More on Egypt in Israel

Much to the frustration of many an archeologist, the alluvial mud of the Egyptian Delta has yielded little evidence of Israel’s presence there and seems unlikely to do so any time soon (given the Egyptian’s love of papyrus together with the Delta’s humid conditions). Suppose, then, as I’ve suggested before, we turn our gaze elsewhere. Suppose we look not for traces of Israel’s influence in Egypt, but for traces of Egypt’s influence on the pages of Israel’s Scriptures. What do we find?

Well, one thing we find is the presence of numerous Egyptian loanwords in the Israelites’ vocabulary, many of which were no doubt absorbed over the course of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt. (To absorb words from a foreign culture takes a significant amount of contact/exposure.) Benjamin Noonan has a great article on the subject here, and, recently, I’ve even forayed into the area myself.

But Israel’s lexicon isn’t alone in its absorption of Egyptian influences. Israel’s name-pool also exhibits notable Egyptian influences, as Egyptologists such as James Hoffmeier have shown.

Below, with these things in mind, I want to consider the precision with which two particular types of Egyptian names are preserved in the Hebrew Bible, viz. names derived from the Egyptian deity names Ptah and Horus.

Ptah Names

Israel’s name-pool contains three or four likely examples of Ptah names. (That needn’t necessarily concern us from a religious perspective. Just as Christians can refer to ‘Thursday’ and yet not worship Thor, so ancient Israelites could assign their children Ptah-names and not worship Ptah.) The first is slightly unusual. Joshua’s lists of geographical names—‘GNs’ for short—twice mention ⟨Maian-Me-Nephtoah⟩ (מַעְיַן מֵי נֶפְתּוֹחַ), which is an unusual GN (Josh. 15.9, 18.15). For a start, it translates as ‘The Spring of the Waters of Nephtoah’, which seems somewhat over-specified. (Most springs involve waters, and no other Biblical GNs have the syntax ‘The Spring of the Waters of X’.) Furthermore, the name/noun Nephtoah (נֶפְתּוֹחַ) doesn’t have a standard Hebrew ‘shape’. So what exactly does the name ⟨Me-Nephtoah⟩ reflect?

Most likely, it reflects the Egyptian name Merneptah, which appears in Egyptian as ⟨Mry-n-Ptḥ⟩ and translates as ‘Beloved of Ptah’. ⟨Me-Nephtoah⟩ doesn’t, therefore, signify ‘The Spring of the Waters of (the unknown) Nephtoah’, but ‘The Spring of Merneptah’. (Consider how Abraham and Isaac named the wells they dug.) Indeed, מֵי נֶפְתּוֹחַ is exactly how we’d expect the name Merneptah to appear in the Bible, since the letter ⟨r⟩ is weak in Egyptian, given which ⟨mry⟩ (‘beloved’) often appears as ⟨my⟩. For the same reason, the Egyptian name ⟨Mry-I͗mn⟩ (‘Beloved of Amun’) occasionally appears as ⟨my-ı͗mn⟩ (as an epithet), and appears in the Bible as ⟨Mijamin⟩ (מִיָּמִן).

Two or three other Ptah names can be noted. The first is Tahrea/Tarea, which is written in two different ways in the Hebrew Bible (תַּחְרֵעַ and תַּאְרֵעַ) (I Chr. 8.35, 9.41), presumably because it was not a native Hebrew name. (Think about how many ways non-native names like Muhammad can be written in English.)

The name Tahrea/Tarea is most likely an inverted form of the Egyptian name ⟨Rʿ-Ptḥ⟩, with Ptah shortened to ‘Tah’, and ‘Tah’ written as both תא and תח, none of which is unusual. (For instance, the Egyptian name ‘Horus-Sobek’ occurs as both ⟨Ḥr-Sbk⟩ and ⟨Sbk-Ḥr⟩; ⟨Ptḥ-my⟩ appears in cuneiform as ⟨Ta-aḫ-ma-ia⟩; and the name ⟨S3-Ptḥ⟩ = ‘Son of Ptah’ appears as ⟨Si-ip-ta-ʾ-ʾ⟩ and ⟨Si-ip-ta-ḫu⟩.)

