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EGYPT IN ITS AFRICAN CONTEXT NOTE 3: TOWARDS

A METHOD FOR VOCALIZING MDW NTR SYMBOLS

By Asar Imhotep (Sun of the Soil)

(November 27, 2012) [updated Dec. 2, 2012]

The MOCHA-Versity Institute of Philosophy and Research

luntu/lumtu/muntu

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LINGUISTIC ABBREVIATIONS

PB Proto-Bantu

PWS Proto-Western Sudanic (Westermann)

PWN Proto-Western Nigritic (Mukarvosky)

PNC Informal. No systematic reconstruction available

PCS Proto-Central Sudanic (Bender)

PAA Proto-Afro-Asiatic (Ehret, Diakonoff)

PPAB Proto-Potou-Akanic-Bantu (Stewart)

Bantu Proto-Bantu (Meeussen, Meinhof)

BANTU Common Bantu (Guthrie)

“Bantu” Bantu & Semi-Bantu (Johnston)

A-A Afro-Asiatic (Diakonoff, Ehret, Greenberg)

ES Eastern-Sudanic (Greenberg)

CS Central-Sudanic (Greenberg)

CN Chari-Nile (Greenberg)

NS Nilo-Saharan (Greenberg)

[I have used Greenberg‟s abbreviations (numbers & letters in brackets) to identify languages].

N-C Niger-Congo

Mande B Banbara, D Dioula, M Malinke

(Delafosse,Westermann)

TogoR Togo Remnant (Heine)

Polyglotta Koelle‟s Polyglotta Africana

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In this essay I attempt to lay the necessary ground work for a proper vocalization of ancient Egyptian

phonographic symbols. There has been some recent interest within the African-Centered community to

revitalize the ancient Egyptian language as evidenced in its hieroglyphic writing script. Researchers have

always speculated as to the vocalization schema of the ancient Egyptian language ever since the

decipherment efforts of Champollion in the early 1800‘s. The problem of proper vocalization becomes

apparent when one realizes that the ancient Egyptians didn‘t write out their vowel sounds, only their

consonants. To facilitate pronunciation of Egyptian terms, Egyptologists insert the vowel /e/ for ease of

speaking among specialists: e.g., Egyptian Htp ―rest,‖ > Hetep.1

The task of vocalizing the Egyptian language is not a new task among African researchers. Cheikh Anta

Diop, in his book Nations Negres et Culture (1955), devised a methodology for revitalizing the ancient

Egyptian language. Since then, this has been an ongoing project of the likes of the Kemetic Institute,

formally headed by Dr. Jacob Carruthers, and one of its founders, linguist and Egyptologist Dr. Rkhty

(Wimby) Amen. This also used to be one of the objectives of ASCAC2 as well.

There are several issues that must be kept in mind when attempting such an endeavor. One of the major

issues is dialects in the language. The question becomes, then, ―What dialect and in what time period are

we choosing to revitalize? And more so, how can we tell dialectical differences in the early, non-Coptic

periods?‖ As Rkhty Amen notes concerning the nature of the writing script:

There were many different dialects spoken in Kemet all along the Hapy itru (Nile River) from time

immemorial. Mdw Ntr writing was used to communicate by people who spoke many different

dialects. The picture words meant the same to everyone no matter what dialect they spoke. The

vowels were not written in Medu Neter. The absence of vowels in the writing made it possible for

everyone, no matter what dialect they spoke, to understand the writing, and still use their own

unique pronunciation. There were also temporal dialects, these dialects are commonly referred to

by scholars as Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian and Coptic, which is the final stage of the language.

Coptic had several dialects of its own, namely, Sahidic, Bohairic, Fayyumic, and Achmimic. The

grammar and vocabulary differed in these stages. Coptic is the only stage of the language wherein

vowels were written, so it is by way of Coptic and other related African languages that we know

something about original pronunciation of words…Coptic is no longer spoken although it still

survives as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church. (Amen, 2010: 3-4).

While I do not discount dialects in ancient Egypt, it is my contention that these were separate languages.

When vocabulary and grammar are different, it is not a case of a dialect, but one of a different language.

They can be all related (closely or more distantly), but different languages none-the-less. The major

scripts that followed these political periods were just the language of the dominant ethnic group of the

time. As Rkhty Amen noted earlier in her essay ―The Unity of African Languages‖ in Karenga and

Carruthers (1986: 156), in regards to the classifications or ―stages‖ of the Egyptian language, that:

These designations, however, reflect not so much stages in the development of Egyptian language

per se as, rather stages in the evolving political history of the various dynasties. What Gardiner

called ―Late Egyptian‖ was the dialect of Upper Kemet, traces of which were already noticed in

the Old Kingdom in Upper Kemetic sites.3 In Dynasties VI-XI, the vernacular called ―Middle

1 However, in this example the vocalization is not too far off. For in the Kalenjiin (Nilo-Saharan) language, a

descendant of Egyptian, ―to sit‖ (rest) is vocalized ketepi. 2 The Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC)

3 Late Egyptian inscriptions in the Old Kingdom: Pierre Montent, ―Les Tombeaux dits de Kasr-el-Sayad,‖ Kemi

(1936, pp. 9197, 177); Aylward M Blackman. The Rock Tombs of Meir, Parts I, III, V, Archeological Survey of

Egypt, Memoirs, 22, 24, 28, (London, 1914, 1915, 1953). First intermediate period inscriptions with late Egyptian

forms: Blackman, ibid, vols. XI, XII (Dsir-el-Gebrawl). Middle Egyptian Inscriptions with late Egyptian forms: N.

Davies and Gardiner, The Tomb of Antefoker and His Wife Senet, Theban Tomb Series, No. 2. London, 1930.

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Egyptian,‖ was predominant in Kemet. During the First intermediate Period this dialect spread

northward. By the late XIth and early XIIth Dynasties so-called Late Egyptian forms occur on all

types of monumental inscriptions. When the Nubian regime regained power in the XVIIIth

Dynasty, the vernacular of Upper Kemet spread with the establishment of the New Kingdom.

Amen Hotep II (1450) composed a letter to his viceroy in Nubia and in it he used what has come

to be called Late Egyptian: in other words, his language was that of Nubia or Upper Egypt.

Again, this would be an example of a different language, not Egyptian. The Nubians are Kushites and the

New Kingdom language would be a Kushite language (not to be confused with Cushitic, which is a

modern linguistic designation). It would be naïve to think, that during the formulative and subsequent

development of Egyptian society, that they spoke a single language (given the size of Egypt and how

African societies in general are composed), especially when the archeological evidence and testimony on

the Narmer Palate state otherwise (see the next section).

Helmut Satzinger, in his book The Egyptian Connection: Egyptian and the Semitic Languages (2003:

231-232), although trying to make the case for a strong Semitic and Egyptian connection, provides these

comments that reaffirm much of what we‘re saying here:

Egyptian has much in common with Semitic, as compared with most Cushitic (including Omotic;

cf. Lamberti 1999) and Chadic languages. But when evaluating similarities between individual

branches of Afroasiatic it is crucial to take into account (1) the factor of time, (2) the historico-

cultural factor, and (3) possible areal effects.

(The factor of time.) Egyptian and Akkadian are attested in the third millennium BC, other Semitic

languages somewhat later. The other branches of Afroasiatic are attested only recently (with the

exception of the rather meagre evidence of ancient Libyan), and often enough not to a satisfactory

extent. This means that comparisons must allow for a further development of several thousand

years on the side of the other branches.

(The historico-cultural factor.) The Afroasiatic relationship dates back to Mesolithic times. Many

important cultural achievements, such as agriculture and cattle-breeding, are later. The social

structure and the forms of rule have changed drastically. This is of particular importance for

lexical comparison. Many terms that appear basic to us cannot be expected to be part of the

inherited common vocabulary. (Characteristic examples are terms like Hsb ―to reckon‖4 and xtm

―to seal‖: the meaning is the same, the transcription is identical for Egyptian and Arabic, there is

obviously a close relationship, but it must be other than genetic.)

(Areal effects.) The prehistory of the speakers of the individual branches of Afroasiatic is

controversial, as is the question of the original Afroasiatic homeland, and consequently the

reconstruction of the migrations from there to their present locations. It is usually very hard to say

who in the course of time used to be the neighbours of the individual groups. Historical Egypt is

4 I do not agree with his assessment as it pertains to this word. The word Hsb ―reckon, calculate, accounting, count‖

derives from a more basic root in Egyptian ip ―to reckon, count, take a census‖; Coptic wp (wp); ipw ―inventory.‖ In

Central Chadic this root is actually *l-p ―to reckon up‖; Daba nif < *lif; Kola nof. The root is possible, with semantic

shift, ip < *lp ―to examine, investigate (Wb I, 66); W.Chadic: Angas-sura *lap ―to investigate, look for‖; Mupun yāp

―to look for something that is missing,‖ yàp ―to check.‖ These became loanwords in Caananite: ēpā ―to measure‖

(Capacity); Hebrew Aēfā; Greek oipi ―measure of corn‖ (< Egyptian ip, ipy.t, iyp.t; Coptic eiope/oeme). In ciLuba

this term is -badika "count, enumerate, to do financial (statements)"; -bala "read, count, enumerate"; mbadilu "how

to read, how to count" (meta-thesis). @sb is an expanded form of sbA "school, teach, wise, to tend, learning, to

instruct, guide, direct, gate/portal." Education is learning how to ―read‖ and ―measure‖ (calculate). We have also in

Egyptian sb ―measurment‖ (for stone). The H- is a prefix. The l-(r-) is an affix mean ―to.‖ In Egyptian r > i in many

instances. Calculating, investigating, reading, thinking, etc., are very basic human activities and the lexemes has

survived in practically all major language families in Africa.

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constituted of two populations: that of the Delta, and that of the Nile Valley. Most probably, these

groups had different languages, and it is only one of them that is the ancestor of historical

Egyptian. At present, many assume that Proto-Egyptian is the language of the Southerners

(Naqâda culture; cf. Helck 1984; Helck, 1990). We know nothing at all about the other language.

