Journal issue

This word study sets out to exemplify the aims and methods of a comparative linguistic approach to the prehistory of the Arabic language conducted against an Afroasiatic backdrop. Drawing on the lexical corpus of the modern Arabic vernaculars, it explores phonological and semantic correlations linking Old Egyptian Xwj ‘to protect’ attested in the Pyramid texts from the 3rd millennium BC to its proposed Arabic cognates in modern Bedouin vernaculars. The database and commentary adduced in this essay proffer further support for the scenario presented in Borg (2019) arguing for symbiotic interaction between Ancient Egyptian and the Old Arabic phenotype that yielded the modern dialects of this Semitic world language.

“A new system for transliterating Egyptian hieroglyphs graphematically”
The way in which Egyptologists transcribe non-Egyptian words in Egyptian texts is not only very inconsistant, but also very inadequate. Although there have been several attempts to change this, none of these systems has been convincing. Here we propose a new approach for transliterating lexemes written in Egyptian sign by sign, which is based on the transliterations used in different neighboring disciplines.
keywords: Transliteration, Syllabische Schrift, Gruppenschrift, Fremdwörter, Umschrift

“Discussions to the Genesis of the Late Egyptian Past sDm=f”
This article deals with the not finally solved problem of the morphological genesis of the Late Egyptian sDm=f with past meaning. In part one it is shown that the previous favorite of a coming out from the Middle Egyptian sDm.n=f, as it was again voted in a specific article by M. el-Hamrawi some years ago, is not very probable. In part two it is suggested that Middle Egyptian past sDm=f was the antecedent of the Late Egyptian form, but that it was a long time enduring and very complicated process which lead to a withdrawing of the sDm.n=f, based on an increasing importance of the so-called pseudo-verbal constructions jw=f Hr sDm and jw=f r sDm, on expulsion and merging of several Middle Egyptian sDm=f forms, phonological change and economical selection, and also that these factors in general were the engine for the change from the Middle Egyptian verbal system to the Late Egyptian system.

This paper researches the interaction between inscriptions facing east and those facing west in offering texts of the Graeco-Roman period, specifically those found in the temple of Hathor and the temple of Isis in Dendera. Continuing research performed by Christian Leitz, this paper argues that a pattern shown by Leitz in which the east side is active where the west is reflecting a state, is not an anomaly, but should actually be considered part of the ‘grammaire du temple’. Moreover, I show that this pattern is used during the reign of Cleopatra VII, and falls out of use during the reign of the emperor Augustus.

“Is HÈjw-mw ‘water conjuration’ an ‘Älteres Kompositum’? Investigations into a terminus technicus of the Egyptian lingua magica”
Starting in the Old Kingdom, depictions of the work and dangers of herdsmen, who ford cattle and ward off crocodiles with magical gestures, formed part of the motif repertoire of country life and agriculture in many commoners’ tombs. The textual counterparts of such scenes are mentioned in seven literary, magical and religious texts from the Middle Kingdom to the Graeco-Roman Period. Regardless of the unity of meaning and context, the terminus technicus denoting those conjurations directed against crocodiles is written in three essentially different ways as HÈjw-mw (Tale of a Herdsman, Hymn to Amun in Papyrus Leiden I 350, Cairo Love Songs, a magical papyrus in Budapest, Florentine Mythological Handbook), HÈjw-m-mw (CT 836) and ÈHÈjw-m-mw (Magical Papyrus Harris). When compared to graphic peculiarities of ‘Ältere Komposita’, HÈjw-m-mw (CT 836) and ÈHÈjw-m-mw (Magical Papyrus Harris) can be identified as phonetic writings, and the attestation in the Tale of a Herdsman, which exhibits the peculiar insertion of a “boat” (Gardiner P.1), as an unetymological writing. Consequently, all seven tokens can be assigned to a single morphological pattern, Hcjw-mw ‘water conjuration’, which, tentatively, can be revocalised *ḥĭśjắw-măw.

This paper discusses the so-called ornamental use of texts on the late Middle Kingdom coffins belonging to Nakht-ankh and Khnum-nakht, the famous “Two Brothers”. The texts include heavily shortened versions of Pyramid- and Coffin Texts spells that the copyists apparently did not attempt to include in their entirety. Yet they can be seen to have made a number of conscious editorial decisions and selected the texts from a small closed set of spells, suggesting that their intent was not merely decorative. It is argued that the ornamental use of funerary texts represents a local religious tradition where the excerpts served as tokens and magical substitutes for the larger compositions from which they derive.

“On the Augment of Late Egyptian Verb Forms”
It is shown that the augment which is characteristic of certain nominal verb forms of Late Egyptian – and survives in a few traces up until Coptic – contains none of those vowels that were regularly admitted at the beginning of Egyptian words. Rather, it must continue a wordinternal vowel /ǝ/ that moved into the initial position by a misdivision of the proclitic definite article, which frequently preceded participles and relative forms in speech. The same vowel [ǝ] occurred as an epenthetic sound before the preposition ‹r› /r/ ~ [ǝr], from which only ǝ remained after its consonantal body got lost. These phonetic insights prove that the Late Egyptian augment cannot derive from the Old Egyptian augment, as has been contended, but is a genuine innovation of Late Egyptian. Finally, the rise of unetymological initial vowels in various other nouns such as ⲉϭⲱϣ (“Nubian”) and ⲉϩⲟⲟⲩ (Bohairic for “day”) is explained.

The paper looks into the history and synchrony of the Coptic periphrastic pattern, suggesting that the diathesis might be one of the factors triggering its usage. Contrary to the well-established opinion, it is demonstrated that Coptic periphrastic constructions do not have inchoative semantics. The paper also examines the lexical repertory of the pattern and formulates grammatical conditions triggering the use of periphrastic constructions.

The earliest stage of the ancient Egyptian language attested in writing, i.e., Old Egyptian, had two productive causative mechanisms that increase the valency of verbs: morphological (mono-clausal) and periphrastic (bi-clausal). The former is characterized by the prefix s-, while the latter employs the lexical causative verb rDj ‘give’ followed by a complement clause. Despite the fact that both causative strategies have been known to scholars since the inception of the study of the ancient Egyptian language, any systematic or comprehensive study of Egyptian causative verbs is lacking. This paper thus aims to provide a new insight into the Old Egyptian morphological and periphrastic causatives by examining their syntactic as well as semantic properties. The results of this analysis show which types of verbs have a preference for which of the two causative strategies and demonstrate the semantic differences between the morphological and periphrastic causative types. Furthermore, this paper clarifies the peculiar nature of the morphological causatives of transitive verbs, whose valency does not increase. I suggest a possible solution to this issue that lies in the function of the n-prefix in Old Egyptian.

Active sDm-f in the so-called “circumstantial” paradigm shows an occasional i-prefix in the earliest Old Egyptian textual data. The present article discusses the possible significance of this phenomenon to the morphological analysis of this particular paradigm and that of the subjunctive sDm-f.

“Varia Addenda”
This article presents various additions to several ideas I proposed in diverse articles, namely about (1) the etymology of the suffix pronoun 3.Sg.m =f, (2) the morphological unity of sDm=f-forms used as predicate in main clauses and circumstantial clauses, (3) transitive use of intransitive verbs without visible morphological derivation.

“Once more on Earlier Egyptian cataphora”
This is a supplement to Uljas’ recent paper on cataphora in Earlier Egyptian. Opposing his suggestion of a semantic constraint in the use of cataphora, I argue that the principal constraint in Egyptian cataphora is a syntactic one: A personal pronoun may only receive a cataphoric interpretation if it refers to the subject of the clause.