From: UrHekau@aol.com Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 11:00:26 EDT Subject: Re: AEL Mummy inscription, KV55. To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Someone wrote to me privately and told me that the original query was about a "prayer" associated with the KV55 coffin. The only prayer that I know of was at the base of the coffin, on the outside. I know of no prayer or poem incised on gold foil on the inside of the coffin. However, if anyone still needs to know what the prayer on the coffin base says, I would be happy to supply that. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: "Randall Larsen" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL verb: gb(b) Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 08:25:50 -1000 Robert Allan, Try the on-line worterbuch slip archive, Hannig, and Faulkner, respectively. The slip archive is at this URL: http://aaew.bbaw.de:88/dzaInfo/dzaInfoE.html Randall Larsen University of Hawaii George 334 larsenr@hawaii.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: Robert Allan To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Sent: Sunday, July 09, 2000 2:18 AM Subject: Re: AEL verb: gb(b) > --- See http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/ for AEL resources. > --- Copyright in the following belongs to the undersigned. > --- To reply privately, send to rallan@mac.com > > AEL all > I am currently looking for any texts which feature verb gb(b) 'to fell (an > enemy)'. I know this meaning is found in Pyr. Text 678, but does anyone know > if it occurs elsewhere? > > Thanks > > Robert Allan > ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 00:22:23 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jerome S. Colburn" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Help with shabti translation On Sun, 9 Jul 2000, Alison Lander wrote: > The description I was given was "Lightblue faience Ushabti from the priest Horem-Heb, son of Ankh-Pa-Cheret, the mother's name is Ta-Cheret-en-Ta-Ihet. Height 11.5cm. Egypt, 27th dynasty, ca 5th c. BC" Well, I'm not much up on 27th Dyn, but I could find the names. > > My attempt so far of the front is: > > ?1 --probably T3 I10 N8 D4 Q1 R8 D21 N35 Q3 ?2 ?3 Aa11 O22 V30 Well, O22 V30 doesn't read xrw as would be required for the reading "justified." Your bird would be G3, and the next sign would be Aa15, and the last two together make W4, read Hr-m-HAb as described. ?4 ?4 N35 S34 Q3 A17 There's anx-p-Xrd. > > And the reverse: > D4 N35 V30 ?5 Q3 X1 G1 A17 X1 M17 V28 M2 ?6 tA-Xrd-t-iHn? followed by determinative that may be B1 or a feminine form of A52 ********************************** * Jerome Colburn * jscolbur@prairienet.org * im nfr mdw pn m bAH mryw mdw-nTr ********************************** ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 07:59:03 +0200 From: Dimitri MEEKS To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL verb: gb(b) 1) Pyr 678b is not gb(b) but gbgb ; 2) the verb gbgb (Woerterbuch V, 165, 3 ; Faulkner, 289) is quite well attested. Some references, not in these dictionaries : CT VII, 20 u; pBeatty VII, r=B0 8, 3; HPBM IV, 2 n. 11 et pl I, 15. See too in P. Wilson, A Ptolemaic Lexikon, 1097. Dimitri Meeks Robert Allan a *crit : > --- See http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/ for AEL resources. > --- Copyright in the following belongs to the undersigned. > --- To reply privately, send to rallan@mac.com > > AEL all > I am currently looking for any texts which feature verb gb(b) 'to fell (an > enemy)'. I know this meaning is found in Pyr. Text 678, but does anyone know > if it occurs elsewhere? > > Thanks > > Robert Allan ============================================================================== From: "Randall Larsen" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Cc: Subject: Re: AEL verb: gb(b) Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 21:40:06 -1000 M.dyall-Smith, Try this URL for the online Worterbuch slip archive: http://aaew.bbaw.de:88/indexE.html try the frameless version. It may be that your Internet Service provider is blocking access due to high traffic into Europe. The site appears to be up at the moment. It could be a problem with your browser. As far as I know the site is NOT password protected. Are you using IE5.0? I know it works with IE 5.0. It should also work with a late version of Netscape. You may need to have no some security feature. kind regards, Randall Larsen University of Hawaii larsenr@hawaii.edu ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 21:51:47 +0200 From: Adolf Devis To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL verb: gb(b) Also, java (not only javascript) must be enabled in your browser. Hope this helps ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 03:34:31 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jerome S. Colburn" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian? On Sun, 9 Jul 2000 UrHekau@aol.com wrote: > One can only make so many assumptions about Manetho. He is a pretty shadowy > person, after all. His knowledge of hieroglyphs is open to question, in my > view, because, had he been able to read the serekhs and cartouches with > ease, what was preventing him from transliterating them in a proper fashion > in the Greek alphabet, even putting vowels wherever he knew they existed in > the pronunciation? I think we are able to "interpret" Manetho's kinglist > because of our own knowledge of Egyptian phonology--not because Manetho > renders the