The Valley population is not indigenous. It has immigrated either from the south or from the

south-west. The implications of this question concern the languages with which Egyptian may

have had contact before it entered the light of history. In the south, we may expect Cushitic

(including Omotic) languages, and apart from Afroasiatic, various Eastern Sudanic languages (of

the Nilo-Saharan macro-phylum), and Kordofanian languages (Niger-Kordofanian macro-

phylum). In the south-west, the presumable neighbours would probably have spoken either Chadic

languages, or Saharan languages (again, Nilo-Saharan). But these assumptions are, of course,

based on the present distribution.

To comment on the later part of this citation, Satzinger is noting the various pools of cultures from which

derived pharaonic Egyptian culture. He is admitting to the fact that areal contacts shape language. He also

attests to at least one other language in the Delta region. What was this language and how did the

interaction of this language, as a result of the unifying of the two lands, effect the development of

Egyptian? Did this language remain a separate language in ancient Egypt? What about the other cultures

and languages that surrounded the ‗Proto-Egyptian‘ language speakers? Did they consciously stay in the

Sudan area while the ‗Proto-Egyptians‘ moved down the Nile? If so, why would they stay? What

compelled this one group of ‗Proto-Egyptians‘ to move down the river and dominate the indigenous

people? How many languages were spoken indigenously along the Nile before the colonists from Ethiopia

took over? These are the types of questions one must ask when discussing the development of ancient

Egyptian in a contact situation.

That Egypt was a multilingual and multiethnic (African) society is also the opinion of the linguist from

Ghana, Dr. Nana Banchie Darkwah. In his book The Africans Who Wrote the Bible (2002: 149), as

concerns the limitations of modern Egyptology on the Egyptian language question, he states:

Unfortunately, Champollion's decipherment of the hieroglyphics was based upon the wrong

premise that Ancient Egypt was a monolingual nation just as most modern European nations are

today. However, that premise is false. Ancient Egypt was a multilingual nation as we see on the

African continent today. Ancient Egyptian writings were therefore not in one tribal language. As a

result, deciphering one language could not give western scholars the orthographic clues to the

numerous documents that were written in other tribal languages. This is the reason less than a

tenth of the supposed recovered papyri from Ancient Egypt have been successfully deciphered up

to date. The deciphering formula that Champollion left behind does not fit all the languages of all

the papyri Egyptologists and archaeologists have recovered from Ancient Egypt. What is worse,

most of these scholars do not even know that they are dealing with different African languages.

For these reasons, and more, I am of the opinion that the only way you can truly revitalize the Egyptian

language is to reconstruct the proto-language that gave birth to all of the ―dialects,‖ if one believes they

were in fact dialects and not distinct languages. I am of the opinion that this would be a daunting task as

proto-Egyptian cannot be reconstructed using the comparative method as it is a ―mixed language‖

(discussed below). The initial language derived from a creolization process of Chadic, Nilo-Saharan

(Kongo-Saharan), and Cushitic languages. Therefore, one cannot reconstruct a single parent to Egyptian.

The nature of certain grammatical aspects of the language will be tackled in this essay which will help to

demonstrate a Kongo-Saharan substratum.

This essay, however, is focused on the writing script: the mdw nTr. I seek here to demonstrate that without

engaging Kongo-Saharan languages, one will not be able to properly vocalize the Egyptian phonemes

associated with certain glyphs. This is because the hieroglyphs are an expansion of old Niger-Congo signs

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and symbols that initially had monosyllabic roots for terms that matched the objects being depicted. Many

of these vocalizations survived in Egyptian. One can verify the old pronunciations by examining the

Linear A script of the Minoans who ―borrowed‖ the designs from the mdw nTr hieroglyphs. However,

many of the Linear A signs have different vocalizations than what Egyptologists believe are the proper

vocalizations for Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, as we will see later on, some of these glyphs are the

correct pronunciation for the signs. I argue that many of the signs have gone through a renaming process

and/or sound mutation in Egyptian which forced a different vocalization of the glyph. This will be

supported by matching the lexemes for the glyphs in both Afro-Asiatic and Kongo-Saharan5 and where

possible, checking against ―dialectical‖ variances of the terms. In this essay we will only focus on the

24(or 26) primary monoliteral glyphs.6

HOW ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS SHAPED EGYPTIAN CULTURE AND LANGUAGE

Before we can tackle the phonology of the primary glyphs, we have to situate Egypt in its proper

historical and cultural context. I mentioned earlier that there was essentially a pool of cultures that came

together and became the Egyptian culture. This was the result of two major historical events: the drying of

North Africa and the unification of the two major kingdoms (―the two lands‖) under king Menes. We will

however only discuss the first point in detail here.

Dr. S.O.Y. Keita (biological anthropologist), in his article ―Geography and Climate‖ informs us of the

details of this climatic event which forced the inhabitants of the green ―Sahara‖ to flee in many directions.

Between 50,000 and 15,000 years ago the desert area west of the Nile was inhabited sparsely, if at

all, due to the region's aridity. During this period a succession of cultures flourished on the banks

of the Nile. As rains came in from equatorial Africa in the early Holocene, the desert became less

arid, and people moved into the Sahara from all directions. Between 10,000 and 6,000 B.C.

archaeological evidence has been interpreted to suggest that the number of people living along the

Nile fell. At the same time, in the desert west of the river there is evidence of an increase in

population and of pastoral societies that built large stone megaliths and sculptures, developed

astronomical knowledge, made the earliest known pottery in Africa, and, likely, domesticated

cattle. There are rock paintings of people and animals, sometimes using themes that also appear

later in Egypt, along with other aspects of the culture. After the climate again grew more arid after

6000 B.C. there is evidence for migration back into the Nile Valley.7

There are a few things that must be highlighted from this citation. The first is that the Nile Valley—

although one of the major corridors for early human migrations outside of Africa—itself was sparsely

populated. This is due to the fact that before agriculture was the primary subsistence strategy in the Nile

Valley, most human groups were hunter-gatherers and/or pastoralists which meant that they were

constantly on the move. The ―lower‖8 Nile Valley (Egypt/Sudan), during the time of the green period of

North Africa, had no real advantages in terms of its living needs. What is now desert was once full of

major lakes and rivers. So the Nile was just one of many rivers for which people could live. However,

5 These labels have been shown to be arbitrary designations but will be used here as to not confuse readers who are

not familiar with the debate on the classification of African languages and their labels. 6 This essay assumes the reader has some knowledge of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic language, so little to no

space will be designated to discuss its history, development or the like. I recommend for the laymen Ankh Mi Ra‘s

work Let the Ancestors Speak: Removing the Veil of Mysticism from Medu Netcher (1995), JOM International Inc. 7 http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/geopedia/Ancient_Egypt

8 Which in our modern orientation would be ―upper.‖ The Nile, however, flows up-down into the Mediterranean sea,

so the ―upper‖ Nile Valley would be in Uganda/Ethiopia.

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things changed as the aridity came back and forced the inhabitants of the Sahara regions to spread in all

directions. This brings us to our second point.

As a result of the forming of the desert, these Saharan groups begin to move south, east, west and north in

search of ecological refuges such as desert oases and other fertile areas to live. Those who moved south

and east found themselves finding refuge along the Nile river. Others going south settled near lake Chad.

Others going west settled near the Niger river. Others moving further south penetrated the forests and

didn‘t stop until they reached the Congo river. In other words, the people settled in areas where there was

an abundance of water. This is when the Nile becomes really important.

With this said, every group that migrated didn‘t speak the same language. Over time, along the Nile,

many groups speaking different but related languages settled in various points along the Nile. Some of

these Sahara migrants actually settled in Greece (Diop 1991, Campbell-Dunn 2006, 2008). This is

important to note because, as Keita mentioned above, these groups brought along with them religious

ideas, cultural motifs, and signs and symbols that later appeared in Pharaonic Egypt. As we will see

below, these signs (writing scripts) are found in West and Central Africa as well as ancient Crete.

Over time, forty-two major provinces appeared along the Nile River and the idea of a unified polity began

to shape. King Menes is credited with unifying the nomes and creating a singular polity. In the forty-two

provinces of Upper and Lower Egypt, a question of linguistic order arose concerning the choice of a

language as the official means of communication or system of communication for federal purposes (Kaya,

2010). Each province had a language or dialect and totem (tama) of its own. The early scribes and

linguists, who were multi-lingual, noted the similarities in many of the basic and major terms of these

dialects and/or languages. This prompted, in the writing script, a conscious omission of the vowel-sounds

as they noted that these were not consistent between the languages and/or dialects along the Nile.

By not writing the vowel sounds in the words, the script became accessible to many groups and it allowed

those in the future to more easily read the ancient scripts as they noted the more stable consonant roots

(Kaya 2010, Rkhty 2010). People do not vocalize the same way in every place and in every time. Vowels

change in any language, even from person to person and from place to place.

On the orders of the Pharaoh, the scribes set consonants as the basic phonemes and pictograms as both the

sign language and the symbols (Kaya 2010). Using early African languages as a frame of reference, the

scribes elaborated a voiced consonant graphic system, which was to unify the whole Egyptian nation and

which we have applied to several African languages.

The hieroglyphs can be used to write different languages and/or be understood by different African

languages that share the same or similar structure. As noted by Kaya:

It should be observed that a link of communication could be established between different African

languages that have a common pre-dialectical source. This is made possible by using identical

consonants and phonemes as a paradigm and introducing ideograms as in the rebus system for the

exceptions, and the determinative clauses as in a lexicon or phonetically complement. For

instance, a Senegalese person could write Walaf in the shape of hieroglyphics which could be read

and understood by a Malian, a Tanzanian or a Zairian without speaking Mandingo, Lingala,

Swahili or even Hausa. This is made possible when African languages and the Pharaonic graphic

system are combined.

As a result of the many groups converging along the Nile, the language that arose and developed was a

‗mixed‘ language and this is why we cannot reconstruct a proto-form of the Egyptian language and why it

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was once labeled as a language ‗isolate‘.9 The study of mixed languages is beyond the scope of this paper.

I recommend the books Language Contact, Creolization and Genetic Linguistics edited by Sarah G.

Thomason and Terrence Kaufman (1988); Language Contact and Grammatical Change by Bernd Heine

and Tania Kuteva (2005); The Dynamics of Language Contact by Michael Clyne (2003); The Ecology of

Language Evolution by Salikoko Mufwene (2001). One can also examine peer-reviewed essays in the

Journal of Language Contact: Evolution of Languages, Contact and Discourse (started in 2007).

