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Ogden Goelet Subject: AEL The Meaning of KMT Dear Listers, I have an article on the meaning of kmt appearing in Prof. Baruch Levine's Festschrift which should appear this summer(?) or early in the fall. The word means "the Black Land," refering most likely to the color of the soil in the fertile Nile Valley. In essence the word might be best described as a word of contrast. In all periods, the primary contrast implied is dSrt "the Red Land" or the desert; secondarily (and not very frequently) it is a word used to contrast Egypt with the rest of the world. In this latter sense, it is occasionally found in parallel with tA-mry "the Beloved Land," both terms appearing with the city-sign (O 49) as a determinative. The word tA-mry will sometimes be written with two city-signs, most certainly as a reference to Upper and Lower Egypt. In all periods, however, when the Egyptians wanted to refer to their country, the preferred terms were simply tA "the Land" or tAwy "the Two Lands." Even (perhaps especially) in royal titularies this is so, kmt rarely appearing in such contexts. Kmt will occasionally be used as the official name for Egypt, as it does, for instance, in the Treaty between R. II and Hattusili III of Hatti. In the Hymns to Sesostris III, kmt is twice followed by a seated man and a seated woman determinative and the plural determinative. In this case it most likely is to be identified as "Egypt" as a collective of peoples. It is contrasted even there with dSrt in a similar manner. I believe there is only one other text in which kmt is used in this sense. Since the latter sense of the word kmt was so rare, Shakespeare was stretching it a bit when he had Cleopatra saying her last words: "I am dying Egypt . . ." Incidentally, Lyttle, a Union general killed at the Battle of Chickamaugua, was famous, both North and South, for a poem with that title, and news of his death was a cause for mourning on both sides. I would be most grateful for a text of that poem, if anyone out there would know where I could find it. Kmt was sometimes used in compound expressions such as tA n kmt "the land of Egypt," rmT n kmt "an Egyptian," and r n kmt "the Egyptian language." The word kmt has an interesting literary usage as a word for the land of the living in the Harper's songs, as in the poignant phrase "No man may tarry in Egypt," viz. everyone eventually comes up to here (the desert burial area where the text is written) when they die. This same usage appears once in the Coptic version of the Apothegma Patrum, showing how persistent the association of kmt with the Nile Valley was. My article, however, only covers up to the end of the Middle Kingdom, with only some reference to the later periods, a subject which I hope to pursue in another article later on. Ogden Goelet ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 17:31:28 -0400 From: "Oscar H. Blayton" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL The Meaning of KMT Ogden Goelet wrote: > > > The word means "the Black Land," refering most likely to the > color of the soil in the fertile Nile Valley. ============================================= This is truly one theory, but let us not forget that there exist more than one theory, and Cheikh Anta Diop would have disagreed strongly with you. In his "Origins of the Ancient Egyptians" he makes a cogent argument that Km.T referred to the color of the people rather than to the color of the soil. =============================================== You state: "In the Hymns to Sesostris III, kmt is twice followed by a seated man and a seated woman determinative and the plural determinative." ================================================ Could it not be the case that kmt would be a qualification of the determinatives in this case, rendering the expression to mean "the black people"? Yours truly, Oscar Blayton Blayton_Law@sprynet.com ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 23:38:20 -0700 From: Patrick De Smet - Rodrigues To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL The Meaning of KMT Ogden Goelet wrote (about KMT): [snip] > The word means "the Black Land," refering most likely to the > color of the soil in the fertile Nile Valley. [snip - well noted] And what about its survival in the word "al-chemy"? Patrick De Smet - Rodrigues udjat@skynet.be Udjat, Eye in the *Black* Sky ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 12:09:47 +1100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language From: Mike Dyall-Smith Subject: AEL Weni vocab p4 Dear Weni-philes, I've got the page 4 vocab up, and fixed up quite a few bugs on the site. Let me know if you find any problems. The site is at: http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/texts/ael/weni.ael/index.htm Hoping to see your next contributions and discussion. Regards, Mike D-S Melbourne ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 15:10:24 -0400 From: Don Feruggia To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Just A Thought Nubkhas@aol.com wrote: > I checked the Greek text and it is written *mu, omega, upsilon with two dots > over it* . In fact, many of the letters are annotated with such markings, the > "upsilon", itself, being marked in other places with what looks like little > quotation marks. Since > I am not a Greek scholar, I must ask whether the ancients, themselves, did > the marking or whether the editor of a book such as I have here assumed this > responsibility. > > Marianne Luban The two dots are called a "diaeresis". It shows that the omega and the upsilon were not slurred together as a single vowel, but were pronounced separately. This is consistent with a consonant 'w' sound. There is absolutely nothing you can do to an upsilon to make it a consonant 'y'. The "little quotation marks" are called "breathings" and are used whenever a word begins with a vowel. The one that looks like an open-quote ("spiritus asper") means the vowel was preceded by an h-sound. The one that looks like a close-close ("spiritus lenis") means the vowel was not preceeded by an h-sound. The open-quote one is also used (always) over initial "r" to give it the sound which we write as "rh" (as in "rhythm" or "Rhodes") but was pronounced "hr". These marks do appear in our copies of ancient texts, which were mostly written by scribes in the middle ages. The breathings, like the accent marks, are very old and were developed in Hellenistic times. I can't tell you offhand when the diaeresis was first used. ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 19:03:34 -0700 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL The Meaning of KMT Ogden Goelet wrote: > I have an article on the meaning of kmt appearing in Prof. > Baruch Levine's Festschrift which should appear this summer(?) or early in > the fall. > > The word means "the Black Land," refering most likely to the > color of the soil in the fertile Nile Valley. [SNIP] > In all periods, however, when the Egyptians wanted to refer > to their country, the preferred terms were simply tA "the Land" or tAwy "the > Two Lands." [SNIP] > My article, however, only covers up to the end of the Middle > Kingdom, with only some reference to the later periods, a subject which I > hope to pursue in another article later on. A couple of points which got missed in your letter: The word probably derives from kmm "to be black" (Coptic KMOM) similarly to the noun qbt derived from the verb qbb "to be cool" The word kmt is used several times in the Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor (early 12th dynasty) to refer to Egypt - always with the "city" determinative. In one instance it is kmt=k "your Kumat" used in parallel to Xnw=k "your home". PS Oscar Blayton wrote: > This is truly one theory, but let us not forget that there exist more > than one theory, and Cheikh Anta Diop would have disagreed strongly with > you. In his "Origins of the Ancient Egyptians" he makes a cogent > argument that Km.T referred to the color of the people rather than to > the color of the soil. If Diop disagrees I feel much more confident that it is correct. The Egyptians certainly don't seem to have thought of themselves as black, in fact in all representations, they make a marked distinction between themselves and people from further south, who themselves were probably much lighter coloured than Mr Diop. -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 12:12:04 -0400 From: Don Feruggia To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: AEL Re: The meaning of KMT Rohan Fenwick wrote: > This is a valid point. The word "alchemy" originated from a Latin word, which was in turn derived from the Arabic "al-kimiya", and since Arabia is a bordering country to Egypt, could the science itself have originated in Egypt and thus the AEL word for Egypt end up being used maybe as a point of origin for the science? Good as far as it goes. The Arabic "kimiya" is from the late Greek "khemeia" (long e), which means "art of transmutation". This art was thought to be mastered by the Egyptians, and the word comes from the Greek "Khemia" (long e), which means "Egypt" and is a direct transcription of "kmt" with added "a". Plutarch uses this word but the classical authors do not. Note that the Greek "Kh" was not yet a guttural sound at this time but was an aspirated "k" exactly as in English. The final "t" had long since dropped off in Egyptian The Bohairic coptic spelling of "kmt" is exactly "Khemi" (long e). ============================================================================== To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: "John Pruitt" Subject: AEL inscriotions on pyramids Date: Tue, 16 Jun 98 02:10:06 PDT ---------- > Date: Monday, June 15, 1998 09:38:19 > From: jpruitt > To: AEgyptian-L-@rostau.demon.co.uk > Subject: inscriotions on pyramids > > hello, my name is John Pruitt my last message was posted in hast. Since I am > new at this I was not sure to introduce my self or not. My last message was in > fact an inquiry. I was just wondering if anyone had heard of such a claim or > not and if it was rational.I have restated my question at the bottom. > > A while back an egyptologist said that he believed that the pyramids > were covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions and were also painated. He > sugested they my have ben painated red and that it is possible to see a redish color left befind on the second pyramid of the giza complex he said that not > only were they used as tombs but as a national billboard telling who's tomb it was. > > > John Pruitt > jpruitt @iserv.net ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 16:25:52 -0400 (EDT) To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Ogden Goelet Subject: AEL RE: The meaning of KMT Dear Listers, Please excuse me if this happens to be a similar message to one I was working on a while back. As I was typing a long message in Eudora, it seems to have zipped off into ya-ya land. I'm not sure whether it simply disappeared into Electronic Heaven or whether it was inadvertently sent. (I have also wondered if my operating system sometimes is capable of making editorial comments on my work) There are several whopping deficiencies in Diop's proposal. The chief argument against interpreting kmt as referring to the skin-color of the Egyptians arises from the citations of the word and the history of its development. Right from its first attestations the word kmt was chiefly contrasted with dSrt, the word for "desert," literally "The Red Land," or similar words for the desert. There must be upwards of several hundreds of such parallels in Egyptian texts of all types and from all periods. The earliest appearances of the word kmt, in fact, do not use the "city" sign O49, but various "land" signs, such as N20, N21 and N23 instead. A few examples exist without any determinative. Even after the MK various writings without O49 occasionally appear. The frequent contrast between "Black Land" and "Red Land," of course, led to an association of kmt with the notion of the "land of the living" in the Harpers' Songs and other sources. The second major argument against Diop's interpretation would be the extraordinary rarity of the word