names in the clearest possible fashion. More about this anon. OK. Where, as is often the case, a name in the surviving traditions of Manetho doesn't agree with what we expect to see based on the hieroglyphs, there can be any combination of several causes at work: a. Manetho got it wrong. b. Manetho got it right, but our understanding of the roots and morphemes of the name in Egyptian is deficient. c. Manetho got it right, but our understanding of the vocalism and historical phonology of the name is deficient. d. Manetho got it right, but what he wrote was garbled during the process of copying, recopying, extracting, editing and quoting (all in Greek) that eventually led to the particular tradition in question. That's what I meant when I wrote: > > To be able to study how well Manetho read Egyptian, (i.e., to be able to discern the operation of cause "a") one would need a > > complete grasp of all that's known about Egyptian historical phonology and > > reconstruction, (i.e., to be able to identify the effects of causes "b" and "c" and thus to distinguish them from those of causes "a" and "d") together with more than can be known about the textual > > history of the renderings of Manetho we have. (i.e., to be able to identify the effects of cause "d" and thus to distinguish them from those of causes "a"-"c") > > paragraph 3: Since "Harmesses Miamoun" appears only in Josephus, it seems > > most likely to have originated in the transmission of the text he used. It > > would be just a matter of transposing two letters in Greek. > > But why should this writing be in Josephus's copy and not in other versions? > Perhaps the other chronographers had the knowledge to reject the writing out > of hand--whereas Josephus did not. Both common sense and text critical practice maintain that if there are several parallel versions of a text, and one of them contains an error, it's much more likely that the error arose in the transmission of that one version rather than that it was present in the original and all but that one version corrected it. That's why I think "Harmesses" is the result of an error in the transmission of the Greek text that Josephus used; sorry if my digression on an alternative obscured that point. I'll send separate posts about snfrw and HA.t-Sps.w.t, because I'd like to see the rest of the list involved in them. > > paragraph 6: I'm not convinced that the ho:tep in iy-m-Htp, which contains > > a long stressed vowel, can really be found in the tail end of Tosorthros. > > For the second member of Htp-Hr=s, we have Coptic (SB) hra=s, so I'd > > expect something like *"Ephras," not "Tyreis." > > Like you, I have seen "Htp" made short work of in various ways and don't > doubt at all that "Tyreis" is possible for "Hetep-heres". Of course, what happens to "Htp" or any other root, phonologically, depends on the grammatical form as well as the prosodic role of the word within the name as a whole. > But, it seems to me that, in > general, Manetho might have written the kingly names with at least as much > accuracy as, say, the surviving Egyptian word-elements appear in a Coptic > dictionary! ...bearing in mind that Manetho represents one of the *earliest* efforts to render a large amount of Egyptian into Greek script. Even the Old Coptic magical papyri were centuries later. > Instead, his pharaonic names are rendered with as much mumbling > omission of consonants and elements as are reflected in the modern Egyptian > toponyms differing from their ancient counterparts, as they were written. > Naturally, toponyms would be handed down in "peasant" speech but, somehow, > this is hardly what one would expect from a person well-schooled in Egyptian > letters. Well, what's happened to the toponyms is that they've become loanwords from Coptic into Arabic. Manetho's names are loanwords from the Egyptian of his day into Greek. ********************************** * Jerome Colburn * jscolbur@prairienet.org * im nfr mdw pn m bAH mryw mdw-nTr ********************************** ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 04:24:40 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jerome S. Colburn" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: caus. 3-lit. (was: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian?) Dd.n=i: > > paragraph 5: The name of snfrw should probably be rendered, in the usual > > "graecizing or copticizing" form, as senfo:re, [...] > > Then his version could go back to a more ancient version of the > > name, *senforwey > *sfor'e >? sore. wn.in Marianne Luban (UrHekau@aol.com) Hr Dd: > I can't follow this. Why "senforwy" for Sneferu? [...] > I > would say "Snofri" would be a fair approximation of how this name should have > been said. > There aren't a lot of good reasons for supposing a stressed vowel in between the n and the f, and plenty of good reasons for putting them together. snfrw is clearly based on the caus. 3-lit. verb snfr, and in the forms that survive in Coptic of the caus. 3-lit. stems, vowels are placed after the s and between the last two radicals. Similarly, in the related caus. 2-gem., the last two radicals are separated (sqbb=f even in what Gardiner called the "perfective sDm=f"). The corresponding stems in Semitic behave similarly. Hence, we should expect that the vowel pattern in the name would contain svnfvr-, not snvfr-. The vocalization *Hasfo:n > Greek Asphynis, modern Asfu:n for the town once called Hw.t-snfrw points to the stressed vowel being the one between the last two radicals, and