This is important to note because linguists are beginning to realize just how important contact is to the

development and the shaping of human languages. Ideas regarding the rigidness of languages and their

resistance to outside change are eroding under the weight of new data. For instance, it was believed that

languages would not adopt whole grammar features from other languages, but this has been shown not to

be the case, for example, with the Ma‘a language of East Africa (Thomason and Kaufman, 1988).

The Ma‘a language cannot be classified by comparative methods because the vocabulary of the language

is Cushitic, while its grammar system is Bantu. The purpose of the comparative method is the

reconstruction of the proto-language. This linguistic tool is used to establish genetic relatedness of

languages. These languages, shown to be related, relate on both a common grammar and basic

vocabulary. If these two aspects of speech are not shared in significant ways (among two or more

languages), it cannot be argued that that these languages are closely related and you cannot classify the

languages into known families. This is the case with Ma‘a. Because the major features in Ma‘a come

from two different language families, one cannot reconstruct the mother language that gave birth to Ma‘a.

Unlike in biological systems, linguists attribute the birth of languages to a single parent, not two like in

living biological systems.

In the case of Egyptian, there are multiple ‗donors‘ that help to create the language. Dr. Alain Anselin,

linguist and Egyptologist (Universite des Antilles-Guyane), in his article ―Some Notes about an Early

African Pool of Cultures from which Emerged the Egyptian Civilization‖ (2011) suggests an integration

of Chadic, Cushitic and Nilo-Saharan elements. I would also add Niger-Congo for reasons to be discussed

below.

THE EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS AS NIGER-CONGO SYMBOLS

The hieroglyphic symbols are an outgrowth and expansion of old Kongo-Saharan writing symbols. These

symbols can be seen among the Vai, Mende and even the ancient Cretans. A few examples can be seen

below of shared iconographic symbols among the Egyptians and Kongo-Saharan speakers. The first few

examples is taken from Cheikh Anta Diop‘s book Precolonial Black Africa: A Comparative Study of the

Political and Social Systems of Europe and Black Africa, from Antiquity to the Formation of Modern

States (1987).

9 A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or "genetic")

relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common

with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single language. Commonly cited

examples include Basque, Korean, Ainu and Burushaski, though in each case a minority of linguists claim to have

demonstrated a relationship with other languages. Egyptian is now considered its own branch of Afro-Asiatic.

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For more info on the Mande script, visit: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mende.htm

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Nsibidi and Egyptian comparisons

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Egyptian and Mande script comparisons

The following example actually comes from Linear A in Crete and the Vai script of West Africa. The

Linear A borrowed many signs from the ancient Egyptian script, but didn‘t borrow the phonetics of the

sign. Practically all of the signs in Linear A match Niger-Congo words for those symbols, which brings to

question whether they were borrowed necessarily from Egypt or brought with them from Africa. The first

example comes from Cambpell-Dunn (2006).

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Below are some of signs alleged to be borrowed from Egypt per Obenga.

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The comparisons below are a more extensive set of Egyptian and Linear A comparisons with their Niger-

Congo names, which I argue, informs us on alternate pronunciations of signs in Egyptian which are

attested in the Egyptian language itself.

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As we can see, the names given to the Egyptian glyphs above are actually the name of those items in

Kongo-Saharan languages. A good number of these glyphs in Linear A actually are just morphological

variations of the ones in Egypt. For instance, Linear A do ―eye‖ is a variant of Egyptian iri ―eye‖ (l <> d);

Linear A se ―arm‖ is a palatalized form of Egyptian (k)a ―arm.‖ We argue that the D36 glyph a "paw, claw, hand, arm" was actually pronounced ka (PWS *ka ―arm, hand, cut‖); e.g., Egyptian a ―region, province‖ < PWS *ka ―place, home‖; PWS *gà ―place‖, PWS *gi ―to be in a place‖; PWN KI (KYI, CI)

―village, settlement.‖ Over time the k- was dropped which left us with /a/.

The Kongo-Saharan languages can tell us a lot about the Egyptian writing script. Diop reaffirms why we

should be looking at those languages from the south in regards to understanding the hieroglyphs.

Equally inadmissible are theories that take the same assumption (Capart) to explain the origin of

Egyptian writing, whose essential symbols in reality represent the flora and fauna of the African

interior, particularly Nubia, not Lower Egypt. (Diop, 1974: 125)

This is important to note because the character of the writing script is not Semitic, but Niger-Congo. The

so-called determinatives of the Egyptian script are none other than Kongo-Saharan noun-classifiers and

verbal suffixes (a few examples will be demonstrated throughout our discussion). In Kongo-Saharan

languages, the ―classes,‖ for example, ―determine‖ the definition of the words, unlike in Semitic where

the meaning is determined by vocalic alternations (the vowels are grammatical elements). These same

characteristics can be found in Sumerian. As Mallowan (1965: 62), referenced in Campbell-Dunn (2009a:

10), noted about Sumerian, determinative signs were often added ―as prefixes‖ and phonetic complements

attached ―as suffixes‖ to clarify the meaning of the word. I argue that Egyptian and Sumerian share these

same features because they both derive from Niger-Congo languages where this approach to writing

matches the inner logic of the language being spoken.

The ―Nubian‖ origin of the language and the writing script is intriguing when we juxtapose it to the thesis

by Welmers for the possible Niger-Congo homeland in the Nile Valley. Wm. E. Welmers, in his 1971

article "Niger-Congo, Mande" [in T.A. Sebeok, et al. eds. Linguistics in sub-Saharan Africa (Current

Trends in Linguistics, 7), pp. 113-140 The Hague: Mouton] suggests the following:

By way of conclusion to this general overview of the Mande languages, a bit of judicious

speculation about Mande origins and migrations may not be out of order. It has already been stated

that the Mande languages clearly represent the earliest offshoot from the parent Niger-Congo

stock—not counting Kordofanian, which Greenberg considers parallel to all of the Niger-Congo,

forming a Niger-Kordofanian macrofamily. An original Niger-Congo homeland in the general

vicinity of the upper Nile valley is probably as good a hypothesis as any. From such a

homeland, a westward Mande migration may have begun well over 5000 years ago. Perhaps the

earliest division within this group resulted in the isolation of what is now represented only by

Bobo-fing. Somewhat later— perhaps 3500 to 4500 years ago, and possibly from a new homeland

around northern Dahomey [now Benin]— the ancestors of the present Northern-western Mande

peoples began pushing farther west, ultimately reaching their present homeland in the grasslands

and forests of West Africa. This was followed by a gradual spread of the Southern-Eastern

division, culminating perhaps 2000 years ago in the separation of its to branches and the ultimate

movement of Southern Mande peoples southeast and westward until Mano and Kpelle, long

separated, became once more contiguous. (pp. 119-120) (emphasis mine)

We have to remember that the Greek historian informs us what the Egyptians told him directly concerning

their origins and customs. We are told by Diodorus that:

They say also that the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians, Osiris having been the

leader of the colony…And the larger part of the customs of the Egyptians are, they hold,

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Ethiopian, the colonists still preserving their ancient manners. For instance, the belief that their

kings are gods, the very special attention which they pay to their burials, and many other matters

of a similar nature are Ethiopian practices, while the shapes of their statues and the forms of their

letters are Ethiopian; for of the two kinds of writing which the Egyptians have, that which is

known as "popular" (demotic) is learned by everyone, while that which is called "sacred" is

understood only by the priests of the Egyptians, who learn it from their fathers as one of the

things which are not divulged, but among the Ethiopians everyone uses these forms of

letters. Furthermore, the orders of the priests, they maintain, have much the same position among

both peoples; for all are clean who are engaged in the service of the gods, keeping themselves

shaven, like the Ethiopian priests, and having the same dress and form of staff, which is shaped

like a plough and is carried by their kings, who wear high felt hats which end in a knob at the top

and are circled by the serpents which they call asps; and this symbol appears to carry the thought

that it will be the lot of those who shall dare to attack the king to encounter death-carrying stings.

Many other things are also told by them concerning their own antiquity and the colony which they

sent out that became the Egyptians, but about this there is no special need of our writing

anything.10

In other words, the Egyptian culture is the Kushite culture (Ethiopian) of Chad/Sudan as acknowledged

by the Egyptians themselves. Even Champollion, the decipherer of the hieroglyphs, understood this

point.11

This would explain why the Kongo-Saharan symbols, along with the words to go with them,

became the foundational symbols of the emerging Egyptian language. There are many theses concerning

the origins of the Niger-Congo language family with many having them originate west of Lake Chad. I

find many of these theories untenable for reasons beyond the scope of our current discourse. But even if

we did accept that hypothesis, one couldn‘t deny the fact that Niger-Congo (and Proto-Bantu) speakers

were in the Nile Valley as evidenced by the Sumerian data.

The Sumerian language has been proven, by way of the comparative method, to be a Niger-Congo

language. Four principle works help to establish this fact: W. Wanger, Comparative Lexical Study of

Sumerian and Ntu (“Bantu”): The Sumerian Sanscrit of the African Ntu Languages (1935); Robin

Walker, When We Ruled (2006); GJK Campbell-Dunn Sumerian Comparative Dictionary & Sumerian

Comparative Grammar (2009); and Hermel Hermstein Black Sumer: The African Origins of Civilization

(2012).

Hermstein (2012: 85-98) posits an eastern migration of Niger-Congo (Proto-Bantu) speakers, originating

from Lake Chad, passing through the Sudan, settling in Somalia, then working their way up to present-

day Iraq. Campbell-Dunn (2009a: 43, 151), on the other hand, posits a Congo origin with the Proto-

Sumerians traveling through East Africa into Arabia and migrating further north. Lake Chad and the

Congo are essentially the same area, only separated by forests. In both scenarios they had to travel east

and cross over the Nile to get to Arabia/Mesopotamia. In traveling they settled in Sudan where the origins

of Egyptian pharaonic culture ultimately lies (although I would add elements from the Western and

Eastern African deserts as well).

