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August 22, 2006

Egyptian Loanwords in Epigraphic Hebrew?

The other day I threatened to look for any direct Egyptian loanwords in Epigraphic Hebrew. Here is my report.

Did I find any? The short answer is, "it is very unlikely that any words in epigraphic Hebrew are direct loans from Egyptian." But as is often the case, the long answer is more interesting.

The only candidate that I could find is ħtm (חותם, ħôtām), meaning "seal" as a noun or "affix" or "seal" as a verb. See Gogel, 329. In general, the nominal forms are more interesting. The "root" occurs in several texts from Arad. These particular texts are likely from the late 7th to the early 6th century BCE (Arad Stratum VI). See Arad 4.2, "seal (the jar)"; 7:8-9 "s[eal] (a jar of) oil"; 10:4 "[S]eal? (it) for Ben-Obadjahu Kittim;" 13:3 "[affix] your seal (to it)" and 17:6-7, חתם אתה בחתמך, "affix your seal to it." [Note: I use ħ as equivalent to Arabic ح (i.e. het).]

The Egyptian source word is , a noun meaning "seal" or a verb meaning, well, "seal." After noting that there are Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Phoenician examples of the word, Lambdin,151, says,

All of these correspond to Eg. htm, "a seal, signet-ring" attested from the earliest stages of the language. . . . All the Semitic nominal forms point to a prototype *hātam, and the long ā of the Syriac and Arabic forms points to a borrowing before c. 1200 B.C. The widespread use of these words in Semitic indicates an even earlier barrowing. [Note: in both the Semitic prototype and the Egyptian word, I use h as equivalent to Arabic خ.]

As Lambdin indicates, the word חתם appears in Phoenician. The 4th or 3rd century BCE papyrus, KAI 51, uses the word in lines 9 and 10 with the meaning "seal" but then uses טבעה in line 10 (חתם בטעה) to mean "signet ring." טבעת, meaning "signet ring" is also found in Biblical Hebrew. It also occurs as a verb in the Neopunic/Latin bilingual inscription KAI 124:4. An Aramaic example of חתם meaning "seal" is known from the 7th century BCE text KAI 236:Vs1.

While the underlying word is attested in several Semitic languages, it is, as far as I can find, unknown in Ugaritic and Akkadian. The word used for "seal" in Ugaritic is mišmn as seen in KTU 2.19:6, "the mišmn of Niqmadu" and on the cylinder seal inscriptions KTU 6.17, "mišmn ytn," and KTU 6.23, "mišmn of Ammistamru king of Ugarit." mišmn is very likely a Hurrian loanword in Ugaritic.

While mišmunnu, meaning "sealed bulla," is known from Nuzi, the more common Akkadian words in this semantic range are the noun, kunukku, "seal," "cylinder seal," "bulla," and the verb, barāmu, "to seal" with its nominal form birmu, "impression." See for example the phrase birim kunukki, "seal impression." See also Akkadian birimtu, "sealing."

So what we have here is a Egyptian word, htm, that found it's way into several Semitic languages but did not become an ubiquitous "culture word." However, its rather broad acceptance in those Semitic languages where it was adopted makes it difficult to demonstrate the path by which it came to be part of the Hebrew language. If it was indeed a direct loan, and I'm not sure such a thesis can be defended, the loan occurred very early in the evolution of Hebrew or its linguistic predecessor. Note that in the noun the ā > ô shift had already occurred prior to its use in Biblical Hebrew and therefore, presumably, in epigraphic Hebrew as well.

Idle and irresponsible speculation: Is it possible that this word came into Hebrew/Aramaic or their predecessor(s) via the Hyksos? Regardless of how you answer this question, your answer will not provide any weight one way or the other to renewed and, in my view, wrong minded speculation that the Israelites of the Exodus were Hyksos escaping form Egypt.

Update: August 24, 2006

Removed stupid error: ". . . unknown in Ugaritic and Akkadian (except from Nuzi)."

References:

Posted by Duane Smith at August 22, 2006 6:59 PM | Read more on Scribal Schools |

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