he proposes to read "black (people)," i.e. "Egypt." It seems highly unlikely to me that a term for something as fundamental as the inhabitants of one's native land should occur only once in several thousand years. To my knowledge, kmt with the man and woman determinatives occurs only two places, both of which appear within a few lines of each other in the Hymns to Sesostris III. In the relevant passage, this term is contrasted with the Red Land, leading Lichtheim to translate it as "the Black Land," rather than "Egypt" in this instance. (See M. Lichtheim, _Ancient Egyptian Literature_ I, p. 200) As I may have indicated, I happen to prefer an interpretation of the word as a personfication, "Egypt." The preferred words for "Egyptian (person)" seem to be simply rmT "person" (also occasionally used to describe humanity in general and foreigners as well) and rmT n kmt lit. "person of the Black Land," the latter being the origin of the Coptic word for "(native) Egyptian," rmnkhme. There is, furthermore, a parallel with a word for the Egyptian language here, which is r(3) n kmt "the speech of Egypt," whose Coptic equivalent is mntprmnkhme, lit. "the matter/thing of the Egyptian person." The terms rmT n kmt and r(3) n kmt, while not common, are far better attested in a wider range of sources than the near hapax legomenon in the Hymn to Sesostris III. Thirdly, if the Egyptians had wanted to employ a term "black (people)" and derive it from kmt, then they would have used a plural _nisbe_ formation from the adjective km, resulting in *kmyw (the asterisk denotes a hypothetical form), to which they would have added either a man determinative or a man and woman determinative. This word is unattested to my knowledge in either a singular or plural form. If I were to decide, unlike Lichtheim that the two words in the Sesostris III hymn represent a _personification_ of Egypt or represented the Egyptian people (those pertaining to the Black Land), for example, I would transliterate the relevant word in the Sesostris III Hymn as *kmtyw, a word written with the "tyw-bird" (G4) and unattested until Ptolemaic texts; its hypothetical (and unattested) singular form would be *kmty (one pertaining to the Black Land). A good parallel for such formations can be found in the very common word imntyw "Westerners," usually referring to the dead, which is derived from imnt "the West." From the point of view of textual evidence alone, the Egyptians do not seem to have taken any interest in peoples' skin colors. The only reference to the skin colors of humanity of which I am aware is in the Hymn to the Aten. In textual evidence, (as opposed to two- and three-dimensional representations in art, where such distinctions are shown frequently) the Egyptians differentiated the foreign neighbors primarily by their customs, clothing and their languages. These are what made people distinct in their eyes. Significantly, these were attributes which one could change, unlike the color of one's skin. Race was a concept which the Egyptians just did not have, until they were shown the error of their ways when they were occupied by those clever Romans, and to a much lesser extent the Greeks (please excuse irony). Several passages in the Story of Sinuhe make this plain, particularly the description at the end of the story when Sinuhe describes how he was transformed from a beduin Asiatic into an Egyptian again. Diop's arguments, like many amateurish attempts at Egyptian lexicography (Bernal!!!!), avoids the fact that the great Berlin Woerterbuch has two parts -- the dictionary itself and the Belegstellen, or "references." Without looking at the references one cannot usually gauge whether a word is common or not, in what sources it appears, and what contexts and "registers" the word is employed. Furthermore, there are a great number of more recent sources which can also be consulted in addition to the Woerterbuch in trying to figure out what a word meant. For example, without looking into the Belegstellen, the Wb. (Wb. V, 126) one might leave with the false impression that there are some Old Kingdom citations -- these in actuality do not exist -- FIP at the earliest. It is sloppy scholarship to make lexicographical arguments without coming to grips with what the Egyptian sources themselves show, to say nothing of how Egyptian grammar can inform us concerning how the Egyptians formed words from a given root. As far as "al-chemy" goes, I have to confess that I am not well informed. I believe that Posener (?) proposed a derivation from the Middle Egyptian instructional text known as the Kemit, derived from another major "km-word," the one associated with the root km "to complete, be complete." Here, incidentally, lies another lexicographical trap -- assuming that words which look alike are derived from the same stem. This is particularly dangerous in Egyptian where we do not have the vocalization of the words in question. While we are on the subject of translation of terms, it is similarly dangerous to assume once we have a reasonable approximation of a word's translation, that we will then have a word whose associations will be the same as those that prevail in English (or German. or French . . . ). In the realm of color, this problem is particularly acute -- even the chromatic shades of what the Egyptians considered to be various colors were different from what we would consider "red," "blue," "brown," etc. to be. I think at this point I have pontificated enough. After years of working in lexicography, I must confess that it often borders on the intellectual equivalent of an injection of novocaine directly into the frontal lobes of one's brains. Ogden Goelet ============================================================================== From: Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 18:45:45 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL The Meaning of KMT In a message dated 98-06-16 15:53:44 EDT, you write: << I presume that those who wish to see Kmt to mean the land of the Black People are equally willing to see the desert, the dSrt, the land of the red people. Gerald E. Kadish >> This reminds me of something I had seen in Brugsch-Bey's translation of the Wadi Hammamat steles from the reign of Ramesses IV. I will give it to you just as he has it: "800 redskins (Erythraeans, Aperiu) from the tribes of Ain (between the Red Sea and the Nile)" These "redskins", of course, are among the great assorted multitude that the pharaoh sent to the Eastern Desert for granite. I am quite fascinated by these detailed (and rather mysterious) inscriptions and would love to see the original. But I haven't and therefore can't tell you the exact term used for the 800 (perhaps it was " Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 22:32:28 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL RE: The meaning of KMT In a message dated 98-06-16 19:57:31 EDT, you write: << While we are on the subject of translation of terms, it is similarly dangerous to assume once we have a reasonable approximation of a word's translation, that we will then have a word whose associations will be the same as those that prevail in English (or German. or French . . . ). In the realm of color, this problem is particularly acute -- even the chromatic shades of what the Egyptians considered to be various colors were different from what we would consider "red," "blue," "brown," etc. to be. >> I understand there is no word for "brown". In fact, I don't think there was in Old Arabic, either. Later on the Arabs used to say "coffee-colored". Marianne Luban ============================================================================== To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 23:08:29 -0700 From: "Rohan Fenwick" Cc: Subject: AEL Glyphs Hi all. This is Rohan, and I'm mailing because I've got most of the glyphs down, but there is a double glyph (I think) which takes the form of the genitival adjectival symbol "nw" on a pair of legs. What sound does that represent? Also, there is the symbol of a five-pointed linear star, a reed on legs, a bird in full flight (I think it's a duck), and a bird sitting on some sort of stand. What do these mean? Please mail if you can help. Rohan Fenwick kingrohan@mailcity.com Get your FREE, private e-mail account at http://www.mailcity.com ============================================================================== From: Julie-Ann Bradwyn To: "'Ancient Egyptian Language List'" Subject: AEL New Hieroglyphic Textbook Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 13:04:53 +1000 Having subscribed to the AEL list for a while, I have often seen = requests for recommendations of good Hieroglyphics texts. As I have = just purchased one which I think is great, I thought that I would share = "the discovery" with you. The title is "A Concise Grammar of Middle Egyptian", and it is revised = and expanded version of Professor Hellmut Brunner's "An Outline of = Middle Egyptian Grammar". It is lightweight and covered in a fabric = soft-cover, making it practical to carry on your overseas travels or to = classes. The text covers topics such as transliteration, nouns, adjectives, = pronouns, prepositions, paticles, non-verbal sentences, relative clauses = and verbs (inluding classes, groups, imperatives, forms & negation). = There are lots of summary tables included and examples, with = hieroglyphics, transliterations, translations and grammar notes given. = However, what I personally like the most about it (apart from the = vocabulary and all the sign lists included) are the exercises. There = are parts of hieroglyphic texts to practice on - such as exerpts from = "The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor", "The Stele of Thutmosis III from = Gebel Barkal", "The Prophecy of Neferty" etc. This really puts the = theory into a practical context and makes it fun too. The full details of the book are : Author : Boyo G. Ockinga Title : A Concise Grammar of Middle Egyptian published by Philipp von Zabern - Mainz/Rhein 1998 ISBN : 3-8053-2501-0 177 pages As it is smoking hot off the press, it may not be in your local shop = yet. However, from personal experience, I would say that it's well = worth ordering in. =20 I hope this reference is useful to some of you. =20 Regards, Julie-Ann Bradwyn. ============================================================================== From: Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 12:00:26 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: AEL New Hieroglyphic Textbook Thanks, Julie-Ann, for the tip! The book does sound great. How much does it cost? Are full solutions provided for the exercises? Are the monumental examples photographed, or typeset? Thanks again! Michael Akard Modesto, California ============================================================================== To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: "Leonid M. Kokun" Date: Wed, 17 Jun 98 13:52:04 +0300 Subject: AEL Re:The meaning of KMT > Hi Patrick. In your mail you write > "what about its survival in the word "al-chemy"?" > > This is a valid point. The word "alchemy" originated from a Latin word, > which was in turn derived from the Arabic "al-kimiya"... > ... > Rohan Fenwick > Dear Rohan Fenwick, The Arabic "al-kimiya" in its turn is derived from the Greek "chemeia". The latter meant "preparation" (Suidas: "chemeia is preparation /kataskeue/ of silver and gold"; "on the preparation /peri tes chemeias/ of gold and silver"). It is hard to conceive its semantic development from the name of a country, since Greeks used another word (Plutarchos mentions "Chemia" as the *Egyptian* name of the country), and for Egyptians it would be rather odd to name a technology by that name. Regards Leo Kokun ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 23:44:14 +1000 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Mike Dyall-Smith Subject: Re: AEL Glyphs This seems like a good guessing game Rohan ;-) What is it for? A particular text or something? Do you have Gardiner, or his sign list? >From your descriptions my guesses would be: a) W25, look up 'ini' b) N14, star, look up 'sbA' c) M18, look up 'ii' d) G40 or G41, look up 'pA' e) G7 (falcon of Horus on a standard), often used