to it having o-color < Egyptian */a/ rather than e-color < Egyptian */i/ or */u/. (Greek y in toponyms, etc., corresponds to Coptic o:, e.g., Athyr = Copt. Hato:r < Hw.t-Hrw.) The metathesis of the two sonorants r and n and the loss of the r are easily understood, putting the weakest consonant in the syllable between a secondary and primary stress. The remaining question is the discrepancy between the o: in Hasfo:n and the short o indicated by Manetho's omega (which corresponds to omicron in Coptic, as I said earlier). The -w also has to be parsed. The w seems to be from the 1. sg. dependent pronoun. At least there is a later name, snfr-w(i)-ptH, where w is so understood. The verb may be an imperative or a sDm=f. Fecht has shown that in older Egyptian, the dependent pronoun drew the stress onto the last syllable of the preceding word, so we should expect *svn'far-wvy for this combination. That's what could have been *sfore to Manetho. The long vowel in Hasfo:n, going back to *-svn'fa:rvw, must reflect a tradition in which the understanding of -w as representing -wi was lost, and the name was reanalyzed -- before the emergence of the secondary lengthening of stressed vowels in nonfinal open syllables. wnw.t pw n sDr nnk! ********************************** * Jerome Colburn * jscolbur@prairienet.org * im nfr mdw pn m bAH mryw mdw-nTr ********************************** ============================================================================== From: UrHekau@aol.com Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 15:37:23 EDT Subject: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian? To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk In a message dated 7/12/00 12:58:44 PM Central Daylight Time, jscolbur@prairienet.org writes: > > On Sun, 9 Jul 2000 UrHekau@aol.com wrote: > > > One can only make so many assumptions about Manetho. He is a pretty > shadowy > > person, after all. His knowledge of hieroglyphs is open to question, in > my > > view, because, had he been able to read the serekhs and cartouches with > > ease, what was preventing him from transliterating them in a proper > fashion > > in the Greek alphabet, even putting vowels wherever he knew they existed > in > > the pronunciation? I think we are able to "interpret" Manetho's kinglist > > because of our own knowledge of Egyptian phonology--not because Manetho > > renders the names in the clearest possible fashion. More about this anon. > > OK. Where, as is often the case, a name in the surviving traditions of > Manetho doesn't agree with what we expect to see based on the hieroglyphs, > there can be any combination of several causes at work: > > a. Manetho got it wrong. > b. Manetho got it right, but our understanding of the roots and morphemes > of the name in Egyptian is deficient. I really can't say I think these factors are very significant in names *usually* unless the name contains a verb such as "Merefnebef". But morphology would be very limited in any case. > c. Manetho got it right, but our understanding of the vocalism and > historical phonology of the name is deficient. I don't think our understanding is so deficient. I think we have assembled enough examples, here and there, to understand what can have happened. For example, I am not surprised when I see "Skemiophris" for "Sobeknefru" because I know about the occasional *servile* character of /b/ or that perhaps in this case there was metathesis and that the "m" in the name represents the "b". Under these circumstances, to find the /n/ missing would not seem odd at all. > d. Manetho got it right, but what he wrote was garbled during the process > of copying, recopying, extracting, editing and quoting (all in Greek) > that eventually led to the particular tradition in question. I would agree that some of this happened, but my study of the names leads me to doubt it happened very much. I conclude that Manetho's writings of the names reflects their "lowest" pronunciation and this is a mystery to me. > That's what I meant when I wrote: > > > > To be able to study how well Manetho read Egyptian, > (i.e., to be able to discern the operation of cause "a") > > one would need a > > > complete grasp of all that's known about Egyptian historical phonology > and > > > reconstruction, > (i.e., to be able to identify the effects of causes "b" and "c" and thus to > distinguish them from those of causes "a" and "d") > > together with more than can be known about the textual > > > history of the renderings of Manetho we have. > (i.e., to be able to identify the effects of cause "d" and thus to > distinguish them from those of causes "a"-"c") Sure. Agreed. > > > paragraph 3: Since "Harmesses Miamoun" appears only in Josephus, it > seems > > > most likely to have originated in the transmission of the text he used. > It > > > would be just a matter of transposing two letters in Greek. > > > > But why should this writing be in Josephus's copy and not in other > versions? > > Perhaps the other chronographers had the knowledge to reject the writing > out > > of hand--whereas Josephus did not. > > Both common sense and text critical practice maintain that if there are > several parallel versions of a text, and one of them contains an error, > it's much more likely that the error arose in the transmission of that one > version rather than that it was present in the original and all but that > one version corrected it. That's why I think "Harmesses" is the result of > an error in the transmission of the Greek text that