As noted by Diop (1974: 169), in regards to the beginning of the mdw nTr script:

As early as 4000 BC Egyptian documents indicate that the Merotic Sudan was a prosperous

country which maintained commercial ties with Egypt. Gold was plentiful. About that time the

Meroitic Sudan probably transmitted to Egypt the twelve hieroglyphs that were the first embryonic

alphabet.

10

Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History, Books II.35 - IV.58, Translated by C.H. Oldfather, Harvard University

Press, 2000 11

As noted by Champollion in his Grammaire Egyptienne (1836), Introduction: XIX.

Page 17 of 62

The idea that the hieroglyphs originated with Kongo-Saharan speakers is also one shared by Campbell-

Dunn. His commentary on the subject is very informative, not only on the development of the script

among the Egyptians, but also on how to approach the phonology of the symbols as well. He goes on to

inform us that:

Egyptian Hieroglyphics (attested from c 3250 BC) uses many (about 900) recognisable

pictographs and combines ideographic and phonetic notation, but not in the same way as

Sumerian. Determinatives and partial phonetic indications (old prefixes, suffixes ?) are

added to clarify the core word. Hieroglyphics incorporates a consonantary, however,

not a syllabary (standard interpretation). I suspect the consonantary arose through

applying a syllabic script designed for a language with few vowels to a foreign

tongue with a vowel system that did not match. The Egyptian method of writing 3

vowels by using consonantal symbols implies reduction of wu to u, yi to i etc. This kind

of change is typical of Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan. The Egyptian practice of

attaching a snake to the SUN sign shows that Hieroglyphics were once used to write

a Niger-Congo language in which the “snake” and the “sun” were denoted by the

same word,12

such as ra, da. Egyptian vowels may once have been indeterminate

however.

The rebus principle is a prominent feature, which suggests Hieroglyphics once wrote a

non-Egyptian language with numerous homophones, such as occur in Niger-Congo. The

rebus principle is based on homophony, which is not a feature of Egyptian. The same

Egyptian sign is freely used for words that are phonetically diverse. But this is true also

of Sumerian. It is explained by a pictographic (ideographic) source.

Pictographies of various kinds (ideographic, syllabic, alphabetic) occur in West Africa,

where they provide elaborate pictorial catalogues of man‘s (and woman‘s) worlds (Dalby

1967). They appear to have originally been used in initiation ceremonies, and were also

employed for purposes of magic. In Africa they have a meaningful cosmic context, and

are embedded in the mythology. Africa therefore, not Egypt, is the probable source of

all these pictographies. Unfortunately however documentation from Africa is relatively

recent. But some of these scripts or their precedents must go back to antiquity. That is

Diop‘s opinion. (Campbell-Dunn, 2009a: 11-12) (emphasis mine)

Besides the off-remark separating Egypt from Africa, Campbell-Dunn brings up many salient points that

gives context to this discourse. As I noted in my 2011 work Passion of the Christ or Passion of Osiris:

The Kongo Origins of the Jesus Myth, the Egyptians communicated through the rebus principle. This

principle is discussed by wiki as follows:

In linguistics, the rebus principle means using existing symbols, such as pictograms, purely for

their sounds regardless of their meaning, to represent new words. Many ancient writing systems

used the rebus principle to represent abstract words, which otherwise would be hard to be

represented by pictograms. An example that illustrates the Rebus principle is the representation of

the sentence ―I can see you‖ by using the pictographs of ―eye—can—sea—ewe.‖ Some linguists

believe that the Chinese developed their writing system according to the rebus principle,[5]

and

Egyptian hieroglyphs sometimes used a similar system. A famous rebus statue of Ramses II uses

three hieroglyphs to compose his name: Horus (as Ra), for Ra; the child, mes; and the sedge plant

(stalk held in left hand), su; the name Ra-mes-su is then formed

12

One can see another example of this in Egyptian: itn.t "solar goddess, female sun disk" (itn "sun/sun disk); itnt "a

snake."

Page 18 of 62

To see this type of communication in action, we can examine a practice among the Yoruba people of

Nigeria in regards to setting up a date (if you will) and how they communicate this non-verbally.

To name one custom, the Yoruba of Africa have always used pebbles as indexical symbols; these

could even assume homophonic value (an important component of some phonetic writing),

whereby one word sounds identical to another with a different meaning. To arrange a tryst13

, for

example, A Yoruba man would leave six pebbles for a woman to find – Yoruba efa, or ‗six‘, also

means ‗attracted‘. If the woman was willing, she left eight pebbles as an answer: Yoruba eyo, or

‗eight‘, also means ‗agreed‘. History of Writing by Steven Roger Fischer, Reaktion Books 2001

p2114

As noted in Imhotep (2011), the rebus principle can be seen in the image below of the God Ra of ancient

Egypt. Each element of the image can be expressed in the Egyptian language using the term ra and thus

the icons—besides being used to denote spiritual concepts—are used here to reinforce the pronunciation

of the deity: they are a kind of ―phonetic complement‖ so-to-speak.

What we are seeing above is the name ra ―written‖ four times:

Egyptian rrw “snake” r “snake” rA “snake” ra “sun, day” ra “hawk”15 (wn) ra “high priest in Letopolis”16

13

A tryst is a ―rendezvous‖ or a ―meeting.‖ 14

Cited in Hermstein, Hermel (2012-10-06). Black Sumer: The African Origins of Civilisation (Kindle Locations

3043-3050). Pomegranate Publishers. Kindle Edition. 15

Mangbetu ri ―animal or bird‖; Songhai k‟úrò ―bird‖ 16

In Niger-Congo la means ―old‖ (refers to elders, those in high rank and gods: e.g., Yorùbá Olá ―elevated status,

fame, honourable estate‖).

Page 19 of 62

Each aspect of the image above is rendered as ra. I argue that the hawk, too, can be rendered ra. This is

because in the family of related languages, the word for ―bird, bird of prey‖ is ra or some variation as we

can see below:

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *raHaw/y- ―bird‖; Semitic: *rahw- or *raʔ- 'crane' or 'red kite'; Western

Chadic: *ray(aw)- 'bird'; East Chadic: *rāy- < *raHay- 'vulture'; Low East Cushitic: *raHaw-

'large bird' ; Hebrew rāʔā 'red kite'; Arabic rahw-; Proto-WChadic: *ray(aw)- 'bird'; Bolewa: rayo,

yaro [Bn:22], met. yaro [CLR]; Karekare: ra yi [ShV]; Ngamo: ra yi [ShV]; Bele: raawi [ShB];

Proto-EChadic: *ray- ‗vulture‘; Migama: raaya [JMig] {Notes: cf. Dangaleat úriya 'heron' [Fd]};

Proto-Low East Cushitic: *raHaw- 'large bird'; Arbore: raw.

The word ra is just a general word for bird and bird of prey among the so-called Afro-Asiatic speakers.17

However, for the Kongo-Saharan speakers who lived in the Nile Valley, they pronounced each of these

items differently and their terms have also survived in Egyptian. For the NC-speakers, each of these terms

can be pronounced with an initial k- or g- sound with an optional post-posted -la suffix article or another

agglutinated term. For instance:

SNAKE ? Sumerian a-lá ―harmful being‖

LA, DA, RA “snake”, “crawl” a-

PWS la ―lie, sleep‖ Sumerian alad ―protective spirit‖

PWN DAD ―crawl‖

PWS guà ―snake‖, Nupe e-wa ―snake‖, Bassa i-wa ―snake‖

PWS gua ―hand, arm‖ (snakes were thought of as ―arms‖)

PWN GHWÁKÀ, GHWYÁKÀ ―snake‖

Bantu jóka ―snake‖

Kongo nioka ―snake‖, Swahili nyoka ―snake‖, Lolo, Ngala, Poto, Ngombe, Kele njo ―snake‖

Yoruba edjo ―snake‖

Xhosa majola ―snake‖ (Sambu, 2008: 223)

Mande bida ―black snake‖

Mangbetu tatala ―snake‖

[Snakes were both harmful beings and protective spirits].

*GW = # *A = a

17

As it regards the pronunciation of the god Ra, as the falcon god, it is my contention that the ra-form in Afro-

Asiatic is the k-r form in reverse (Hr<>r(H)). A clue lies in the pronunciations in related languages (cited above)

where the root for ra is either r-h, r-y or r-ˀ. Each of the sounds in the C2 position derive from /k/ (k>h, k>y, k>ˀ).

See below for discussion on Hrw. Diop (1955: 117) unknowingly supports this suggestion in his commentary on

African words that may have been borrowed into Greek > Latin. He suggests the following: "Ra, Re: Egyptian god,

symbolized by the sun, title of the Pharaoh; Rog: celestial Serer god whose voice is thunder; Rex: king, in Latin;

which, in the Romance languages, becomes re, rey, roi, whereas in the Anglo-Germanic we have only king or

König." However, the word king may be a loan from Sumerian. The Serer rog and Latin rex would verify that on the

one hand, the inherited term in Serer substantiates the r-k root. One should know that in African languages, the word

for ―sky‖ and ―sun‖ are often the same (Campbell-Dunn 2009a, 2009b). The borrowing into Latin would have to be

at a time where ra was pronounced raH where the H was later dropped in the other Romance languages. It should be

noted that la in Kongo-Saharan can mean ―great, big‖ and is seen in the Yorùbá word Olá ―elevated status, fame,

honourable estate.‖ It can be seen in such names as Olásení ―fame is not unachievable,‖ Oladŭnni ―high status is

sweet to have,‖ Olánrewájú ―status is progressing forward,‖ Oláitán ―honour never gets used up.‖ In Bantu this

becomes kala, kulu, kale, etc.

Page 20 of 62

The word Dt ―cobra‖ in Egyptian derived from an old Kongo-Saharan word *gua ―snake.‖ Here g > D

which is common in African languages and can be seen in Egyptian iqr ―snake‖ (Xhosa-Bantu ma-jola

―snake‖). A similar sounding root is given for the word ―sun‖ in Kongo-Saharan. A few examples can be

seen below:

*GHW = Q

SUN (G. N7)

QE (Linear A) = *guia ―sun‖; I Tschi a-wia ―day‖, o-wia ―sun‖, Agni wa ―sun‖ < wia, Guang o-

wi, o-wu ―sun‖, Abure e-yue ―sun‖, IV Yula we ―sun‖, Tem we-re, we ―sun‖, Tshala we-ta ―sun‖.