as det. of gods, the king, or as an ideogram in 1st person suffix pronoun. Regards, Mike D-S >Hi all. This is Rohan, and I'm mailing because I've got most of the glyphs >down, but there is a double glyph (I think) which takes the form of the >genitival adjectival symbol "nw" on a pair of legs. What sound does that >represent? Also, there is the symbol of a five-pointed linear star, a reed >on legs, a bird in full flight (I think it's a duck), and a bird sitting >on some sort of stand. What do these mean? > >Please mail if you can help. >Rohan Fenwick >kingrohan@mailcity.com > > >Get your FREE, private e-mail >account at http://www.mailcity.com ******************************** Mike Dyall-Smith, Melbourne, Australia m.dyall-smith@microbiology.unimelb.edu.au ******************************** ============================================================================== From: Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 13:26:23 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Glyphs In a message dated 98-06-17 03:35:04 EDT, you write: << Hi all. This is Rohan, and I'm mailing because I've got most of the glyphs down, but there is a double glyph (I think) which takes the form of the genitival adjectival symbol "nw" on a pair of legs. What sound does that represent? Also, there is the symbol of a five-pointed linear star, a reed on legs, a bird in full flight (I think it's a duck), and a bird sitting on some sort of stand. What do these mean? >> Hello Rohan-- the first symbol you refer to Gardiner's W25. It should have the phonetic value of "in" and is used in words for "to bring" or "fetch". The "star" , Gardiner N14 is is, of course, a determinative and has the phonetic value of "sb3" (which is a term for "star") It is also used to make up the sound "dw3" ("morning" or "adore in the morning") or even "dw3t" ("the Netherworld). M18, the "walking reed-stalk" is "ii" and it respresents "come" and the related words. The "flying duck", G40, has the phonetic value of "p3" (to fly) or as "p3", the masculine article "the". G41, the "pintail duck alighting", is phonetically "xn" or even "xm". Birds sitting on stands are certainly often seen and their meaning depends on the type bird. For example, a falcon on a stand with feather (R13) is an eblem of the West or "imnt". G7, the falcon on a standard is a determinative or ideogram in "Hrw" or Horus, "imn" (Amun) and "nsw" (king) and in "wi" when the king is referring to himself. Maybe that's where we get the "Royal we" from. G26, the ibis on a standard is a det. for "hb" (ibis) and an ideogram in the writing of the name of the god "Thoth" or "Dehuti". The standard by itself (R12) is called "i3t and is, I think, where we get our nautical term "yard", That is just my opinion. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 13:39:20 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Just A Thought The ancient historian Josephus tells us that "mw" or "water" was vocalized "mo-y" with a long "o". If this can be credited, it has some possible implications for the pronunciation of Egyptian terms ending in "w". For example, when a king is referred to in the time that he was still an "inpw" (child or boy), this word may well have been pronounced "inpo-y" or just something that sounded like "bo-y" and nothing much more. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 18:49:53 -0400 From: Don Feruggia To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Just A Thought Nubkhas@aol.com wrote: > The ancient historian Josephus tells us that "mw" or "water" was vocalized > "mo-y" with a long "o". The Greek upsilon ('y') was pronounced 'u' in classical times and simply represents the "w" sound of 'mw'. It later became an umlauted-u sound as in German, then became a vowel 'i', which it still is in modern Greek. It was never pronounced as a consonant 'y'. ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 16:25:32 -0700 (PDT) To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: reeder@sirius.com (Greg Reeder) Subject: Re: AEL Re:The meaning of KMT Leo Kokun wrote: >Dear Rohan Fenwick, > The Arabic "al-kimiya" in its turn is derived from the Greek "chemeia". >The latter meant "preparation" (Suidas: "chemeia is preparation /kataskeue/ >of silver and gold"; "on the preparation /peri tes chemeias/ of gold and >silver"). It is hard to conceive its semantic development from the name of a >country, since Greeks used another word (Plutarchos mentions "Chemia" as the >*Egyptian* name of the country), and for Egyptians it would be rather odd to >name a technology by that name. > Dear Leo, Al-Chemy is the process of turning base metals into gold. It was therefore thought not only as the "art of the Egyptians" but also as "The Black Art" hence Al-Chemy from kmt "black". This explanation however is traditional and may in fact have no etymological basis. Greg Reeder http://www.egyptology.com reeder@sirius.com ============================================================================== From: Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 15:21:27 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? In a message dated 98-06-18 14:28:47 EDT, you write: << have to say that I tend to feel that Loprieno's solution wasn't so bad. He equates (book not available for cite at hand, forgive me) 3 with a gutteral r; he actually writes 3 as R (as opposed to the flap/trill r) as in "t3 = taR." I am uncomfortable with the notion that 3 is 'ar.' This would be unparalleled in what we know about AE. >> I don't know what Loprieno knows, of course, but this just doesn't make sense to me. Again, why would /3/ be used as a phonetic complement for biliteral signs that already include /3/ , such as "p3"--the *wild-duck"? And why does /3/ always appear as "a" and "o" in Coptic? I can't say this with any great authority, but it seems unusual for a language to have more than one kind of "r" in it's *standard* accent. Even though there may be several dialects, the "r" in each dialect would remain uniform. Take British. In the *standard* pronunciation there is an "r", which happens to disappear in certain positions. When there are two "r's" in a row, the pronunciation changes entirely. Well, who knows with Egyptian? Maybe Loprieno is just agreeing with me after a fashion in saying that /3/ is "ar"--albeit he believes it was gutteral. The feminine article "t3" was written without any biliteral signs (as far as we know). Would Loprieno make that "tR" while the masculine was "p3R"? Anyway, the Hittites heard "t3 Hm.t nsw" as "Dahamunza". That doesn't seem to indicate that /3/ was anything but just a kind of "a". I think people have twisted themselves all out of shape to try to justify the /3/ as "r" or "l". Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 01:10:53 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? In a message dated 98-05-27 13:07:59 EDT, you write: << I have just been reading an article by Chris Reintges (Lingua Aegyptia (1994) 4:213-244) entitled: 'Egyptian root-and-pattern morphology'. In section 1.2, 'Egyptian Aleph' he discusses the phonological value of the egyptian vulture-A sign. He uses Coptic evidence and arguments based on common phonological processes (eg. 'dipthongisation') to derive a value for the Aleph in Middle Egyptian as..... a glottal stop! While I know there has been some debate about whether it was a glottal stop or a liquid (r, l), I thought the matter had been fairly well resolved in favour of latter, and that the discussion had now narrowed to whether it was an 'r' or an 'l'. James Hoch and Antonio Loprieno come to mind here as active participants in this arena. They both cite examples of correspondences in egyptian and afroasiatic words where the aleph in egyptian seems to be equivalent to 'r' or 'l' in the other language (eg. Egyptian kAm = Afroasiatic krm, meaning 'garden'). Reintges argues that this sort of analysis is too simplistic, and that a simple one-to-one correspondence in sounds may not be present. He thinks it is a many-to-one relationship, with afroasiatic /r l/ corresponding to egyptian r, ? or '. He goes on to propose that, "the afroasiatic proto-morpheme is analysed as a complex segment, with /r/ as the primary and /?/ and /'/ as the secondary articulators, which became the primary ones in the course of debuccalisation. Geoffrey Graham has mentioned to me that he has seen a paper by Osing also comes to the conclusion that the aleph is a glottal stop. If this is accepted, then we seem to have come full circle >> I wanted to talk about this earlier, but couldn't find the spare time to look for my notes on /3/. So it's still up in the air, eh? I'm not surprised. Here are some of my thoughts on /3/--for what they are worth: My feeling is that the whole business of /3/ being an "r" of any sort is based on a very few examples and a very shaky premise. I am rather glad to see it is by no means universally accepted among philologists in Egyptian and that the school of thought that /3/ is the equivalent of the Semitic "aleph" has not been vanquished by any means. Personally, I think that the /3/ is a bit more complicated than that, especially when there are two in a row. Only then do I think a sort of "r" was indicated in pronunciation. /3/ is /a/ in the syllabic orthography (i.e. the writing of Ptolemaic names). All the other basic signs retain their Middle Egyptian values in the orthography--why shouldn't /3/? Another good indication that /3/ cannot be any sort of "r" is that, in this orthography, or in writing the foreign topographical names, /3/ is NEVER used as the initial /r/--in a name like "Rehovot" for example. The sign the *mouth* is used for the initial /r/, the place, of course, where the "r" sound would be strongest in any term. Otherwise, the Egyptian /r/ has been seen to be quite weak, even negligible, as in the standard British pronunciation. We know this because it is sometimes omitted in words altogether in later writings and, also, it has been seen to be interchangeable with /l/, which a strong, burring "r", would never be. I feel sure that, at least in some Egyptian dialects, /r/ was even vocalized like something between an "l" and a "w"--like the Polish "l' with a slash through it. An example of this would be the Egyptian writing of "Israel" or "ysri3r". Try pronouncing thr final /r/ as a "w" and you'll see what I mean. Here's the evidence on which this theory of /3/ = r/l has been based. It is upon these terms, thought by some to be cognates with Semitic, although it is not certain they are not just loan-words. b3q (bright, shing) Ar. baraq Heb. barak bk3 (morning) bakir boker k3m (vineyard) karm kerem w3D (green) waraq (foliage) That's about it right there, I think. However... 1. There is already an undisputed /r/ in Egyptian, the *mouth* 2. /3/ is always "a", e, or aw" in Coptic 3. /3/ is "a" in the syllabic orthography because it was *heard* that way. 5. /3/ is NEVER used to write foreign topographical names that begin with "r"--in fact it represents an "r" NOWHERE in topigraphical writing. If it were an "r", you would think it would have been substituted for /r/, the *mouth*, SOME of the time in the initial place. But it is not. Does anybody think it's possible that /3/ or the *vulture* might have started out as a syllabic sign? Egyptian has numerous signs like "ba, ka, nu, ti, ir" and on and on. Can it be that /3/ was such a glyph in early times and, if it was, the value that I would assign to it as making the most sense, everything considered, would be "ar". That would explain everything. It would explain it's use in those Semitic cognates I showed above. It would also explain how /3/ got to be "a" in later times as the "r" in "ar" would have been typically "weak", as it always was in Egyptian, following the exact same pattern as the "r" in standard British pronunciation. Therefore, it would have been pronounced as "ah" or "aw". ONLY, when two /3/'s were written in a row, would a different sound have been derived--just as happens when two "r's" are seen in British English, like in the word "carrier". Take just as one example the word "3h" in Egyptian, meaning "woe, misery". It is "ahe" in Coptic. Or the word "3s3k3 "to delay--all those /3/'s!" survives into Coptic as nothing more than "awsk". Not an "r" in sight anywhere. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 09:46:56 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Just A Thought In a message dated 98-06-18 03:34:14 EDT, you write: << > The ancient historian Josephus tells us that "mw" or "water" was vocalized > "mo-y" with a long "o". The Greek upsilon ('y') was pronounced 'u' in classical times and simply represents the "w" sound of 'mw'. It later became an umlauted-u sound as in German, then became a vowel 'i', which it still is in modern Greek. It was never pronounced as a consonant 'y'. >> I checked the Greek text and it is written *mu, omega, upsilon with two dots over it* . In fact, many of the letters are annotated with such markings, the "upsilon", itself, being marked in other places with what looks like little quotation marks. Since I am not a Greek scholar, I must ask whether the ancients, themselves, did the marking or whether the editor of a book such as I have here assumed this responsibility. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 08:33:26 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? I have to say that I tend to feel that Loprieno's solution wasn't so bad. He equates (book not available for cite at hand, forgive me) 3 with a gutteral r; he actually writes 3 as R (as opposed to the flap/trill r) as in "t3 = taR." I am uncomfortable with the notion that 3 is 'ar.' This would be unparalleled in what we know about AE. brian betty urnammak@aol.com ============================================================================== From: Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 10:43:45 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Another thing I forgot to write late last night is something that bothers me. And, really, it is contra /3/ being a biliteral sign as I suggested it might be. Biliteral signs usually have their phonetic complement. For example, U30, the "potter's kiln" and being phon. "t3" is normally not written just alone but has a *loaf* before and a *vulture* after. So that, in my opinion, pretty much argues for /3/ not being another biliteral sign (or "ar" as I had suggested). And it certainly argues against /3/ being "r" or "l", too. Still there are indications that there is something unusual going on with /3/. The terms that are on the order of "look, see, etc." are transliterated "m33", although they are commonly spelled *U1, D4, G1, G1* or ending in *two vultures" U1 is phon. "m3" and D4 is "ir". G1 is the "unknown quantity", especially when written twice in a row. However, a name like "The Viewing Place of the Aten" offers a clue.. It is called "mi3rw" in Egyptian, surely having to do with "look,see", but an /r/ is clearly present, indicating to me that what we write as "m33" was probably vocalized "ma'irar" (or something like our "mirror") and that two "3's" together indicated a kind of "r". Another example, I think, is the term "i33.t" (a club, cudgel, mace, rod, scepter, stick). If, with two "3's" in a row being present, we can get "iar.t" out of it, then it fits well with the IE base for "rod" that resulted in our present "yard" or measure--just like "m33" would correspond to the IE words that indicate "look" ("mira", etc.) If I am wrong about this, there is another alternative. We can stop trying to make /3/ a glide and stop trying to make it a glottal stop by forcing the language to fit into a Afro-Asiatic/Semitic mold and call it an "alpha" instead of "aleph". It looks to me like there are only two "birds" that are not viewed as biliteral signs and those are the *vulture* and the *chick* (w). But how numerous are the indications that the "chick" was ever a "w" and not just a "u"? It is not too difficult at all to make an argument that this sign was always a "u" that could be made to sound like "w" with the annexing of certain vowel sounds. In Akkadian transcription the Egyptian "wpwti" (messenger, envoy) is "uputi" and in Meroitic it is "apote". So maybe, as much heresy as it sounds, Egyptian did actually have some "vowels" in the sense that /3/ and /w/ were like alpha and upsilon. As for this: b3q (bright, shing) Ar. baraq Heb. barak Can someone give me a proof that this was a cognate instead of merely a later Semitic borrowing where no "r" was provided in the spelling because none was present in the pronunciation? Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Aayko Eyma To: 'Ancient Egyptian Language List' Subject: AEL AW: AEL Re: The meaning of KMT Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 20:17:27 +-200 >Good as far as it goes. The Arabic "kimiya" is from the late Greek = "khemeia" (long e), which means "art of transmutation". This >art was = thought to be mastered by the Egyptians, and the word comes from the = Greek "Khemia" (long e), which means "Egypt" >and is a direct = transcription of "kmt" with added "a". Plutarch uses this word but the = classical authors do not. >Note that the Greek "Kh" was not yet a guttural sound at this time but = was an aspirated "k" exactly as in English. The final "t" >had long = since dropped off in Egyptian The Bohairic coptic spelling of "kmt" is = exactly "Khemi" (long e). **Dear Don, Which word does Plutarch uses? khEmeia or KhEmia? Can you give a context/reference please? In his Moralia likely? This would make a major difference you see: If it is khEmeia, in the 'transmutation' sense, that is in Plutarch, = i.e. well=20 before the Arabic conquest of Egypt, then the Arabic must be a loan from = the Greek, contrary to what most books say - who all claim that the Arabic came straight from the Coptic _Khemi_ or "from the = Arabic name for Egypt" [which was IMHO actually 'Misra'/'Mitsrun'!]. Still leaving the doubt whether the Greek came from Khemi, or was an independent word, khemeia or khymia, meaning "art of=20 melting and joining metals" - from kheO =3D "to melt" ? It is btw thought that European '(al)chemy' is a 'rationalisation'=20 under influence of the Greek, modifying the Vulgar Latin (al)chimia - = that=20 came from the Arabic that at an earlier date had come from the Greek. Hmm, note this would be an ouroboros-like process, how fitting for a word like alchemy! :) I think I would find your route (Coptic-Greek-Arabic-Late Latin),=20 most attractive, seeing the facts that: - Emperor Diocletianus ordered that all Egyptian books about the art of making gold, had to be burned. - In the 4th century, in Alexandria, there were many alchemistic works written, often claiming they derived from Thoth/Hermes Trismegistus. So this is all pre-Islam, highly propably pointing to the route Egypt->Greek->Arabic, instead of: Egypt->Arabic->Greek. [Sorry Ishinan ;)] But as said, the alchemistic and etymological books I looked in, all claimed the latter (Egypt->Arabic). Shame on them. And these facts also would make alchemy as "secret art from Egypt" quite attractive. However, for the ultimate origin of the khemeia, there are still different theories around, even though "art of Khemi" seems to be the most popular. Aayko Eyma ============================================================================== To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: "Leonid M. Kokun" Date: Thu, 18 Jun 98 00:29:35 +0300 Subject: AEL Re:The meaning of KMT > Dear Leo, > Al-Chemy is the process of turning base metals into gold. It was therefore > thought not only as the "art of the Egyptians" but also as "The Black Art" > hence Al-Chemy from kmt "black". This explanation however is traditional > and may in fact have no etymological basis. > > > Greg Reeder > http://www.egyptology.com > reeder@sirius.com > Dear Greg, The rub is that alchemy was never styled "the black art" in the first millennium; the Greeks called it "sacred science" /episteme hiera/, "divine art" /tekne theia/, or simply "chemeia". Neither was it called so later; it only was regarded by many as *connected* with the black art. Regards Leo Kokun aegeis@aegeis.carrier.kiev.ua ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 15:29:56 -0400 From: Don Feruggia To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL AW: AEL Re: The meaning of KMT Aayko Eyma wrote: > Which word does Plutarch uses? khEmeia or KhEmia? > Can you give a context/reference please? In his Moralia likely? > My unabridged Greek dictionary gives a single reference for KhEmia (Kmt): Plutarch 2.364c, which puts it in the Moralia. Thanks for making me look this up, because this dictionary gives khEmeia only as a variant spelling for khymeia (same meaning) and refers to a book by Diels, "Antike Technik", p. 109, for a discussion of its derivation. ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 18:24:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Dear Marianne, > I don't know what Loprieno knows, of course, but this just doesn't make > sense to me. Again, why would /3/ be used as a phonetic complement > for biliteral signs that already include /3/ , such as "p3"--the *wild-duck"? > And why does /3/ always appear as "a" and "o" in Coptic? As I have told you before, it is because {3} had become vocallic by the New Kingdom, so Coptic CANNOT show anything to us about the CONSONANTAL value of {3} as much as we would like it to. However, your point about the possibility of something like *ar is well taken because it does indeed explain the odd behavior, answering questions like, why it would dissappear intiatially as well as finally if it were a liquid sound. I like your idea, and I think it might be worthy of some further investigation. One piece of data that you might find particularly interesting is that the reedstalk {j} occurs extremely often before {3}. We pretty well know that initial {j} often represents a prothetic vowel before consonant clusters. So, the excessively frequent appearance, all the way back to the Old Kingdom, of {j} in front of words with initial {3} might indicate that what you say is true, for then you could easily have {3} coming in clusters with subsequent consonants, and the {j} would then be used to ease pronunciation, and/or remind people that a VOWEL preceeded the word. Also, another thing that might need consideration is that the prothetic helping vowel occurs most frequently in Coptic before the "blemner" consonants ({b} (actually a bilabial fricative, and thus not a stop as in English), {l}, {m}, {n}, and {r}). These five consonants are all sonorants and NOT stops. This might be another clue as to the value of {3} because we might expect it to fit this description also based on what we know of the use of the supralinear stroke in Coptic. > I can't say this with any great authority, but it seems unusual for a language > to have more than one kind of "r" in it's *standard* accent. I totally agree with you here. I cannot accept Loprienos' proposition of /R/ (uvular /r/). I could accept, however, that it were ghayn, which is a rather similar sound. But, then we would expect it to alternate with /`/ and /g/ which it does not seem to do in any contexts known to me. What it does alternate with are /n/ and /r/, so, in my opinion, it has to be a "blemner" type sound which could conceivably alternate with /n/ and /r/, but which is not itself /n/ or /r/, since those sounds are already accounted for in the writing system. This leaves us with /b/, /m/, and /l/, unless there were some other sound in the inventory that disappeared totally before the emergence of Coptic. It cannot be /b/ or /m/, because, like /n/ and /r/, these sounds are already accounted for in the system. This leaves only /l/, and I see few reasons not to accept this as the original designation. Taking your idea into account, perhaps it was more like *@l, and this would account for why it disappeared from all three positions: initial, medial, and final. Finally, and perhaps the most important datum of all, is that what {3} comes to alternate with, and is even eventually replaced by, in the transition from Late Egyptian to Demotic, is {y}. Now what sound would be a "blemner" consonant AND tend to alternate with /y/???? It cannot be /b/, /m/, /n/, or EVEN /r/. Here again, the only choice that I can see is /l/. Note Spanish {pollo}, pronounced /poyo/ for a cogent example of this kind of transformation. So, as far as I am concerned, the best candidate for the value of {3} presently known to me as any possibility is something like *@l. > entirely. Well, who knows with Egyptian? Maybe Loprieno is just agreeing > with me after a fashion in saying that /3/ is "ar"--albeit he believes it was > gutteral. The feminine article "t3" was written without any biliteral signs > (as far as we know). Yes, and if we take t3 "land" to have been *tal, then we have a perfectly well known cognate in Semitic "tel" "mound". Would Loprieno make that "tR" while the masculine was > "p3R"? Anyway, the Hittites heard "t3 Hm.t nsw" as "Dahamunza". That doesn't > seem to indicate that /3/ was anything but just a kind of "a". I think people > have twisted themselves all out of shape to try to justify the /3/ as "r" or > "l". 