Josephus used; sorry > if my digression on an alternative obscured that point. I think it's a good conclusion--"a" and "r" accidentally transposed. I can certainly accept it. > I'll send separate posts about snfrw and HA.t-Sps.w.t, because I'd like to > see the rest of the list involved in them. > > > > paragraph 6: I'm not convinced that the ho:tep in iy-m-Htp, which > contains > > > a long stressed vowel, can really be found in the tail end of > Tosorthros. > > > For the second member of Htp-Hr=s, we have Coptic (SB) hra=s, so I'd > > > expect something like *"Ephras," not "Tyreis." > > > > Like you, I have seen "Htp" made short work of in various ways and don't > > doubt at all that "Tyreis" is possible for "Hetep-heres". > > Of course, what happens to "Htp" or any other root, phonologically, > depends on the grammatical form as well as the prosodic role of the word > within the name as a whole. > > > But, it seems to me that, in > > general, Manetho might have written the kingly names with at least as > much > > accuracy as, say, the surviving Egyptian word-elements appear in a Coptic > > dictionary! > > ..bearing in mind that Manetho represents one of the *earliest* efforts > to render a large amount of Egyptian into Greek script. Even the Old > Coptic magical papyri were centuries later. Yes, but my point is this: We get our knowledge of Coptic from Coptic writings, not spoken Coptic. It appears to me that written Coptic preserved the older Egyptian terms very well. Certainly, they are emminently recognizable in written Coptic, for the most part. If Coptic, for example, wrote "noufe" for "nfr" centuries after Manetho lived--why couldn't he at least have written "Sobeknoferw" or something close instead of "Skemiophris" if he knew the Classic Egyptian language? I don't know how many centuries before Manetho the /b/ had been dropped in the pronunciation of the name of the god "Sobek", but at least he could have written "nofri". I don't think Manetho cared anything about the older forms of these names or how they should be properly written. > > Instead, his pharaonic names are rendered with as much mumbling > > omission of consonants and elements as are reflected in the modern > Egyptian > > toponyms differing from their ancient counterparts, as they were written. > > > Naturally, toponyms would be handed down in "peasant" speech but, somehow, > > > this is hardly what one would expect from a person well-schooled in > Egyptian > > letters. > > Well, what's happened to the toponyms is that they've become loanwords > from Coptic into Arabic. Manetho's names are loanwords from the Egyptian > of his day into Greek. I don't know what you mean by "loanwords" in this sense. Toponyms, in my view, are just what certain locales are called. Despite the Greek and Arab conquests, many Egyptian toponyms are still Egytian. That these would be pronounced and even transcribed in a vulgar style is reasonable. But the kingly names? In England, they pronounced St. Paul "Sin' Paul" and St. John "Sin Jin"--but who writes it that way? Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: UrHekau@aol.com Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 14:51:07 EDT Subject: Re: caus. 3-lit. (was: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian?) To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk In a message dated 7/12/00 12:58:41 PM Central Daylight Time, jscolbur@prairienet.org writes: (snip) > The vocalization *Hasfo:n > Greek Asphynis, modern Asfu:n for the town > once called Hw.t-snfrw points to the stressed vowel being the one between > the last two radicals, and to it having o-color < Egyptian */a/ rather > than e-color < Egyptian */i/ or */u/. (Greek y in toponyms, etc., > corresponds to Coptic o:, e.g., Athyr = Copt. Hato:r < Hw.t-Hrw.) There are several Egyptian consonants that are known to have had, at times, a rather *servile* character and could be, in vocalization, assimilated to the next consonant. These were notably,/n/,. /b/ and /m/. Hwt-snfrw became "Asphynis" by virtue of the /n/ in "snfrw" assimilating into the /f/. This is obvious. The rest can only be explained by the weakness of the Egyptian /r/ and its ability to be interchangeable with /n/ in older Egyptian *writings*--reflecting perhaps an interchangeability in pronunciation. But the name of King Sneferu can, IMO, only have become "Soris" by the complete disregard of the "nfr" glyph, as I stated in my paper. Jerome, the Egyptian /f/ was not a weak consonant (some even believe it was "pf", as in the German "Pfund"). It does not disappear, nor did it disappear in "Asphynis". Nor does it disappear in Manetho's "Suphis" (Khufu). The element "nfr"--as far as I can recall, is retained in *all* the rest of Manetho's royal names. It survived into Coptic as "noufe". Therefore, I would think it quite reasonable to believe that "Snofri" is an approximation of how this name was pronounced "in good Egyptian" (as in "ounofer" for "wnnfri") , using Manetho's own substitution of ''i'" for /w/--as this surely was significant. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 03:33:17 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jerome S. Colburn" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: caus. 3-lit. (was: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian?) On Wed, 12 Jul 2000 UrHekau@aol.com wrote: > But > the name of King Sneferu can, IMO, only have become "Soris" by the complete > disregard of the "nfr" glyph, as I stated in my paper. That little word "only"... > Jerome, the Egyptian > /f/ was not a weak consonant (some even believe it was "pf", as in the German > "Pfund"). However, it was weaker than Greek phi (which is why the demotic letter was used instead of the Greek one when the Coptic writing system was devised). It was not exactly matched by any Greek letter. Faced with trying to write a pattern [sfV], some Greek speakers could attempt to approximate the [f] with a phi (whose usual value was [p + h]), as in "Asphynis"; others left the [f] graphically unrepresented, as in "Sardis." > It does not disappear, nor did it disappear in "Asphynis". Nor > does it disappear in Manetho's "Suphis" (Khufu). which is a different phonetic environment. > The element "nfr"--as far > as I can recall, is retained in *all* the rest of Manetho's royal names. which indicates that Manetho wasn't in the *habit* of leaving the /nfr/ glyph out altogether, making it less likely that he did so here. > It > survived into Coptic as "noufe". again, a different phonetic environment, and a different grammatical form. > Therefore, I would think it quite > reasonable to believe that "Snofri" is an approximation of how this name was > pronounced "in good Egyptian" (as in "ounofer" for "wnnfri") , again, a different grammatical form, not immediately relevant to the disposition of vowels in /snfrw/. What reason is there to reconstruct an /o/ in snfrw, except that you admit that Manetho got that much right? Or do you take the vowel from "Asphynis"? If you take *that* name is a reliable guide to the color of the stressed vowel, it also implies that the stressed /o/ has to come *after* the /f/, "Senfori" and not "Snofri" -- as I also argued on the basis of what we can recover of caus. 3-lit syllable structure. That is, there is at *least* as much ground for a vocalization *senfori as for *snofri -- I'd say considerably more. The passage from *senfori to *sfori requires only an elision of the servile /n/ in the unstressed syllable, an understandable change. > using > Manetho's own substitution of ''i'" for /w/--as this surely was significant. Or rather /i/ for the unstressed final vowel in the syllable originally delimited by /w/. I'll grant you the /i/; the difference between the -e I had been using and your -i is but that between Saidic and Bohairic, and because we're talking about an Alexandrian, we go with Bohairic. ********************************** * Jerome Colburn * jscolbur@prairienet.org * im nfr mdw pn m bAH mryw mdw-nTr ********************************** ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 04:00:45 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jerome S. Colburn" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: HA.t-Sps.w.t and Amessis (was: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian?) I would like to see a fair hearing given to Fecht's suggestion that "Amessis" represents an earlier *Aspessis < a pronunciation like [HaSpes'e] < 18th Dyn. *[Hu-Sipiswa] from *Hu'at+*Sipiswat, because if it can be confirmed it gives us another name rendering and another data point. I would like to know whether this suggestion has been positively discredited (rather than simply ignored); if it *has* been ruled out (e.g., by evidence of a different stress pattern in the vocalization of Sps.w.t, such as *Sepse:we), there's no better alternative explanation of "Amessis" than Ms. Luban's derivation from HAm.t-nsw, I'll admit. There's one other possible objection to Amessis < HAm.t-nsw. There are two instances in which, indeed, the title "king's wife" was taken for a personal name: in the Deeds of Suppiluliumas and in the Old Testament. However, in both instances the definite article was prefixed: tA HAm.t-nsw > tahamunzu in the Deeds of Suppiluliumas, and TA HAm.t pA nsw > taHpneis in the Masoretic Text of 1 Kings 11:20 (TA HAm.t nsw > thekemmeine:s in the Septuagint). That is, the noun phrase "the queen," being definite, was taken for a personal name, also definite. Why wouldn't the same thing happen if HA.t-Sps.w.t were referred to only by the title HAm.t-nsw, producing *Tamensis in Greek from tA HAm.t-nsw rather than Amensis? ********************************** * Jerome Colburn * jscolbur@prairienet.org * im nfr mdw pn m bAH mryw mdw-nTr ********************************** ============================================================================== From: UrHekau@aol.com Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 09:17:32 EDT Subject: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian? To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Jerome wrote: I wrote: > > OK. Where, as is often the case, a name in the surviving traditions of > > Manetho doesn't agree with what we expect to see based on the hieroglyphs, > > > there can be any combination of several causes at work: > > > > a. Manetho got it wrong. > > b. Manetho got it right, but our understanding of the roots and morphemes > > of the name in Egyptian is deficient. > > I really can't say I think these factors are very significant in names > *usually* unless the name contains a verb such as "Merefnebef". But > morphology would be very limited in any case. I forgot to mention a factor--the plurals. There is some morphology there, certainly, and, though limited, one is sometimes unsure of how to reconstruct the vowels involved. A case in point was mentioned by Jerome--the nomen of Hatshepsut. This deals with the feminine plural "wt" Now, in some terms, the morphology went thus: "Hmt" (woman), Coptic "Hime"; "Hmwt" (women), Coptic "Hiome". Also, "rnpt" (year), Coptic "rompe"; "rnpwt" (years), Coptic "rompooue". Now I think Gardiner reconstructed the vocalization of Hatshepsut to "Hatshepsowe", although he may have shown the /t/ to have fallen away--I can't recall. I would expect this, certainly. However, it seems to me that the element "noble lady" is actually singular "Spsi.t"--so that might complicate the plural a bit as it exists in the name of the woman-king. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 02:08:12 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jerome S. Colburn" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian? On Wed, 12 Jul 2000 UrHekau@aol.com wrote: > Yes, but my point is this: We get our knowledge of Coptic from Coptic > writings, not spoken Coptic. It appears to me that written Coptic preserved > the older Egyptian terms very well. It strikes me that the baseline for evaluating Manetho's transcriptions shouldn't be the Coptic orthographies, which were developed by literate classes with lifetime familiarity with *both* Egyptian and Greek and several hundred more years of experience dealing with both at once than was available to Manetho, but rather the transcriptions of contemporary Egyptian names in the Greek papyri of that period. Many a happy hour plowing through Preisigke/Foraboschi lies ahead of someone... ****** But from your following comments, > If Coptic, for example, > wrote "noufe" for "nfr" centuries after Manetho lived--why couldn't he at > least have written "Sobeknoferw" or something close instead of "Skemiophris" > if he knew the Classic Egyptian language? > I conclude that Manetho's writings of the > names reflects their "lowest" pronunciation and this is a mystery to me. > > > Naturally, toponyms would be handed down in "peasant" speech but, > somehow, > > > this is hardly what one would expect from a person well-schooled in > > Egyptian > > > letters. > many Egyptian toponyms are still Egytian. That these would be > pronounced and even transcribed in a vulgar style is reasonable. But the > kingly names? ... it sounds as if you think that social classes were distinguished in Ptolemaic Egypt by different *pronunciations* of the Egyptian language. I have not come across any indication of that; have you, outside of Manetho? What I see is a quite different situation. There was common Egyptian, written in Demotic, and evolving toward Coptic; and there was the classical language as it was then known, used for religious and magical purposes and for official inscriptions in hieroglyphs. But what distinguishes these two languages is grammar and vocabulary, *not* pronunciation. The Oxyrhynchus magical papyrus, from about the 2nd century AD, is in (neo)classical language ("Late Middle Egyptian" - Loprieno), but it shows the same reductions of unstressed syllables and the same vowel shifts as appear later in Coptic. The situation appears to be parallel to Church Latin, which is Latin in grammar and vocabulary but (since Trent) Italian in pronunciation. > If Coptic, for example, > wrote "noufe" for "nfr" centuries after Manetho lived--why couldn't he at > least have written "Sobeknoferw" or something close instead of "Skemiophris" > if he knew the Classic Egyptian language? That one I think can be taken care of by scribal error in Greek. The name in Egyptian at that stage would be *Se(b)k-'nofr(e), whether "high" or "low". (Reduction of stress in the first element of a name consisting of noun + stative had already begun in the Amarna period, as shown by cuneiform renderings like amanmasa, amanhatpi "Amenmose, Amenhotp" vs. fully stressed amana "Amun".) A writing of seknofr as *sekanophris, followed by metathesis (I almost wrote "metasethis" ;-) ) of epsilon and kappa, and a misreading of the two peaks and following upright of alpha nu as the two peaks and following upright of mu iota, gives Skemiophris. I've proposed the alpha to account for the first peak in the mu; if it was present, it could represent the release from k going into the sonorant n. Two scribal errors in one name may seem a bit much, but proofreaders today notice that errors tend to come in clusters. grH nfr, ********************************** * Jerome Colburn * jscolbur@prairienet.org * im nfr mdw pn m bAH mryw mdw-nTr ********************************** ============================================================================== From: UrHekau@aol.com Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 04:06:02 EDT Subject: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian? To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk In a message dated 7/14/00 2:13:05 AM Central Daylight Time, jscolbur@prairienet.org writes: (snip) I wrote: > > many Egyptian toponyms are still Egytian. That these would be > > pronounced and even transcribed in a vulgar style is reasonable. But the > > kingly names? > .. it sounds as if you think that social classes were distinguished in > Ptolemaic Egypt by different *pronunciations* of the Egyptian language. I > have not come across any indication of that; have you, outside of Manetho? Can you give me one reason why I would tend to believe ancient Egypt should have had a uniform pronunciation by both the high-born and educated and the peasant in his field when such a linguistic situation has hardly ever been seen in the history of the world, including modern times in far more democratic societies? > What I see is a quite different situation. There was common Egyptian, > written in