PWN GHWIN ―sun‖. Bantu γuva ―sun‖, Bantu (Meeussen) guba ―sun‖. A. (B-C) Ogoni gbei, Ufi

a rigwe ―sun‖, Ewe ghe,Fon hue ―sun‖. (V) Fula nange ―sun‖, Gola egwe ―sun‖. Language Gbe

(Kru, Kwa, Benue-Congo, Cross River), Kwe (Benue-Congo). Probably Q = gb, as in II Ogoni.

(Campbell-Dunn, 2006:1-2)

The word for bird also shares this root in Kongo-Saharan.

BIRD Sumerian hu ―bird‖, ( u5 ―cock‖)

KU “bird”

PNC *ku ―bird‖, Igbo o-ku ―parrot‖, kuku ―pigeon‖

PWN KUKI ―fowl‖

Bantu kumbi ―hawk‖, kucu ―parrot‖, kunda, kuti ―pigeon‖

―Holoholo‖ kokŏ ―hen‖

Mangbetu kua ―parrot‖

Proto-Mande *kuni ―bird‖

Songhai k‟úrò ―bird‖

*K = h *U = u *K = # *U = u

In Egyptian these words have varying morphologies: SNAKE Dt/ADyt/wADyt "cobra, cobra (as amulet)‖ (<

kt "uraeus snake, black necked cobra"); SUN xai "be shining (of kings)," xAy "shine (of sun), enlighten (of

land)," Hrw "sun, day, daytime" (x > H)18

; HAWK Hrw/Hr ―Heru (hawk god)‖ (Proto-Bantu *-kodi-

‖falcon, hawk, bird of prey‖),‖ HAi "screech (of falcon) [(PNC *ku ―bird‖, ―bird cry‖)], dance (at

funeral)19

"; siAt "falcon amulet" (k>s ?).

Even the body of the person in the image of Ra above can be said to have this -k- root, as a word for

―person, living being‖ in Egyptian is anx (Linear A qa ―man‖; Khoi-san khoi ―man‖; Dinka koi

―man‖; Akan nkwa ―life‖; Kikongo nkwa ―life, man‖; I Tschi a-kwa ―a male, a male slave‖; Tschala o-

kpa ―person.‖ There is also the general word for ―body‖ xt. It should be noted that in Linear A the anx

Dsymbol is pronounced za ―life‖ (PCS za ―flesh‖) which in Niger-Congo is also associated with ―blood‖

(the life-source): e.g., Yoruba edže ―blood,‖ Nupe edža ―blood,‖ Lefana ubudza ―blood,‖ Guang obuza

―blood,‖ Ewe kadze ―blood,‖ Ahlo obidza ―blood‖ (Eg. Df ―drop of blood‖; < fD ?). Again, this derives

from an original k-form: e.g., PWN *GHIA ―blood,‖ Tchi boga ―blood,‖ Nupe egia ―blood,‖ Bantu

(Meeussen) gida, gadi ―blood‖ (Eg. Tr ―red liquid/blood‖; ti.t ―amulet, Isis blood‖), Gbe aga, agya

18

It should be noted that in Niger-Congo the g/k sound is often palatalized and the word *gua for ―sun‖ can be seen

in its NC variants: Yoruba o-džo ―sun,‖ Mbe a-džui ―sun.‖ This would match closely to the Egyptian Dt ―cobra‖ (Yoruba edjo). 19

It should be noted that many indigenous ceremonial dances imitate animal movements and this may be the case

here: a kind of falcon dance. The author recalls seeing something like this among the Papua New Guineans who do a

mating dance that is imitative of an exotic bird that lives in the area. One can see such a display here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/humanplanetexplorer/events_and_festivals/sing_sing.

Page 21 of 62

―blood.‖ The b- prefix on some of the roots may derive from m- (m>b), a Kongo-Saharan prefix for mass

liquid nouns.

As we see in Egyptian, two different pronunciations exist (ra, Hrw) in the same language for the exact

same symbols, as the same symbols for the god Ra are the same symbols (exactly) used for the god @rw. I

attribute this to at least two different language families living in Egypt at the time of these religious

formulations who gave these signs pronunciations in their own language. It is very common for Africans

to mix religious ideas from various groups into their own tradition. The Yoruba system of Ifa immediately

comes to mind.

Section Summary

We have set out to set out the context by which the ancient Egyptian writing script developed. We noted

that the Egyptian state is a pool of various African groups and the Egyptian language emerged out of a

need to communicate all throughout the Nile River. Egyptian became a creolized lingua-franca (like

Lingala in Congo) and emerged from Chadic, Kushitic and Kongo-Saharan languages in the area. We

argue that the glyphs originally were Kongo-Saharan signs that were significantly expanded on by scribes

of the Egyptian state. Clues to their earlier pronunciation lie in studying the Vai and Linear A writing

scripts. Diodorus informs us that the major manners and customs of the Egyptians derive from the

‗Ethiopians‘. These were the various groups, generically called Kushites, who resided in modern-day

Sudan. If the Egyptians note that their customs and script derive from the South, then we cannot look to

Semitic for the proper phonology of the Egyptian writing script: it is not a Semitic language. This is why

our method here is to look into Kongo-Saharan as our starting point for clues to the pronunciation of

words, word-formation, and of grammar ‗hidden‘ in the glyphs. This is the focus of our next section.

Page 22 of 62

THE PHONOLOGY OF THE WRITING SCRIPT

As noted previously, the focus of this paper is a preliminary look at the basic monoliteral signs that are

the foundation of the Egyptian alphabet. Below are the glyphs and their pronunciations as they are

understood today.

The objective is to verify that the phonemes assigned to each glyph are the correct ones given the

historical development of the script. There are several reasons why we of the African school would want

to revisit this research question. The main reason is to accurately compare ancient Egyptian lexemes with

modern African lexes to evaluate the rate of change of paleo-African words. As Egyptian is our oldest

known full script on the continent (and the world for that matter), it serves as a fertile ground for

comparisons for all other related languages; especially in the areas of grammar and word formation.

As noted earlier, the method so far has been to compare Egyptian with the Semitic languages. This stems

from earlier notions in Egyptology which believed that the Egyptian language and culture stemmed from

migrants coming from Western Asia. Since this area is dominated by Semitic languages, they assumed

that Egyptian would thus be an offshoot of Semitic. This has proven not to be the case and it has been

known that Egyptian and Semitic were not closely related since the time of E. Wallis Budge. But cultural

bias ensued and we still have, to this date, a strong belief that Semitic will reveal a lot about the Egyptian

language when it cannot. As noted by Diop (1974: 124):

To attempt to explain the Negro Egyptian world by the so-called Semitic world should be

impossible on the basis of no more than a few grammatical similarities such as the suffixal

conjugations, pronoun suffixes, and t for the feminine. The Semitic world, as we conceive of it

today, is too recent to explain Egypt.

Another problem is researchers have stricktly looked to the Coptic language, which is believed to be the

last stage of the Egyptian language, for the proper pronunciation of Egyptian words. This is problematic

on several fronts. The first is that Coptic is approx 3000 years after the development of the Egyptian

language. The language has gone through too many changes to accurately be able to pronounce old or

Page 23 of 62

middle Egyptian (if one believes that these are stages and not dialects and/or different languages).

Secondly, it is my personal opinion that the Copts were not, wholly, indigenous Africans, but Europeans.

One can go to Egypt today and see the Copts are not the Africans depicted on ancient Egyptian reliefs. As

noted previously, Champollion even mentioned this in his Grammaire Egyptiene:

The ancient Egyptians…belonged to a race of humans who resembled in every way the Kenuz or

―Barabras,‖ the current inhabitants of Nubia. The Copts found in Egypt today have none of the

characteristic traits of the ancient Egyptian population. The Copts are the result of the anarchic

metissage of all the different peoples that had successively dominated Egypt. It is wrong headed to

try to find in these people the physical traits of the ancient race.20

I agree and I extend this notion even to the language. One question one has to ask is why would the

indigenous Africans need to borrow Greek letters to write their native language? The Egyptians have

created over 900 signs for their language and for 3000 years didn‘t feel the need for vowels. Why all of a

sudden is there a need for vowels in this era? I can understand the need for better communication across

languages in regards to a need to write out vowels, but one is confused on why the Egyptians even

adopted the consonants from the Greeks as well. Again, the Egyptians were more than capable of utilizing

the consonants they already had.

My contention is that the Copts were Greeks and Coptic is the result of the interaction between Greek and

Egyptian speakers. The Greek Copts needed a way to write the African terms but with sounds that more

closely resembled the Greek language they were used to. Therefore, they employed the Greek script and

―adopted‖ the Demotic signs for sounds not present in the Greek language. There would have been no

reason for the Egyptians to ―adopt‖ their own script they have been writing with for centuries. Coptic, as a

script, developed in the 3rd

century BCE after the Greek takeover of Egypt and the subsequent spread of

Christianity.21

The existence of the script, and thus the pronunciation of words, are birthed in a Greek

(foreign) environment and cannot be used to wholly understand Old and Middle Egyptian. The

pidginization of terms must be considered.

There is now even some controversy about the pronunciation of Coptic. The reason is Coptic died out as a

primary spoken language in the 15th century. Most classical Coptic literature was written in the Sahidic

dialect, and when that is taught today (e.g. Thomas O. Lambdin, Introduction to Sahidic Coptic, Mercer

University Press, 1983, 1988), a sort of compromise "academic" pronunciation, partially based on the

academic pronunciation of Greek, is used. This is the same with middle Egyptian in modern Egyptology.

The Coptic spoken today is the result of a revitalization project just like with Hebrew.22

Therefore, we

must understand Coptic in its Greek context. The issues of language contact, in an era where Egyptians

are no longer sovereign, have to be considered. In other words, ―How did the Greek invasion and

hegemony affect the development of the Egyptian language during Greek occupation?‖ How did the

previous occupation affect the known Egyptian dialects? How did Egyptian words change under foreign

tongues? Who was writing during these periods: the indigenous or the new foreign ruling class? While

Coptic is helpful in pronunciation of Egyptian, it cannot ultimately be the barometer by which we attempt

to vocalize Old, Middle and New Kingdom Egyptian.