1) The Hittites were contemporary to LATE Egyptian, and thus, their data would be irrelevant to the question, and... 2) The Late Egyptian definite article probably was never anything more than p-, t-, and n- written with syllabic orthography. Yours, Geoff Graham sokar@minerva.cis.yale.edu ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 19:24:47 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Dear Marianne, Some of your ideas are rather interesting. See below. > If I am wrong about this, there is another alternative. We can stop trying to > make > /3/ a glide and stop trying to make it a glottal stop by forcing the language > to fit > into a Afro-Asiatic/Semitic mold and call it an "alpha" instead of "aleph". > It > looks to me like there are only two "birds" that are not viewed as biliteral > signs and > those are the *vulture* and the *chick* (w). Wait, there is also {m}! ;-P But how numerous are the > indications > that the "chick" was ever a "w" and not just a "u"? It is not too difficult > at all to make > an argument that this sign was always a "u" that could be made to sound like > "w" > with the annexing of certain vowel sounds. In Akkadian transcription the > Egyptian > "wpwti" (messenger, envoy) is "uputi" and in Meroitic it is "apote". So > maybe, as > much heresy as it sounds, Egyptian did actually have some "vowels" in the > sense > that /3/ and /w/ were like alpha and upsilon. What is cogent about your idea of values like /a/ and /u/ is the fact that in the Coptic writing system there was no such distinction between "vowel" and "consonant" as in our view. Any consonant could be used as the apex of a syllable by the use of a supralinear stroke, and graphemes like {a}, {i}/{ei}, and {u}/{ou} could serve either as vowels or as consonants. Certainly in Latin there was no distinction between v and u as letters, nor between j and i. Jim Allen, indeed, likes to represent several instances of {w} and {j}/{y} as {u} and {i} in his reconstructions of ancient vocalizations, in places where more strict "German-school" scholars would use {w} and {j}. Perhaps the Egyptians did not particularly think about a distinction between vowel and consonant in certain cases where the categories were too blurred, as in the "weak consonants". However, one constantly looks for "system", and is discouraged by what one finds. Oh well. Yours, Geoff Graham ============================================================================== From: Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 08:07:17 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? In a message dated 98-06-19 03:34:44 EDT, you write: << Yes, and if we take t3 "land" to have been *tal, then we have a perfectly well known cognate in Semitic "tel" "mound".>> I don't know that "land" and "mound" are the same thing. But, anyway, I said before: "I feel sure that, at least in some Egyptian dialects, /r/ was even vocalized like something between an "l" and a "w"--like the Polish "l' with a slash through it. An example of this would be the Egyptian writing of "Israel" or "ysri3r". Try pronouncing the final /r/ as a "w" and you'll see what I mean." If what you say is true, then the /3/ would have been seen as a better candidate to end "ysri3r" than /r/. Of course, you might say this is late and the real value of /3/ had been forgotten. But even in "Weni", we have a word like "i3rr.t" (vines). Don't you think such a term would have been quite a mouthful if /3/ had been *@l ? >> Would Loprieno make that "tR" while the masculine was > "p3R"? Anyway, the Hittites heard "t3 Hm.t nsw" as "Dahamunza". That doesn't > seem to indicate that /3/ was anything but just a kind of "a". I think people > have twisted themselves all out of shape to try to justify the /3/ as "r" or > "l". >> >> 1) The Hittites were contemporary to LATE Egyptian, and thus, their data would be irrelevant to the question, and... 2) The Late Egyptian definite article probably was never anything more than p-, t-, and n- written with syllabic orthography. >> The people who were contemporary to Late Egyptian are the only ones we have who offer us clues as to the pronunciation. And then I have to admit I am still puzzled by the notion of Middle Egyptian possibly being an artificial language that was never spoken by anybody! This I certainly would like to see discussed more. And how could I have forgotten that "boid" the owl?? God, I certainly hope we can rest assured that this was not a biliteral sign! Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Michael Tilgner To: 'Ancient Egyptian Language List' Subject: AEL AW: Re: AEL RE: The meaning of KMT Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 00:40:55 +0200 Marianne Luban wrote: > << > In the realm of color, > this problem is particularly acute -- even the chromatic shades of > what the Egyptians considered to be various colors were different > from what we would consider "red," "blue," "brown," etc. to be. > >> > > I understand there is no word for "brown". Rainer Hannig, "Grosses Handwoerterbuch Aegyptisch-Deutsch (2800 - 950 v. Chr.)", Mainz, 1995: iwn [general] "color" imAw "reddish shine/glare", "red mineral" ins "blood-red" irtiw "color, coloration, spotting" idmi "*dark red" wAD "green" mfkAt "turquoise" mnSt "ocher (may be red one)" nbw "gold-colored" HD "white, light" xnmt "red jasper (also *red glass)" xnt "*red jasper" [= xnmt?] xsbD "blue, like lapis lazuli" sAb "multi-colored, spotted, blotchy" qnit "yellow-gold [auripigment]" km "black, dark" (Hannig says "also brown") kT "yellow/orange/red [for saflor and types of grain]" Tms "red (more bluish), violet" Tr "ocher" dSr "red (color of a flamingo), yellow reddish" Dab "black like charcoal" DHti (dHti) "lead" [grey?] Best wishes, Michael Tilgner mtilgner@baan.nl ============================================================================== From: Michael Tilgner To: 'Ancient Egyptian Language List' Subject: AEL AW: AEL RE: The meaning of KMT Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 00:43:10 +0200 Ogden Goelet wrote a very detailed commentary on the meaning of kmt = "Egypt" instead of "Egyptian people". I would like to add some remarks: > if the Egyptians had wanted to employ a term "black > (people)" and derive it from kmt, then they would have used a > plural _nisbe_ formation from the adjective km, resulting in *kmyw > (the asterisk denotes a hypothetical form), to which they would > have added either a man determinative or a man and woman > determinative. This word is unattested to my knowledge in either > a singular or plural form. =20 Rainer Hannig, "Grosses Handwoerterbuch Aegyptisch-Deutsch (2800 - 950 v. Chr.)", Mainz, 1995 has an entry (p. 883) I6-m-M17A-D3-A40 kmi "the Black One (Osiris, Min)" > I would > transliterate the relevant word in the Sesostris III Hymn as > *kmtyw, a word written with the "tyw-bird" (G4) and unattested > until Ptolemaic texts; its hypothetical (and unattested) singular > form would be *kmty (one pertaining to the Black Land). in fact earlier, see Hannig, "Handwoerterbuch", entry I6-G21 kmtiw "people from Athribis" > From the point of view of textual evidence alone, the > Egyptians do not seem to have taken any interest in peoples' skin > colors. The only reference to the skin colors of humanity of > which I am aware is in the Hymn to the Aten. In textual evidence, > (as opposed to two- and three-dimensional representations in art, > where such distinctions are shown frequently) the Egyptians > differentiated the foreign neighbors primarily by their customs, > clothing and their languages. These are what made people distinct > in their eyes. Skin color was an important aspect of Egyptian culture - see "Lexikon der Aegyptologie" [LAe], Vol. II, cols. 1068-1072, entry "Hautfarbe" [color of the skin]. Examples: men were colored reddish-brown, women with yellow skin. The same colors were used for boys and girls. This differentiation can also be found in hieroglyphic writings: Tomb of Sethos I - sign B3: A woman with yellow skin gives birth to a red-colored child (=3D son). Foreign peoples were differentiated by their skin colors. Gods and goddesses had the same skin colors as men and women. Sometimes other colors were used to denote certain aspects of the gods: Black for Osiris as the ruler of the dead, green for his ability to regenerate. Other gods are sometimes shown in green or blue; but it's not always possible to give a reason for it. There are some more textual evidence in the New Kingdom, see footnote 10, col. 1071. > Race was a concept > which the Egyptians just did not have, until they were shown the > error of their ways when they were occupied by those clever > Romans, and to a much lesser extent the Greeks (please excuse > irony). LAe VI, cols. 627-628, entry "Toleranz" [tolerance]: The Egyptian was tolerant of foreign peoples in the New Kingdom, especially in the time of Amarna (Hymn to Aton). But the Egyptian people also knew intolerance. Only an Egyptian was called rmT "man". Foreign peoples were generally seen as enemies. Every foreign country was Xsi "miserable"; there was a common feeling that the Egyptian people was superior to other peoples. Additional information can be found in LAe II, cols. 311-312, entry "Fremde, Verhaeltnis zur" [foreign parts, relation to]: A foreign country (xAst) was part of the chaos in contrast to the well-ordered circumstances in Egypt. Their inhabitants as well as their gods are often shown as unrestrained beings (tomb of Haremhab in Sakkara), whereas the Egyptian saw himself as a controlled person. Foreign customs even threatened the Egyptian beyond the grave so that dead bodies had to be returned to Egypt. Egyptians looked at foreigners with contempt and mockery. One did not have a meal together with a foreigner (Herodot). See also LAe II, cols. 305-310, entry "Fremde in Aegypten" [foreigners in Egypt] and other entries. Michael Tilgner mtilgner@baan.nl ============================================================================== From: Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 22:13:55 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL AW: Re: AEL RE: The meaning of KMT In a message dated 98-06-19 19:12:32 EDT, you write: << km "black, dark" (Hannig says "also brown") >> Yes, that may well be. In Semitic "brown" is "khum". Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 21:13:57 +1000 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List From: Mike Dyall-Smith Subject: Re: AEL AW: Re: AEL RE: The meaning of KMT Michael Tilgner wrote: >Rainer Hannig, "Grosses Handwoerterbuch Aegyptisch-Deutsch (2800 - 950 v. >Chr.)", Mainz, 1995: >iwn [general] "color" >imAw "reddish shine/glare", "red mineral" etc...... Michael, how did you do this? Surely you didn't scan the entire dictionary for colour words? Regards, Mike D-S ******************************** Mike Dyall-Smith, Melbourne, Australia m.dyall-smith@microbiology.unimelb.edu.au ******************************** ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 11:17:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Dear Marianne, > "I feel sure that, at least in some Egyptian dialects, /r/ was even vocalized > like something between an "l" and a "w"--like the Polish "l' with a slash > through it. An example of this would be the Egyptian writing of "Israel" or > "ysri3r". Try pronouncing the final /r/ as a "w" and you'll see what I mean." > If what you say is > true, then the /3/ would have been seen as a better candidate to end "ysri3r" > than > /r/. Of course, you might say this is late and the real value of /3/ had been > forgotten. Yes, look at the date of the "Israel Stela". It is 19th Dynasty, and hence {3} was long gone from pronunciation. You need to find a Middle Kingdom example to get anywhere with this discussion. > But even in "Weni", we have a word like "i3rr.t" (vines). Don't you think > such a > term would have been quite a mouthful if /3/ had been *@l ? In Coptic j3rr.t becomes {eloole}, pronounced *'elo'le. Doesn't Loprieno suggest at some point that maybe {r} had really originaly been /l/ and {3} been /R/? I don't know if I agree with him, but it does seem like something funny took place in Egyptian liquids. Thrown into this picture is also the fact that Faiyumic dialect Coptic had no /r/, but only {l}. > >> 1) The Hittites were contemporary to LATE Egyptian, and thus, their data > would be irrelevant to the question, and... > > 2) The Late Egyptian definite article probably was never anything more > than p-, t-, and n- written with syllabic orthography. >> > > The people who were contemporary to Late Egyptian are the only ones > we have who offer us clues as to the pronunciation. And then I have to > admit I am still puzzled by the notion of Middle Egyptian possibly being an > artificial language that was never spoken by anybody! This I certainly would > like to see discussed more. Yes, isn't it frustrating? Just when we start to get bilingual references, Egyptian was already hopelessly losing some of its sounds. The idea with Middle Egyptian is that during the Middle Kingdom people were trying to write like Old Egyptian, while their language was already well on the road to evolving into Late Egyptian, and that Middle Egyptian is a kind of artificial compromise between how they spoke and how they thought they had to write to look erudite. In fact, it is possible that every single stage of Egyptian can be described as such a compromise. So, we might have almost no texts at all which reflect real speech, only artificial recorded literary versions of that speech. Writing is almost always far more conservative than speech. I can assure you that the writing with which I address you, is not the same as the words with which I would speak to you in person, and I am sure that that is true for the majority of people on this list. I can also assure you that the spellings which I employ, except for when I make spelling *airs*, does not much reflect the way my words would sound if you actually could hear me saying them instead of reading them off of a screen. Moreover, each person reading this list probably has a different dialect or accent in their spoken English, and, if they wrote to us exactly as they spoke, sometimes, we might not even recognize what they were saying to us at all. So, my point is that academic English is very much like Middle Egyptian. It is artifial because almost no one SPEAKS it. If one is going to cut words into stone, or even to bother writing them down, assuming that there is a larger readership, then one is most likely to strive toward more presetigeous varieties of language. And, when one is actually incapable of producing the highest callibre of prestige language, one does the best that one can and "fudges" one's way. Often the inconsistencies which we find in Middle Egyptian texts are the most informative parts of them with regard to how well connected people were in reality to what they were writing. And, believe me, I don't use this many instances of "one" in every day speech, but American academics are now taught "Political Correctness", so that one must avoid gender-specific pronouns, as well as too much use of the first or second person pronouns, so one now has to write stiltedly like what one wrote above. ;-P Yours, Geoff Graham ============================================================================== From: Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 19:25:50 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? In a message dated 98-06-20 14:32:34 EDT, you write: << > But even in "Weni", we have a word like "i3rr.t" (vines). Don't you think > such a > term would have been quite a mouthful if /3/ had been *@l ?>> >> In Coptic j3rr.t becomes {eloole}, pronounced *'elo'le. Doesn't Loprieno suggest at some point that maybe {r} had really originaly been /l/ and {3} been /R/? I don't know if I agree with him, but it does seem like something funny took place in Egyptian liquids. Thrown into this picture is also the fact that Faiyumic dialect Coptic had no /r/, but only {l}.>> I think that "j3rr.t" became "eloole" due to the two "r's" and no influence from the /3/ . I also think precisely because of what I wrote above, what you wrote below it happened. (snip) > The people who were contemporary to Late Egyptian are the only ones > we have who offer us clues as to the pronunciation. And then I have to > admit I am still puzzled by the notion of Middle Egyptian possibly being an > artificial language that was never spoken by anybody! This I certainly would > like to see discussed more. >>Yes, isn't it frustrating? Just when we start to get bilingual references, Egyptian was already hopelessly losing some of its sounds. The idea with Middle Egyptian is that during the Middle Kingdom people were trying to write like Old Egyptian, while their language was already well on the road to evolving into Late Egyptian, and that Middle Egyptian is a kind of artificial compromise between how they spoke and how they thought they had to write to look erudite. >> This certainly makes sense to me, but I still don't see any overwhelming evidence for the /3/ being anything *radically* different (in vocalization) in the Middle Kingdom from what we see it being used for in the syllabic orthography. As for the examples from Semitic I gave before, for every "k3m" (vineyard) there is also an "3H" (food) that corresponds to a Semitic term like "okhel" (food)--if you see what I'm driving at. If you look at words where the following combinations are in initial place, in my view a pattern like this emerges: 3 alone = a short vowel sound like "e" or "a" i3 = "ah" or "ey" i< = "yo" or "ya" yi = "aye" iw = "uh" i alone = some short vowel sound ("i" seems to be the real Egyptian glottal stop) // = "ee" w = "oo" or "uh" y = making a "y" sound as in the English "yard". plus there are a couple of other combinations involving other glyphs The above doesn't make too much sense in every case, but that, as far as I can see, is what Coptic and Greek seem to indicate. As I said, all these combinations occupy initial place (except "//"). What happens to the combinations in other places I haven't looked into. It might not differ much. Another possibility of creating a kind of "l" sound we can look into is the combination of "iw" or any combination that has a sound like "aye". These are interchangeable with '"l" in many instances--Egyptian "iwn" (color) for Semitic "lon" of the same meaning. We see this, as another example, in the Latin term "folia" (leaf) which became "foyu" in Romanian. Just as Arabic "hal om" (today) is "hayyom" in Hebrew. As I say, these two combinations are interchangeable and so we can't swear that "iw" in Egyptian couldn't have had an "l" vocalization. Things like this are quite curious, wouldn't you agree?: Egypt: h3i or h3iw (meaning "hail") h3w (meaning "hall) i3yt (meaning "old", Ger. "alt") We could find a lot of such curiosities if we tried and, although people don't like to see Egyptian as part of any IE picture, it certainly gives one a small pause as to what the real Egyptian pronounciations of the above actually were. >> In fact, it is possible that every single stage of Egyptian can be described as such a compromise. So, we might have almost no texts at all which reflect real speech, only artificial recorded literary versions of that speech. Writing is almost always far more conservative than speech. I can assure you that the writing with which I address you, is not the same as the words with which I would speak to you in person, and I am sure that that is true for the majority of people on this list. I can also assure you that the spellings which I employ, except for when I make spelling *airs*, does not much reflect the way my words would sound if you actually could hear me saying them instead of reading them off of a screen. >> You are right, but I'm not sure this actually matters much. And there are always people who will speak pretty much as they write. They are a little intimidating, but... People are notoriously careless in their pronunciations and, in a stratified society, the more careless , the lower the class of the person. Remember how important Eliza Dolittle thought it was to enunciate properly? Still, the spelling of a word should be part of a standard and this standard changes very slowly although pronunciation can change much more swiftly. For example, standard British pronunciation has changed quite a bit since WWII veering toward a less "plummy" and more "mid-Atlantic" accent like the Prince of Wales used to affect before the war. However, the generation before him still spoke in a very plummy Victorian way that is not much heard anymore except perhaps in a send-up of an old fuddy-duddy from the "old school". It has been remarked, for example, the Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's PM, pronounced "gold" like "gould". Every Briton on this list will know exactly what I mean by all this. In America, just since the war a great many people have taken to pronouncing "ask" like "axe" and otherwise making quite a lot of changes to American English that may, in time, become the majority pronunciation--who knows? But spelling takes a very long time to change and sometimes two ways can coexist like "Christmas" and "Xmas" and "nite" and "night". The Egyptian language had a long time to change and it certainly did in the grammar but if you take individual Middle, Late and Coptic terms and compare them, don't you think there will be a lot more sameness than radical difference? We don't pronounce the grammar--just the individual words--one at a time. >> Moreover, each person reading this list probably has a different dialect or accent in their spoken English, and, if they wrote to us exactly as they spoke, sometimes, we might not even recognize what they were saying to us at all. >> Yes, and that is why it is so important to have a standard in the written language-- like Middle Egyptian. Since, as an example, that /x/ to /S/ didn't occur overnight and was probably a regional thing, one ancient Egyptian may have thought the speech of a fellow some miles up the Nile very strange to the ears. >> So, my point is that academic English is very much like Middle Egyptian. It is artifial because almost no one SPEAKS it. If one is going to cut words into stone, or even to bother writing them down, assuming that there is a larger readership, then one is most likely to strive toward more presetigeous varieties of language. And, when one is actually incapable of producing the highest callibre of prestige language, one does the best that one can and "fudges" one's way. Often the inconsistencies which we find in Middle Egyptian texts are the most informative parts of them with regard to how well connected people were in reality to what they were writing. And, believe me, I don't use this many instances of "one" in every day speech, but American academics are now taught "Political Correctness", so that one must avoid gender-specific pronouns, as well as too much use of the first or second person pronouns, so one now has to write stiltedly like what one wrote above. ;-P>> True, but, in actuality, an educated man like yourself, although certainly you don't use "one" or "must" in your speech, still speaks correct English (for an American) and I doubt if the above came out of your mouth instead of your keyboard it would be so different as to look like a whole other version of a language. Now I live in Minnesota and we have our little ways here. Until I saw the film "Fargo" I never realized how much most of us here say the Scandinavian "Ya" with every other breath. When I really started "listening" to people around me, I realized this is exactly what we do and it is really rather amusing because a great many of us are not of Scandinavian background at all. Geoff, you are always good for a lively discussion. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 14:55:39 +1100 To: Ancient Egyptian Language From: Mike Dyall-Smith Subject: AEL home/Gardiner Dear AEL members, Just letting you know that Mark has put in a link from the AEL home page to the Gardiner material. I am gradually sifting through it and revising the format and content (so it is very much 'work in progress'). I've even added something for lesson 1. I realize that I may have dampened the enthusiasm for this thread. My humble apologies. If anyone is willing to contribute further, I will try and be supportive. Given the new grammars coming out by Boyo O. and Mark C., there may be a limited window of opportunity for Gardiner before we move onto the 'new boys on the block'. BTW, has anyone noticed the new home page for the AEL? Finally, who is going to push on with Wni ?? Are we mainly on semester break at the moment or is the world cup soccer exhausting us all ? Best wishes, Mike Dyall-Smith Melbourne ============================================================================== From: Michael Tilgner To: 'Ancient Egyptian Language List' Subject: AEL AW: Re: AEL AW: Re: AEL RE: The meaning of KMT Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 14:14:16 +0200 Mike Dyall-Smith wrote: > Michael Tilgner wrote: > > >Rainer Hannig, "Grosses Handwoerterbuch Aegyptisch-Deutsch (2800 - 950 v. > >Chr.)", Mainz, 1995: > > >iwn [general] "color" > >imAw "reddish shine/glare", "red mineral" > > etc...... > > > Michael, how did you do this? Surely you didn't scan the entire dictionary > for colour words? Dear Mike, as a starting point I used "Lexikon der Aegyptologie" [LAe], Vol. II, cols. 117-128, entry "Farben" [colors] and checked the words in Hannig's "Handwoerterbuch", using only those words and translations which I found in this dictionary. BTW, I realize that many problems in AEL and EEF had been described, discussed or solved before in the LAe. It is an encyclopedia of egyptology in 7 volumes; most articles are written in "egyptological German", some in egyptological English and French. It contains a rich treasure of information. Unfortunately its price is excessively high; I got my copy from an antiquarian bookshop. This leads to me another question: Which languages should a "serious" egyptologist know, if he is not a linguist, to understand or translate ancient texts and read contemporary relevant articles and books? Modern: English, French, German. Dutch? Italian? Russian? Polish? Czech? Arabic? Ancient: Greek, Latin. Naturally Old, Middle, New Egyptian, Demotic, Coptic. What about Akkadian? Hittite? Any omissions, additions? Best wishes, Michael Tilgner mtilgner@baan.nl ============================================================================== From: Michael Tilgner To: 'Ancient Egyptian Language List' Subject: AEL AW: AEL Artifical AEL Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 14:16:26 +0200 Michael Akard wrote: > Middle Egyptian an artificial language? Interesting idea. There have been, > and are, other artificial languages in widespread use; artificial in the sense > that they must be learned through academic media and no native speakers exist. > Esperanto is one, but perhaps a rather extreme example. This is indeed a very interesting question! But first we should define what we want to understand as an "artificial" language. Esperanto is a constructed language using some parts of Romanic and Germanic languages. It never was a language of a people somewhere evolving naturally. But now we have a community of Esperanto speakers all over the world. Nevertheless I would agree it is an "artificial" language, e.g. an artificially created language. > How about Modern > Standard Arabic? It's based on Classical (that is, Qur'anic) Arabic, but is > only spoken in formal, academic settings. Outside of the classroom or lecture > hall, the speaker/professor/politician returns to the local dialect. In many countries one dialect became the standard of a language. In Europe this process started with the invention of printing and the translation of the Bible at the beginning of modern age. Nowadays this process of standardization is furthered by the media (newspapers, radio, TV). In some cases the reference is not a local dialect, but a sociolect - the language spoken by a certain social group, mostly by the religious or political elite -, may be in the case of Modern Arabic and, I believe, in Japan. So we have here some native speakers, too. Therefore the language is not "artifical", though it may sound strange to the ordinary people. > Classical Arabic as it has come down to us was never spoken > either, since the only codifications we have of it are works of poetry, such > as the Qur'an It is now commonly accepted in linguistics that the written form of a language has its own phenomena and rules and is not only a codification of the spoken language. I would not accept that the use of writing be termed "artificial". > I can't agree that academic English is artificial. > my spoken > dialect is pretty much standard/academic, and I do not shift my lexicon, > grammar or pronunciation when I'm among my academic colleagues or when I come > how to my family. I don't believe it. In academic circles one is using a special language (register, variety) which has its own vocabulary (lexicon, terminology) and its own syntax, which is derived from the common syntax, but uses some features more often than others. Examples: special languages of law, mathematics, technology, philosophy, egyptology etc., especially in written texts. I would agree that these kinds of a language are not "artificial" either. > the question of ME being an artifical language. To summarize: - ME was not a constructed language like Esperanto. Later it became a dead language and was used like Latin in the Middle Ages. - ME is a standard reference. We do not know much about dialects in Ancient Egypt, but there were differences between Upper and Lower Egypt. - ME is known only from written texts. Some speech utterances can be found in speech captions of the Old Kingdom (and later). But, however, ME is "artificial" or "artistic" in the sense that it used special stylistic means (for example "parallelismus membrorum") and a fixed phraseology. Best wishes, Michael Tilgner mtilgner@baan.nl ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 09:56:47 -0400 (EDT) From: Geoffrey Graham To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Dear Marianne, > I think that "j3rr.t" became "eloole" due to the two "r's" and no influence > from > the /3/ . I also think precisely because of what I wrote above, what you > wrote > below it happened. Well, yes, you are right. The value of {3} as /l/, if such was ever the case, cannot have survived into Coptic at all, so the {l}s in {eloole}, must come from the {r}s of the earlier word. > This certainly makes sense to me, but I still don't see any overwhelming > evidence > for the /3/ being anything *radically* different (in vocalization) in the > Middle Kingdom from what we see it being used for in the syllabic orthography. > As for the examples from Semitic I gave before, for every "k3m" (vineyard) > there is also an "3H" (food) that corresponds to a Semitic term like "okhel" > (food)--if you see what I'm driving at. In order for you to see what I have been trying to explain about the difference, you would have to read a large corpus of Middle Kingdom and earlier texts, and then, read a large corpus of 2nd Intermediate and later texts while noting how the Egyptian vulture sign gets used in the two stages of the language. What you would notice, if you are like any of the other scholars who have spent considerable time on this, is that Old and Middle Egyptian had {3} as a very stable, consistent, and predictable radical in verbs and their derivative nouns and adjectives. One could characterize {3} of the Old and Middle Kingdoms as a "strong consonant", just like {p}, {k}, {s}, etc... (consonants which do not tend to inexplicably dissappear and appear, as in the case of {j} or {w}), consonants which do not tend to get lost or drop unexpectedly from spellings. Were {3} anything vocallic or the glottal stop during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, it could not behave in this fashion. I won't even speak of how weak vowels can be, but glottal stops, in the languages which employ them, are NOTORIOUSLY weak, and can appear or disappear at the drop of a hat. Thus, calling early {3} a "glottal stop" does not seem logically like a serious option, not if we are to take the behaviour of this grapheme seriously in the earlier stages of the language. So, number one, we are already therefore hunting for a more stable value for {3} right from the start. What we know it can't be is any weak consonant of the types: /'/, /y/, or /w/. Beyond, these, it could then be almost anything. Number two is that it has to have been of a consonantal type which could later have slipped from the strong category into the weak category, as you will see below. The most likely candidates for this are trickier business, but liquids are prime candidates. The reason that people have opted for a liquid designation is, as you already know, because of the Semitic cognates, the foreign transcriptions back and forth, the syllabic orthographies, etc., etc., etc... Now, continuing in the previous discussion, of what you might see if you worked on Late Egyptian texts, only after having an extremely solid basis in Middle Egyptian texts... Quite suddenly, at least by the advent of the New Kingdom, {3} no longer behaves like a strong consonant. Suddenly, {3} becomes almost "optional", as if its presence or absence were really inconsequential, in many cases. Some words continued to be written with their traditional orthographies, but in some cases even these start to see odd spelling errors, where {3} is followed by or completely replaced by {y}. In some cases, {j} already begins to take its place in initial position as well. In Demotic this transformation is absolutely irreversable, because there one finds that {3} can stand in for, or be replaced by {j}, {y}, and {`}, and most all examples of final {3} are only written with {y}. Coptic shows us the last tiny bit of evidence, and that is that there simply was no remaining correlation between much of anything in the language with what had formerly been {3}. You can find final {i} standing in for older {3}, or you can find virtually any vowel, but particularly long ones like {O} and {E} standing in for it in initial and medial positions. I wish I could help you to see it more clearly than this, but until you have worked with texts from both periods systematically for a longer period of time, it will not yet become evident, and you can only take the words of other scholars who have done this. Some things cannot be imparted by mere words, you need the practical experience of the sheer numbers of instances in order to be able to finally get it. When I say something like "usually/mostly/many/more/lots, etc..." that does not necessarily mean anything significant to you, and I can well understand why. Until someone actually records all Egyptian texts into a single database, categorizes them by exact date, and sets up a mechanism to get actual percentages, noting exact positions within syllables, etc., there will be no way to accurately quantify such data and make it absolutely clear to all future students. In essence, each one of us has to wade into the subject with our own bare feet, until they get thoroughly soaked, and then they have a concept, a FEELING for what really is taking place... their feet are WET, so they now know what "wet" is, and they understand some things about which they can only speak in terms like "lots/much/mostly, etc." > If you look at words where the following combinations are in initial place, > in my view a pattern like this emerges: > > 3 alone = a short vowel sound like "e" or "a" > i3 = "ah" or "ey" > i< = "yo" or "ya" > yi = "aye" > iw = "uh" > i alone = some short vowel sound ("i" seems