Demotic, and evolving toward Coptic; and there was the > classical language as it was then known, used for religious and magical > purposes and for official inscriptions in hieroglyphs. But what > distinguishes these two languages is grammar and vocabulary, *not* > pronunciation. When you look at the Rosetta Stone, you perhaps see a Demotic "evolving toward Coptic", but I see a stage of the language that is a lot closer to Late Egyptian than Coptic. In fact, it *is* Late Egyptian for all practical purposes. However, I think it's a safe bet that neither this Demotic section or the section that represents a slightly modified Middle Egyptian gives an adequate idea of pronunciation of Egyptian at the time of Ptolemy V. And this, of course, is already past the day of Manetho. Manetho's version of the kingly names whose elements consist of ordinary words, after all, coupled with the names of the gods, do not resemble anything written in the Demotic of the time of the Ptolemies. So, obviously, Manetho is reflecting some sort of pronunciation of these names, not how they would be written in *any* Egyptian graphic system. You can hardly argue against that. Whether or not you want to conclude that the pronunciation is refined or coarse, that is up to you. I have given you my opinion, for what it's worth. > The Oxyrhynchus magical papyrus, from about the 2nd century > AD, is in (neo)classical language ("Late Middle Egyptian" - Loprieno), but > it shows the same reductions of unstressed syllables and the same vowel > shifts as appear later in Coptic. The situation appears to be parallel to > Church Latin, which is Latin in grammar and vocabulary but (since Trent) > Italian in pronunciation. Fine, but Manetho did not live in the 2nd Century AD. He lived in the 3rd Century BC. Can you cite a papyrus from closer to this time and perhaps discuss something relevant there? Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: 14 Jul 2000 06:30:27 -0700 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Subject: AEL PALERMO STONE HELLO ALL! PLEASE, CAN SOMEBODY WRITE ME THE CONTENT OF PALERMO STONE? IF YOU CAN, SEND ME, PLEASE, ON WINGLYPH CODE. THANKS ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 11:13:09 -0700 From: sfryer@prcn.org (Stephen Fryer) To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: caus. 3-lit. (was: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian?) "Jerome S. Colburn" wrote: > > It > > survived into Coptic as "noufe". > > again, a different phonetic environment, and a different grammatical form. > > > Therefore, I would think it quite > > reasonable to believe that "Snofri" is an approximation of how this name was > > pronounced "in good Egyptian" (as in "ounofer" for "wnnfri") , > > again, a different grammatical form, not immediately relevant to the > disposition of vowels in /snfrw/. > > What reason is there to reconstruct an /o/ in snfrw, except that you admit > that Manetho got that much right? Or do you take the vowel from > "Asphynis"? If you take *that* name is a reliable guide to the color of > the stressed vowel, it also implies that the stressed /o/ has to come > *after* the /f/, "Senfori" and not "Snofri" -- as I also argued on the > basis of what we can recover of caus. 3-lit syllable structure. > > That is, there is at *least* as much ground for a vocalization *senfori as > for *snofri -- I'd say considerably more. > > The passage from *senfori to *sfori requires only an elision of the > servile /n/ in the unstressed syllable, an understandable change. > > > using > > Manetho's own substitution of ''i'" for /w/--as this surely was significant. > > Or rather /i/ for the unstressed final vowel in the syllable originally > delimited by /w/. I'll grant you the /i/; the difference between the -e I > had been using and your -i is but that between Saidic and Bohairic, and > because we're talking about an Alexandrian, we go with Bohairic. I would point out that there is a form of the verb in Hebrew which is probably cognate with the s-causative of trilit. verbs, namely the Hiph'il form - eg. from the root qa:tal we get hiqti:l, which might imply for Old Egyptian, at least, the pronunciations na:far and sinfi:r. -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 20:10:17 -0600 Subject: Re: caus. 3-lit. (was: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian?) From: Troy Sagrillo To: Ancient Egyptian Language List on 14.07.2000 12.13 PM, Stephen Fryer wrote: > I would point out that there is a form of the verb in Hebrew which is probably > cognate with the s-causative of trilit. verbs, namely the Hiph'il form - eg. > from the root qa:tal we get hiqti:l, which might imply for Old Egyptian, at > least, the pronunciations na:far and sinfi:r. In case anyone is interested, the s-causative is regularly used Amazigh ("Berber") languages: Qabyle: nnulfu "to appear (suddenly)" -> snulfu "to invent; to compose" (i.e., to cause to appear) Wargali: ddufet "to be killed; to be fatigued" --> ssdufet "to fatigue s.o. ; to kill s.o.; to tire s.o." Mozabite: eqqes "to close" --> sseqqes "to cause to close" Cheers, Troy -- Troy Sagrillo Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations University of Toronto Canada ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 04:00:13 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jerome S. Colburn" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho Read Egyptian? --- See http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/ for AEL resources. --- Copyright