Lastly, many who are involved in the revitalization of Egyptian have not even bothered to step outside of

the modern Egyptian literature to verify that the modern scholars got the vocalization, and subsequently

our modern transcriptions correct. The problem is method. There are those who will attempt to justify

their associations by looking into modern dictionaries of Egyptian. The problem lies in the fact that one

20

Cited in Fluehr-Lobban and Rhodes (2004: 90), translated by Antenor Firmin (1885) from the French. 21

See http://www.omniglot.com/writing/coptic.htm 22

Read more here: http://www.stshenouda.com/coptlang/copthist.htm

Page 24 of 62

cannot ask native Egyptians, who speak the ancient Egyptian language (and write with the ancestral

signs), if one is saying the phonemes correctly. We have to rely on other methods to verify that the

phonetic associations with glyphs in current dictionaries are accurate or not.

Trying to verify the pronunciation of hieroglyphic sounds by way of a modern Egyptian dictionary is like

trying to prove the Bible by referencing the Bible. We cannot rely solely on the word of researchers

whose aim was to connect the Egyptian language to Semitic (thinking Semitic was ―Asian‖). In

attempting to link ancient Egyptian with Semitic, researches have also attempted to attach Semitic

phonology on the Egyptian glyphs. They did this without doing the comparative method23

to verify the

sounds by reconstructing the proto-Egyptian sound system so that we may account for sound changes in

later periods.

The approach to solving this problem has to be radically different than the approaches used in previous

decades. This is the objective of our discourse. Here are a few notes of mine before we get started

tackling the phonetics of Egyptian:

1. The hieroglyphs represent consonants, not vowels. So any ―vowel-like‖ associations given in the

text would have to be the result of consonant degradation.

2. For phonetic monoliteral signs, the first consonant for the name of the object depicted is the

phoneme that was chosen to represent the hieroglyph: e.g., nw = water; water sign = /n/

value.

3. Consonants morph over time and old signs get new sound values: e.g., H < k.

4. Egypt housed many language groups and dialects. As a result, some signs have totally different

pronunciations as a result of multiple groups assigning value to a single sign: e.g., fx, Sfdw

and arq.

Also, when understanding dialects and change over time, one has to be familiar with the common

morphology of phonemes. For this study I have adopted the Table of Equivalent Consonants created by

Alexander Aberfeldy.24

As noted by the author:

Before we can understand the wordlist we need to understand something about consonants. The

new approach has one tool, the Table of Equivalent Consonants or TEC, and the TEC has one

application, the wordlist. The TEC was inspired by Soundex, a phonetic indexing system devised

early in the twentieth century by Robert C. Russell and Margaret K. Odell. They called their

invention the Soundex system and patented it in 1918 and 1922. It has been used, successfully,

ever since to bring order to the spellings inflicted on immigrant surnames by English-speaking

clerks and, often, by the owners of the names. In a similar way, the TEC has brought order to

several million everyday words. The main feature of both systems is a reduction in the number of

effective consonants from the dozens used in European languages to six effective consonants.

Vowels are ignored. Both systems are effective because these variant spellings are not the result of

sloppy speech, imperfect education, or laziness: they represent what actually happens to sounds

when they are passed, many times, from mouth to ear and then written down, usually by a clerk

who does not speak the same language. Every word in our dictionaries was transmitted orally for

most of its existence and then transcribed in a similar way.

Here is the table below:

23

See this link for details of the comparative method, how it is done and what it is used for:

http://people.du.ac.in/~pkdas/hls/cmd.pdf 24

http://lochearnhead.wikidot.com/

Page 25 of 62

Fig.1.1 The TEC

1 B Mb P F V W

2 M N Ng Gn F V

3 C G J K Q S X Y Ch Sh H

4 D T Th Z

5 L LL

6 R RR

Fig.1.2 The 36 disyllabic roots

1 BB,BM ,BC ,BD ,BL, BR

2 MB,MM,MC,MD,ML,MR

3 CB,CM ,CC ,CD ,CL,CR

4 DB,DM ,DC ,DD ,DL,DR

5 LB,LM,LC,LD,LL,LR

6 RR,RB,RM,RC ,RD ,RL,RR

One can visit the material for more details on how it is organized. For now, the table above shows certain

primary consonants and their known dialectical variations; the results of internal and external agents of

morphological change over time. It helps us to anticipate the different spelling of words across space and

time and can be applied to African languages. Since we are doing a lot of comparisons with the ciLuba-

Bantu language, it should be noted the different sound interchanges in that language. It may be helpful in

the Egyptian language.

Sound interchanges in CiLuba-Bantu

n ↔ m np ↔ mp p ↔ f ↔ v r ↔ l ↔ d sh/š ↔ s ↔ z

m↔ b w↔ b p↔ h rn ↔ nl ↔ nd↔ d f ↔ v↔ pf

m↔ mb s ↔ z ↔ j p↔ b d↔ t t/č ↔ t

To begin an exercise, a word for ―bird‖ in Egyptian is written pr. History has shown us that the sounds /b/

and /f/ are often variants of /p/ (and vice versa). Also /l/ and /r/ interchange. With this knowledge I can

anticipate another form in Egyptian, something like b-r and that is exactly what we find: bA ―bird‖ [Wb I

S 410] (A = l). We note that often b > m, so we should check for a m-r variation as well. We find it, but the

phonemes are reversed. In Egyptian there is a phenomenon where the /A/ and /r/ sound are often switched

to the C1 position in Egyptian if originally in C2. So instead of mr or mA we find Ama ―bird‖ [Wb I S 10]. If

we notice on row 1 of the TEC that the /b/ sound also morphs into /w/, then we can anticipate a form w-r

in Egyptian given that /w/ in Egyptian derives from /b/ (b>w). In Egyptian we find wr ―young bird‖

[Cerny: CED S 98]. This word has a slight semantic evolution. However, the /r/ consonant is also known

to morph into /n/, so it is no surprise that we find in Egyptian wn ―bird‖ [Wb I S 307]. As a check on the

last pronunciation, we should note the word bn ―bird‖ [Wb I S 457] > bnw ―Heron, Phoenix.‖ Here the

general word for bird was given a slightly different pronunciation to give association to a specific type of

bird. But as we see here, all of these are variants of the same word: pr = bA = Ama = wr = wn = bn = bnw.

We can check into Negro-African languages against our Egyptian data:

BIRD Sumerian buru5 ―bird‖

BU “bird”

RU “demonstrative/plural”

Ngombe mbulu ―bird‖

Mande bō, bū ―bird of prey‖

Page 26 of 62

Mangbetu pupu ―big bird‖

―Bantu‖ (Johnston 1922: 255) bun ―bird‖ (Kwango-Kasai Group), also buru, bulu, mburu, puru

etc.as in Ruwenzori-Semliki languages (p. 256)

[Malay has burung ―bird‖, prefixed to bird names as a classifier]. [Mangbetu bulu ―man, speech‖]

<*B = b *U = u *R = r *U = u

Understanding common sound changes will help us detect dialectical variations of terms. When deciding

a sound for a morpheme, one must be cognizant of the variations in the language for the same concept

depicted by the glyph.

On the following page is my table of the proposed sound values for the Egyptian basic monoliteral

glyphs. I have also included the equivalent sounds, based on sound correspondences, in the ciLuba-Bantu

language given by Mubabinge Bilolo. Before we go there, however, I just want to show the Merotic script

from Meroe in the Sudan. It was the script used in the kingdom of Kush beginning in the second century

BCE. I will refer to this set of glyphs later on to verify some pronunciations in old Egyptian.

Page 27 of 62

Table1: Basic Egyptian Signs and their Phonemes

Gardiner

Sign Coda

Symbol Description Proposed

Sound Value

ciLuba25

Other possible

vocalizations

G1

vulture A a r/l

M17

Reed leaf e/i/j i gi, bi, ci

Double reeds e/y y g>y

D36 Arm a a, e(n) ka, ba

G43,

Quail chick/

rope u/w u b, swa

D58

Lower leg/foot b b p, k

Q3 seat26

p p b

I9 Horned viper f f b

G17

Owl/carpenter‘s

level m m b, p

N35,

Water/white

crown n n m, mb; ng, nk > ny

D21 mouth r l

O4

courtyard h h, k

V28

Twisted flax H ng, nk,

sh

s

Aa1 sieve x ng, sh

F32 Belly & udder X sh, nk, h x

O34 Bolt/lock s/z s, sh, z t, j, k

S29

Folded shawl s s, sh, z

N37 Pool of water S sh

N29 Hill slope q k, q

V31 basket k k, g t

W11

Jar stand or stool g g, ng, nk

X1 Bread loaf t t d

V13 Tethering rope T tsh, ci t

D46 hand d d, t, ci

I10

cobra D dj, nd d, j, k

25

Bilolo (2011: 236)

26 Some argue that this is a sign for a mat. See p "mat" (as covering for furniture), (statue) base, throne" .

Page 28 of 62

To justify the sounds associated with each glyph, the following table provides the names for the glyph

where the first consonant was taken to represent that sound in the hieroglyphs. Keep in mind that this is a

work in progress, so not all associatios are completed here.27

Table 2: Basic Egyptian Signs and their Equivalents in Negro-African Languages

Gardiner

Sign

Symbol Description Negro-African

G1

= A

vulture Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *raHaw/y- ―bird‖; Semitic: *rahw- or *raʔ-

'crane' or 'red kite'; Western Chadic: *ray(aw)- 'bird'; East Chadic:

*rāy- < *raHay- 'vulture'; Low East Cushitic: *raHaw- 'large bird'

; Hebrew rāʔā 'red kite'; Arabic rahw-; Proto-Semitic: *rahw- or

*raʔ-; Proto-WChadic: *ray(aw)- 'bird'; Bolewa: rayo, yaro

[Bn:22], met. yaro [CLR]; Karekare: ra yi [ShV]; Ngamo: ra yi

[ShV]; Bele: raawi [ShB]; Proto-EChadic: *ray- ‗vulture‘;

Migama: ráaya [JMig] {Notes: cf. Dangaleat úriya 'heron' [Fd]};

Proto-Low East Cushitic: *raHaw- 'large bird'; Arbore: raw.