to be the real Egyptian > glottal stop) > // = "ee" > w = "oo" or "uh" > y = making a "y" sound as in the English "yard". > plus there are a couple of other combinations involving other glyphs I am afraid that such one-for-one correspondences do not work in this picture. For a good discussion of the problem with lots of examples of everything that {3} appears to "become", you should consult Adolf Erman's multi-volume work on ancient Egyptian, the title of which slips my mind.... Maybe someone else on the list can tell us the exact reference? > The above doesn't make too much sense in every case, but that, as far as > I can see, is what Coptic and Greek seem to indicate. As I said, all these > combinations occupy initial place (except "//"). What happens to the > combinations in other places I haven't looked into. It might not differ much. > Another possibility of creating a kind of "l" sound we can look into is the > combination of "iw" or any combination that has a sound like "aye". These are > interchangeable with '"l" in > many instances--Egyptian "iwn" (color) for Semitic "lon" of the same meaning. > We > see this, as another example, in the Latin term "folia" (leaf) which became > "foyu" > in Romanian. Just as Arabic "hal om" (today) is "hayyom" in Hebrew. Don't you mean Arabic al-yOm? As I > say, these two combinations are interchangeable and so we can't swear that > "iw" in Egyptian couldn't have had an "l" vocalization. Things like this are > quite curious, > wouldn't you agree?: Yes I would agree. > Egypt: h3i or h3iw (meaning "hail") > h3w (meaning "hall) > i3yt (meaning "old", Ger. "alt") > We could find a lot of such curiosities if we tried and, although people don't > like to see Egyptian as part of any IE picture, it certainly gives one a small > pause as to what the real Egyptian pronounciations of the above actually were. Well, you know what I think of this kind of connection, but I note that it works with {3} as /l/ just as well as {3} as something else, so you might want to step back and question whether the methodology is sound, since you'd expect it to be consistent if nothing else. > You are right, but I'm not sure this actually matters much. And there are > always people who will speak pretty much as they write. Well, yes, there are always people, even in Arabic society, where the "diglossia" (perhaps better referred to as a "post-creaolization continuum") problem is much more marked than it is in English, people who speak something much closer to the "standard/prestige" variety of the language. However, on closer examination, it always turns out that they do not speak the prestige language EXACTLY. There are small details which they have not noticed, let slip by, perhaps because the issue of class v/s language is such a heated and sensitive topic, that they do not wish to see the places where they and all others diverge from the ideal standard. For instance, I speak something which is extremely close to academic English, however, I do not use academic grammar in my speech. Like most other Americans, I do not actively use "whom" anymore, although I consistently TRY to write it. When I am speaking with my close family members I do not enunciate "I am go-ing to do it", but rather I say "I'm gunna do it", or even, if said rather quickly, "I-munna do it". Now these are just a few small examples, but I am sure that if one were to study all of my spoken deviations from academic English, even though, to the average American listener, I seem to totally SPEAK academic English, one would discover that I do not, in fact, realistically speak this. I merely speak the closest thing possible. [snip interesting comments on Engllish dialects] > not of Scandinavian background at all. Geoff, you are always good for a > lively discussion. Thank you, Marianne! You know I love talking about this stuff with you, of course. Yours, Geoff ============================================================================== From: "Mark Wilson" To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 17:25:52 +0000 Subject: AEL Administrative Over the last few days a number of posts have been submitted for distribution to this list which have contained discussions of racial issues. Such discussions are far off topic for AEL, and will not make it onto the list. I really do not appreciate it when people make a concerted effort to flout the rules. Please can those of you who feel inclined to discuss these things do so elsewhere. If anyone would like another copy of the AEL scope and rules sending to them, send a message to with the word "help" in the message body. Remember that "persistent or egregious infringement of the rules WILL result in you being removed from the list". Thank you, Mark Wilson AEL-Owner. -- Mark Wilson weneg@rostau.demon.co.uk http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/index.html ============================================================================== From: Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 12:01:33 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: Re: AEL Artifical AEL Hi Marrianne and everyone! < Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 13:07:10 EDT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Subject: AEL Re: AEL Aleph: a glide or glottal stop? Geoff, I am just taking a couple of things from what you wrote, since it is too long for me to quote in entirety and I am not capable of commenting on it all, anyway. Clearly, I am not commenting as any kind of expert (in case it isn't only too obvious). Just my observations, which in time may change to other observations entirely. You can just consider them "wondering statements", if you like and not pronouncements. I said: > This certainly makes sense to me, but I still don't see any overwhelming > evidence > for the /3/ being anything *radically* different (in vocalization) in the > Middle Kingdom from what we see it being used for in the syllabic orthography. > As for the examples from Semitic I gave before, for every "k3m" (vineyard) > there is also an "3H" (food) that corresponds to a Semitic term like "okhel" > (food)--if you see what I'm driving at. Geoff said: >>Quite suddenly, at least by the advent of the New Kingdom, {3} no longer behaves like a strong consonant. Suddenly, {3} becomes almost "optional", as if its presence or absence were really inconsequential, in many cases. >> Well, do you mean here that there is a blank in the spelling where /3/ used to be or that /i/ has been substituted? In Coptic, there sometimes is a blank where /3/ once was in initial place--but more often /3/ is represented by a letter of the Coptic alphabet and not always the same one. >>Some words continued to be written with their traditional orthographies, but in some cases even these start to see odd spelling errors, where {3} is followed by or completely replaced by {y}. In some cases, {j} already begins to take its place in initial position as well. In Demotic this transformation is absolutely irreversable, because there one finds that {3} can stand in for, or be replaced by {j}, {y}, and {`}, and most all examples of final {3} are only written with {y}.>> Somehow, this doesn't seem remarkable to me at all. If /3/ and /i/ were both used as glottal stops in the initial position in the words that I studied (as borne out by Coptic pronunciations of said terms), with much the same pronunciation, why would they not be seen as interchangeable after awhile? Isn't /3/ followed by /i/ in Middle Egyptian ever? >>So, number one, we are already therefore hunting for a more stable value for {3} right from the start. What we know it can't be is any weak consonant of the types: /'/, /y/, or /w/. Beyond, these, it could then be almost anything. Number two is that it has to have been of a consonantal type which could later have slipped from the strong category into the weak category, as you will see below. The most likely candidates for this are trickier business, but liquids are prime candidates.>> You could reason that way, but you could also reason, I think, as I have above. /3/ and /i/--no big difference--no big deal. That is not to say that /3/ and /i/ were not supposed to have a different pronunciation at one time, but that ideal may have long fallen by the wayside and by Demotic nobody heard any difference at all. I said I thought new spelling evolved slowly, but it *does* happen eventually, as witnessed by the difference in English spelling between now and, say, Elizabethan times. I can't see why /3/ *has* to have been something like a glide because it eventually got written as /i/. >> The reason that people have opted for a liquid designation is, as you already know, because of the Semitic cognates, the foreign transcriptions back and forth, the syllabic orthographies, etc., etc., etc... >> Well, are they "cognates" or borrowings? I would like to see some proof of the former. If they are only borrowings, there is a good chance the Semitic "r" could have been left out due to the way the Egyptians pronounced the borrowed terms. It seems to me I have seen "garden/vineyard" written both as "k3m" and "k3mu" in Egyptian using the *upraised arms* sign which is the biluteral "k3" and has never been suspected of being "k3(r)". We can't have it both ways. And what can you show me from "foreign transcriptions" that show /3/ to have been a glide? Syllabic orthography, IMO, doesn't show it to have been a glide at all. > see this, as another example, in the Latin term "folia" (leaf) which became > "foyu" > in Romanian. Just as Arabic "hal om" (today) is "hayyom" in Hebrew. >Don't you mean Arabic al-yOm? Yes! Arabic is one alphabet I can't read. I have never seen anything spelled out in that language--just know some by ear. That's how it sounds to me. Anyway, the point is still the same--Arabic contains the "l'" and Hebrew doesn't because of the interchangeability of "l" and a "y" sound. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Michael Tilgner To: 'Ancient Egyptian Language List' Subject: AEL AW: AEL Re: Re: AEL Artifical AEL Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 20:18:15 +0200 Michael Akard wrote: > But did > somebody say Middle Egyptian was never a spoken language? Again, what does > that mean? Do we mean that the ME vocabulary was never part of AE? The egyptological discussion can be summarized as follows: We do have actual speech forms in Egyptian texts. "Non-literary examples are the 'speeches and calls' written near the people shown in action in the mastaba decoration. It is important to remark the quite colloquial type of language used in this case, as opposed to the highly rhetorical qualities of the dialog employed in the Pyramid Texts ... The classic literature often employs the dialog." ("Lexikon der Aegyptologie", Vol. I, cols. 1075-1079, entry "Dialog") On the other hand: The salutations and speech captions in the mastabas as well as colloquial or non-literary texts of later times cannot be seen as adequate reproductions of actual speech utterances: - Their grammar is in general agreement with other literary texts of the time. - Speech constructions and expressions are repeated and become fixed topics. - There are no distinctions between colloquial and literary language. These observations show the influence of the literary language on the reproduction of spoken language. In addition the lack of dialectical phenomena in these texts hamper the dialectological analysis. ("Lexikon der Aegyptologie", Vol. V, cols. 1214-1219, entry "Sprechen" [speaking]) As a consequence we have to conclude that spoken ME escapes our attempts to analyze it. Application of the "theory of speech acts" and "discourse analysis" to Egyptian texts is questionable. But there are no indications that written ME was completely different to spoken ME, that it was an artificial language with its own vocabulary and grammar. Obviously it realized a certain standard and used special stylistic means in written texts, including the parts representing actual speech forms. I believe that it will not be possible to advance this question further without new evidence. Best wishes, Michael Tilgner mtilgner@baan.nl ==============================================================================