in the following belongs to the undersigned. --- To reply privately, send to jscolbur@prairienet.org I'd written: > > .. it sounds as if you think that social classes were distinguished in > > Ptolemaic Egypt by different *pronunciations* of the Egyptian language. I > > have not come across any indication of that; have you, outside of Manetho? On Fri, 14 Jul 2000 UrHekau@aol.com wrote: > Can you give me one reason why I would tend to believe ancient Egypt should > have had a uniform pronunciation by both the high-born and educated and the > peasant in his field when such a linguistic situation has hardly ever been > seen in the history of the world, including modern times in far more > democratic societies? No, I can't. But pronunciation isoglosses between geographic regions and between chronologic periods are far more obvious than those between social classes, and the latter are likely to be mixed up with the former in a way that makes it difficult to extricate them. That's all I meant. (Of course, it is not always true that "high-born" pronunciation is more conservative of the underlying phonemic structures than "vulgar" pronunciation is; think of the fate of syllable-final /r/ in British RP.) On further consideration, however, here are some data that seem to support your main point about Manetho: (1) In the Oxyrhynchus magical papyrus in Late Middle Egyptian, etymological /x/ is written with an adaptation of the demotic form of Aa1, while etymological /S/ is written with the same adaptation of M8 that later expressed S in Coptic, which (except in Akhmimic, farther south than Oxyrhynchus) came from Eg. /x/ as well as /S/. This could indicate that the priestly classes (all over Egypt?) retained [x] while [S] replaced it in the speech of commoners (or it might only mean that the change /x/ > [S] had not yet spread as far south at this time as it later did). Manetho uses (mostly) /S/ (but not in, e.g., "Akencheres"). (2) Manetho renders xwfw as Souphis, and one of Manetho's quoters (I'm speaking from memory here, and I don't recall which one) adds that Souphis built the Great Pyramid, "which Herodotus says was built by Cheops." If that line is really Manetho's and not a gloss by his quoter, it would indicate that Manetho did not know that the name had undergone the change /x/ > [S]. (3) In the explanation of the name "Hyksos", Josephus quotes Manetho as saying that the "huk" belongs to "the priestly tongue," but "so:s" in "the common dialect" means "shepherd." Therefore, Manetho knew that there was a difference in dialects, and he knew something of the priestly dialect, but he didn't know that the second part comes from xAs.t "foreign country" and not from SAsw "Bedouin." Maybe he got the idea for "shepherd" from the S37 sign used to write HqA. If so, he knew only what the whole group S37-N25:X1*Z1 meant, not the parts. From whatever source, he learned the phrase pronounced with /x/ > [S]. (4) Another Copticism in Manetho is found in the rendition "Tlas" for wAD-ns; whether the first consonant in the word for "tongue" was actually pronounced [n] by the learned classes, as it was written, we don't know. The other way they could write [l] is with an , but I don't know of a writing *rs. But if the learned priests did pronounce it [n], then the /l/ in Coptic /las/ is a true vulgarism, and a conservative one (Arabic lisa:n, Hebrew lSo:n, Akkadian liSa:nu). In that case we *do* have an isogloss between social classes, and Manetho does fall on the vulgar side of it. On the other hand, it also means that he at least understand the meaning of the parts of this name. So, I think I agree with you on the main point. Thank you for the time and patience to read this. ********************************** * Jerome Colburn * jscolbur@prairienet.org * im nfr mdw pn m bAH mryw mdw-nTr ********************************** ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2000 01:24:17 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jerome S. Colburn" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: OK, Amensis, not Aspessis (was: Re: AEL How Well Did Manetho...) On Thu, 13 Jul 2000 UrHekau@aol.com wrote: > I forgot to mention a factor--the plurals. > Also, "rnpt" > (year), Coptic "rompe"; "rnpwt" (years), Coptic "rompooue". Now I think > Gardiner reconstructed the vocalization of Hatshepsut to "Hatshepsowe", > although he may have shown the /t/ to have fallen away--I can't recall. I > would expect this, certainly. However, it seems to me that the element > "noble lady" is actually singular "Spsi.t"--so that might complicate the > plural a bit as it exists in the name of the woman-king. Yes, you are right, Sps.t is feminine of Spsy, not of Sps. That would make the plural Sipsiywat or Sipsi:wat, ruling out Fecht's suggested vocalization *Sipiswat. (The i in the first syllable is shown by Coptic SapSi (Boh.) not *Sopsi.) */Sipsiwat/ would become *S@pse:w@ by Manetho's time, and the nomen of the K. of U. and L. E. MAa.t-kA-ra should be transcribed as "Hashepse:we." Therefore, I retract my objections to your interpretation of "Amensis" as HAm.t-nsw. The (older and Upper Egyptian) vocalism */'vnsvw/ for nsw is found in cuneiform "tahamunzu-" and "insibya". (A later and Lower Egyptian vocalism is */'vniysvw/, as shown by Fecht.) ********************************** * Jerome Colburn * jscolbur@prairienet.org * im nfr mdw pn m bAH mryw mdw-nTr ********************************** ==============================================================================