M17

= i/j

Reed leaf REED

GI “reed”

Sumerian gi ―reed‖

PWS gí, gíl, (git) ―tree‖, PWS ti ―tree‖

PWS gi ―root, vein‖

PWN GHI, (GHIM) ―be alive‖, PWN TÍ ―tree‖

Bantu cimb ―plant‖ (dig)

Ngombe gbie ―plantation‖

Mande yiri, B dyiri ―tree‖

Mangbetu gi ―clothing‖ (made from reeds)

Mangbetu gi ―riverbank‖

Mangbetu gilinda ―brushwood that won‘t burn‖

Mangbetu kese ―grass‖

Mangbetu ki ―wood for heating‖, aki ―to break‖

PCS ki ―to break‖

*G = g *I = i

Egyptian qqi ―leaf‖ PB *jánì ―leaf, grass‖

= y

Double reeds Mangbetu bi ―leaf‖

PWN BI ―seed‖

Mande bi ―grass‖

ciLuba diBeji "leaf, paper"; ciBeji "large leaf"; lubeji "grass";

dyanyi "leaf"; lwanyi "high grass"

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *ʕabVl-

Meaning: leaf, grass

Borean etymology: Borean etymology

Semitic: *ʕVbil- 'fall (of leafs)'

Western Chadic: *bul-

Central Chadic: *HVbul-

27

The entries for the Negro-African column are taken from Campbell-Dunn (2009b) (one can check his sources) for

Kongo-Saharan; the online Nostratic database for Afro-Asiatic; the online ciLuba database for the Tshiluba

language; and the BLR3 Bantu database.

Page 29 of 62

East Chadic: *bil-

Low East Cushitic: *baHal- 'leaf'

D36 = a Arm ARM

KA “arm”, “strength”

Sumerian á ―arm, strength‖

PWS ka, bua (ba) ―arm‖ [BU = β]

Sumerian kalag ―strong‖

C-loss [k > h or b > v]

Sumerian a5, aka ―make‖

PWN BUAK, GWAL, KA (KYA), KWÁN ―arm‖

Sumerian Á-KAL ―strength‖

Bantu gado ―arm‖, bóko ―arm‖

Sumerian áh, ahi ―arm strength‖

―Holoholo‖ bokó ―arm‖, kal‟ ―to cut‖

Mande bolo, bolo-kala, kãmba-kala ―arm‖, wa ―arm, strength‖

ES Didinga kalkic ―armpit‖, kom ―be strong‖

G43

= w

Quail chick Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *wacVʕ- ‗bird‘; Egyptian: wd_ʕ 'grey crane'

(OK); Proto-Semitic: *wasʕ- 'little bird'; Arabic: wasʕ-, wasīʕ-;

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *waw/y/ʔ- ‗k. of bird‘; Semitic: *waw-at-

'kind of bird'; Egyptian: wy.t (med) 'kind of bird'; High East

Cushitic: *wayy- 'dove'; Proto-Semitic: *waw-at- ‗kind of bird‘;

Judaic Aramaic: wāwǝtā 'stork' [Ja. 376] (wātā according to [Levy

WTM III 505]); Gurage: Gog. Sod. Muh. Msq. wawat 'crow'

[LGur. 673].; {Notes: Tentative as the semantic difference

between the terms under comparison is substantial}; Proto-High

East Cushitic: *wayy- ‗dove‘; Burji (Bambala, Dashe): wayya;

Kongo-Saharan: Bulom ši-we (plural) ―birds‖, i-we ―bird‖

(singular), Biafada a-tsua ―fowl‖, Kissi sō ―fowl‖, Bulom e-sok

―fowl‖, Temne a-toko, a-tsogo ―fowl‖. Evidence that Minoan is

Atlantic. Mande sise ―fowl‖. The Egyptian phonetic for ―quail

chick‖ is w (unexplained).

D58

= b

Lower

leg/foot28

Proto-Bantu *píndí "shin, leg, calf, bone"

Proto-Bantu *bát "lie flat, be flat or leveled, walk flatfooted"

Proto-Bantu *pàdí "foot"

Amarigna bat ―calf of leg‖

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *Paʔil- ~ *laP-

Meaning: bone or muscle of the leg

Semitic: *pāʔil- 'muscle of the thigh'

Western Chadic: *falal- 'middle bone of an animal's foreleg'

Central Chadic: *fVl- 'foot'

Bedauye (Beja): fil-ik 'top of the shin-bone'

Saho-Afar: *laf- 'bone' (met.)

Low East Cushitic: *lafi 'bone' (met.)

Notes: Ch f- in Hs and Bud may reflect both *p- and *f-. Cf.

Cush.-Om. *lap- 'bone' SIFKJa 167; Sasse PEC 21.

Q3 = p seat ciLuba ciBàsa "bench, table, board, slate, seat, stand"

PB púnà ―stool‖

28

Note that the /b/ sound also became /w/ in Afro-Asiatic, so we find in Egyptian iwa ―leg‖; iwaw "thigh" (of a man),

"leg" (of beef).

Page 30 of 62

Egyptian bn ―seat‖

I9 = f Horned viper Proto-Bantu *bámbà "poisonous snake"

Proto-Bantu *bòma "snake, python"

PAA *biʔVy- "snake" (Egyptian /by/ "holy serpent"; Central

Chadic Kapsiki=Higi Kamale: m bya, Fali Gili: biya; Higi Ghye:

biya; Higi Nkafa: bg'y; Higi Baza: wg'y "python").

Egyptian bTw "poisonous snake."29

G17

= m

Owl pChadic *mun "a bird"

pChadic *minin "kind of bird"

Warji munwai "bird"

Kariya munu "bird"

ciLuba ciMini; ciMinyi "eagle, vulture, swallower"

Egyptian imnt "vulture goddess, a vulture (as amulet)

Egyptian mnwt "swallow, pigeon, ringed turtle dove"

mwt (vulture glyph)

mnwt "swallow, pigeon, ringed turtle dove"

mAS "a duck"

im "a bird" [M17 - G17 - D38]

imw "goose, duck"

imtr "a bird"

mst "marsh bird, breeding fowl, geese"

msyt "waterfowl"; poulty?

msrt "a bird"

Mande mbû ―owl‖

Bed. miláike "owl"

Afar milliko "bird of prey"

ECh: WDng mukuku "chouette"

Hausa múúǯììyáá "owl"

CCh: Daba mimbizimbizim "owl"

CCh: máwwá "owl sp." (wáwwá "owl")

NBrb: Zayan & Sgugu muka "chouette"

pr [Vogel] Wb I S 531 (vogel = bird)

bA [Vogel] Wb I S 410

abA "bird, turtle dove" (Yoruba abiye "bird")

ab(A) [Vogel] (= {abw}?)] Meeks: AL 780686

abw [Vogel] (= {ab(A)}?)] Meeks: AL 780686

Abjjt [Vogel] Meeks: AL 780026

(j)Abt [Vogel] RdE 30 (1978) S 10

Abd [Vogel] RdE 30 (1978) S 10

Ama [Vogel] Wb I S 10

amaAt [Wurfholz zur Vogeljagd] Wb I S 186 (throwing stick for

bird hunting)

N35 = n Water NU = *nu ―drink‖; I Anecho nu ―drink‖, Dahome

nu ―drink‖, Ga nu ―drink‖, Guang nu ―drink‖, Edo

nwo ―drink‖, III Lefana ni ―drink‖, Santrokofi ni

―drink‖, Kposso nua ―drink‖. Songhai numai to

take a bath‖. PWN NGU ―to drink‖. Bantu nua

―mouth‖. Kongo, Bangi nua ―to drink‖, Soko noa

―to drink‖, Kele, Ngombe mwa ―to drink‖, Swahili

nwa ―to drink‖.

29

This term may be a variant of this word in Egyptian, mtw ―poison, malevolence, resentment‖; mtwt ―semen, seed, progeny, poison, ill will.‖ [b>m]

Page 31 of 62

Niger-Congo ma ―liquid‖ prefix.

Bangi, Ngala,

Poto mai ―water‖,

Swahili maji ―water‖,

Kele balia ―water‖,

Kongo maza ―water‖

Mande bã, (bā-n), bãg.a ―muddy water‖, gyi su-ma ―fresh water‖

Afro-Asiatic : Chad : Angas (1) am, Ngala (2) am, Sukur (3) yiam,

Musgu yem ―water‖ (Greenberg),

WATER Sumerian a, e4 ―water‖

GI, GIA “water”

RA “water”, “go” (see previous)

Niger-Congo ma ―liquid‖ prefix.

PWS gi, gia ―water‖, Kpelle ya ―water‖, Mampa yi ―water‖,

Mende yia ―water‖ > ye.

PWS bà, bàt ―swamp‖, Efik m-bat ―swamp‖

PWS pat ―swamp‖

Bangi, Ngala, Poto mai ―water‖, Swahili maji ―water‖, Kele balia

―water‖, Kongo maza ―water‖

Mande bã, (bā-n), bãg.a ―muddy water‖, gyi su-ma ―fresh water‖

Mangbetu kuma ―rain‖ (suffix ?)

Afro-Asiatic : Chad : Angas (1) am, Ngala (2) am, Sukur (3) yiam,

Musgu yem ―water‖ (Greenberg), presumably from *ya ―go, flow‖

[In Sumerian y > #]

D21 = r mouth Kongo-Saharan

Isekiri (Nigeria): arū

Bozo: lo

Kpele: la

Sarakolle (Mali): la

Busa: le

Guro (Ivory Coast): le

Ndemli (B.Congo): lu

ciLuba: eela ―utterance, command, word‖

Yoruba: orò ―roar, noise‖; òrò ―word, speech, sound‖ ; ro ―to tell,

to give sound with mouth, to relate (as

in to relate a story)‖; aru (Isekeri – Nigeria) ―mouth‖

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *rVʔ-/*rVw-

Old Egyptian: r (pyr); rA, rw

Meaning: 'mouth'? 'redende Person', 'sentence, speech, language'

Fayumic: la 'mouth'

Akhmimic: ro

Bohairic: ro

Sahidic: ro

Proto-WChadic: *ruru- Meaning: 'shout' (n.)