The Bible’s other Ptah names are borne by one of Samuel’s ancestors, who is variously referred to as ⟨Nahath⟩ (נַחַת), ⟨Tohu⟩ (תֹּחוּ), and ⟨Toah⟩ (תּוֹחַ),

…which are most likely different abbreviations of the name ⟨Ptḥ-nḫt⟩ = ‘Ptah is strong’.

To sum up, then, the Bible contains three or four Ptah-names—Tahrea, Me-Nephtoah, Toah, and Tohu—, which exhibit a predictable pattern. When Ptah occurs word-initially, it maintains its standard vowel, [a] (hence Tah-rea), but, when it occurs word-finally, its vowel becomes [o] (hence Nephtoah, Toah, and Tohu), all of which resonates with remarkable precision with what we know about Egyptian phonology. In stressed environments (which we can roughly equate with word-final environments), the Egyptian vowel [a] is known to have become [o]. Meanwhile, in non-stressed environments (which we can roughly equate with word-initial environments), the vowel [a] is known to have remained unchanged or to have gravitated towards a ‘schwa’ (hence Ptah rather than Pitah).¹

Of course, considered in isolation, that might not seem such a big deal, but the same phenomenon can be observed (mutatis mutandis) in the Bible’s Horus names.

Horus Names

Israel’s name-pool absorbed quite a few Horus names over the years. For instance, Moses does battle with Amalek alongside an Israelite named Hur (חוּר) (‘Horus’) (Exod. 17). The tribe of Simeon has an important (Egypt-born) patriarchal figure named Hori (חוֹרִי) (Num. 13). And Solomon appoints an Israelite officer named Ben-Hur (בֶּן־חוּר) over Ephraim (I Kgs. 4). Meanwhile, up in Asher (on a stretch of the Mediterranean coastline known to trade with Egypt), we find the name ⟨Har-nepher⟩ (חַרְנֶפֶר) (I Chr. 7.36), whose Egyptian equivalent can be observed here. And later in the Biblical narrative we come across ‘a keeper of the wardrobe’ who’s referred to as a son of ⟨Harhas⟩ (חַרְחַס)—another Horus name (II Kgs. 22.14).

The Bible thus contains no shortage of Horus-names—Hur, Hori, Ben-Hur, Har-nepher, and Harhas (as well as others besides)—, which, like their Ptah counterparts, exhibit a predictable and noteworthy pattern. When Horus occurs word-initially, it has a short [a] vowel (hence Har-nepher and Har-has), but, word-finally, its vowel becomes a long [o] or a long [u], all of which is echoed in cuneiform attestations of Horus names. (For instance, Horus occurs word-initially with an [a] vowel in names like ⟨Ḫar-si-si⟩ and ⟨Ḫar-nu-pi-ʾ⟩, and word-finally with a long [u] in names like ⟨Ḫu-ú-ru⟩ and ⟨Ṣi-i-ḫu-ú-ru⟩.) Furthermore, the Bible’s Horus-names are consistent with our knowledge of ancient Egyptian. In stressed—roughly, word-final—environments, the Egyptian long [a] became a long [o], and sometimes seems to appear as a long [u] (hence the Egyptian word for ‘lily’ has been loaned into Hebrew as both shoshan and shushan). Meanwhile, in non-stressed—roughly, word-initial—environments, Egypt’s long [a] vowel remained largely unchanged, which is consistent with its appearance as a short [a] in a closed syllable in the Masoretic Text.²

Conclusion

Of course, all these things are a bit more complicated than can be spelt out in a short article, but the basic point (I hope) is clear enough. The Hebrew Bible preserves Egyptian names with a remarkable degree of accuracy. It doesn’t simply reflect a vague awareness of a few Egyptian deity names; it reflects an awareness of how these names were pronounced, how they found their way into personal names, and how their pronunciation changed in light of the particular positions they assumed in personal names, all of which bears testimony to a sustained first-hand acquaintance with the Ancient Egyptian culture and language together with a reliably preserved text.

1. Loprieno, A. (1995). Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University Press, pp. 32ff.

2. Cp. Loprieno Ibid.