Hausa: ruri

Sura: ruruu

Karekare: rúuru

Proto-CChadic: *ray- Meaning: 'speak'

Page 32 of 62

Zime-Batna: re [Sa]

Notes: Cp. CCh *riʔ- 'to laugh'

O4 = h

courtyard SU = *kù ―house‖; I Ewe χo ―house‖, Dahome

χuo ―house‖, Kyama n-ku ―house‖, Edo i-ku ―room

in a house‖, III Kebu ku ―hut, house‖, VI Vai ku ―house‖, Gbi ku

―house‖. (K) Hwida, Dahome ho,

Mahi huo, ho ―house‖. Songhai has fu ―house‖.

Bantu (Meeussen) daku ‗house‖. Language Su

(Benue-Congo)

HOUSE Sumerian e2 , (‗à) ―house‖

KA ―house‖, ―fire‖

PWS kà, kàl ―to remain‖

PWS ka ―charcoal‖

PWN KA ―home‖

Bantu jái ―home‖

Poto mbuka ―home‖, Bangi, Ngala mboka ―home‖

Mande M su-kala ―habitation‖

Mangbetu kago ―fire‖

Mangbetu eka ―to light fire‖

ES Kenuzi, Dongola ka ―house‖, Nandi ka ―house‖

NS Kunama ka ―house‖

*K = # *A = e *A = a

Proto-Mashariki *-kááyà "home village"; PRuvu *-kaya "home";

Tsonga kaya, ma- "home," kaya, adv. "home"; Zigua "a village,

abode." Nurse and Hinnebusch, 626; Schoenbrun, The Historical

Reconstruction of Great Lakes Bantu Cultural Vocabulary, 89, 91.

V28

= H

Twisted flax PWS ta ―hand‖, Stewart has Proto-Akanic *-sã ―tie up‖ (< *ta).

Ewe (Rongier) sà ―tie a knot‖. The sign is simplified from ―cord‖,

―wick of flax‖. There may be a reference to tying bales.

Egyptian Styw/Stw "to tie, bind"; hi "secure a rope, tie up

(boat); šs ―rope‖.

Aa1 = x Sieve/placenta? Proto-Bantu *kéd ―filter, strain‖

Proto-Bantu *gòbì ―placenta‖

F32 = X Belly & udder Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *ḫVwVy- "stomach"

Egyptian: ḫ-t 'belly'

Central Chadic: *ḫway- 'stomach' 1, 'belly' 2, 'intestines' 3

Proto-CChadic: *ḫway-

Afroasiatic etymology: Afroasiatic etymology

Meaning: 'stomach' 1, 'belly' 2, 'intestines' 3

Chibak: ɣǝy 3 [Kr:62]

Margi: WM xay 3 [Kr: 72]

Wamdiu: ḫay 1

Higi Futu: xwi 1 {Kr: 171]

Higi Baza: xu 1 [Kr: 141]

Higi Nkafa: xwi 1 [Kr: 131]

Higi Ghye: xwi 1 [Kr: 161]

Kapsiki=Higi Kamale: xwu 1 {Kr:151]

Page 33 of 62

Zime-Batna: yā 2 [Sa]

Masa: haya 2 [Mo]

Notes: contraction in ZBt; cp. also Mnj hoho 'spleen' [TMnj]

Sumerian šag4 ―belly‖

―Bantu‖ (Johnston) sakasaka* ―belly‖ (103), seke* ―belly‖ (28),

tsatsa* (175), aka* (189), sañgω ―belly‖ (155)

O34 = s/z Bolt/lock ciLuba jiba ―close‖; jibala "be securely closed"; jibakana "be

plugged, be closed tightly, be too tight"; jibika "close, obstruct";

njila "close"

Egyptian Sri ―stop up, block up, fill in, obstruct‖30

t > s

PWS tì ―to close, to open, to take off hat‖ (actions of hand or

arm).31

Proto-Bantu *dìb ―shut, shut eyes‖; *tìb ―stop up, shut‖ Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *tab-

Meaning: plug, bolt

Semitic: *tabb- 'plug'

Berber: *tab- 'lock, bolt'

Notes: Scarce data. Cf. Eg dbb (ME) 'stop up'. Cf. WCh *tVb- <

*tVb- 'close, cover': Kry tǝbǝ, Jmb duba

S29

= s

Folded shawl PB *-kòny- ―fold, bend, twist‖ (k > s)

Egyptian qah ―bend, fold (in cloth)

Egyptian Ak ―bend‖

Egyptian xAb ―bowed, bent (of arms in reverence), to bend,

to bow‖

Egyptian ksks "to bend"

Egyptian gsA "to bend, to make crooked, to ruin"

N37 = S Pool of water Bantu anza ―river, lake‖ < sa, siwa, ziwa ―water, lake, pond,

river‖

PB *-jànjá ―lake‖

PB *-diba- / *-jiba- ―water, pool, pond, well, deep water‖

N29 = q Hill slope ciLuba mu-kuna ―hill, mountain‖

Yoruba eke ―hill‖

Egyptian qAA ―hill‖ V31 = k basket

32 Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *kʷalVb-

Meaning: container

Semitic: *kVlūb- 'basket'

Egyptian: t_rb 'vessel' (n), t_b (XVIII)33

Western Chadic: *kwalab- 'bottle'

30

It should be noted that in ciLuba l and b interchange. This may be the case in ciKam as well. 31

I argue that the s-form in Egyptian ultimately derives from a *ka form given in PWN as KA ―home‖ (with door or

gate), Bangi ekuki ―gate‖, Ngala engambi ―gate‖, but PWS ka ―open, close‖, also PWS guá ―gate‖ (mouth)

(Campbell-Dunn, 2009b: 16). The morphological order became k>t> s. A possible t-form of the word in Egyptian

could be tA ―gate, door, screen.‖ Alternate forms of the same root may be isn "bolt, lock (door)"; isnyt "wooden bar,

lock"; xtm "lock, seal"; qArt/qAwt "door bolt"; qri "door bolt"; aD "spool, reel, weaving shuttle, (part of a door -

bolt?)." These would be an example of a doublet in the Egyptian language. 32

This is probably the origin of the word ―cup‖ in English. 33

The Nostratic dictionary also informs us that the /k/ sound was palatalized and became /t/ in Egyptian.

Page 34 of 62

Central Chadic: *xwalub- 'pot'

Low East Cushitic: *kolVb- 'horn-cup' FILL

Notes: Derived from *kol- 'gourd, calabash'34

Proto-Bantu *cúpà "calabash"

Sumerian dug

ku-kur-du ―jar‖

PWS kua ―calabash‖, ―bowl‖, PWS kua, kual ―bag‖

PWS (ŋ)-gua, (ŋ)-guan- ―calabash, pot‖

PWS ku ―belly‖

PCS *kur, *kul ―gourd, pot‖

A.Egyptian: qby "calabash/pitcher"

Coptic: kaap "pitcher"

Cushitic: cape (Bari)

Cushitic: gabo (Saho)

Cushitic: okra (Oromo)

Cushitic: *gwib "gourd"; *gwabo "gourd" (C.Ehret 1995)

Omotic: k'ibbo "spatula"

Nilo-Saharan: kebewa "calabash" (Teda)

Nilo-Saharan: sepe.t "calabash" (Nandi)

Nilo-Saharan: kebe "calabash", e-kub "water jar", e-gub "bowl"

(Nubian)

Niger-Kordofanien: gamb bi "calabash gourd" (Wolof)

Niger-Kordofanien: kombi.r "calabash spoon" (Dagara)

Niger-Kordofanien: igba "calabash" (Yoruba)

Niger-Kordofanien: ci-bungu "calabash" [metathesis] (ciLuba)

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *kakul-

Meaning: basket

Semitic: *kukkul- (<*kulkul-) 'basket'

Western Chadic: *kukul- 'cooking pot'

Central Chadic: *kVkVl- 'basket'

East Chadic: *kwakwal- 'cooking-pot'

South Cushitic: *kakul- 'half-calabash'

Notes: Derived from *kʷalay- 'vessel, pot' (769).

Egyptian ksks ―basket‖

W11 = g Jar stand or

stool STAND

GU, KU “stand”

BA “place”

Sumerian gub ―to make stand‖

PWS guà ―scaffolding‖, (gba)

PWN GIM, (GIUM) ―stand‖

Bantu gi-am ―stand‖

PWS kua ―leg, foot‖, Igbo ó-kpà ―foot, leg‖

Bantu gudu ―foot‖

Mande gyu ―foot‖ (of tree or mountain)

Mande so,to ―to stand‖

34

In other words, the word for ―basket‖ in Egyptian, given the Afro-Asiatic roots, derives from a word that means

―gourd, calabash.‖ We see then a variation of this term in Egyptian as aqrf ―basket‖; bqrw ―basket.‖ We see here that

b<>f interchange and are free affixes on the qr root. The word wHAt ―cauldron, basket‖ may be a dialectical variant

[b>w; q>H; r>A]. Another variation of aqrf would be gAb(w) ―basket.‖

Page 35 of 62

Mangbetu éku ―to come‖

Khoisan : Hatsa //ka ―to stand‖

PCS *co, *ko ―motion‖

X1 = t Bread loaf Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *tiʔ- ‗bread, flour‘

Egyptian: t (pyr) 'bread'

Western Chadic: *tuw- < *tiw- 'food made of flour, tuwo'

East Chadic: *ti-

Proto-Bantu *duba ―flour‖

V13 = T Tethering rope ciLuba tenga- ―tie, bind‖

D46 = d hand ciLuba cyanza ―hand‖ (PWS *ka ―hand‖ > sa ―hand‖ > n+sa

> nza ―hand‖) PWS ta ―hand‖= ―give‖

I10

= D

cobra Coptic adjo, edja "viper

Yoruba ejo, edjo "snake"

Igbo agwo "snake"

PB *joka "snake"

ciLuba nyoka "snake"

PWS guà ―snake‖, Nupe e-wa ―snake‖, Bassa i-wa ―snake‖

PWS gua ―hand, arm‖ (snakes were thought of as ―arms‖)

PWN GHWÁKÀ, GHWYÁKÀ ―snake‖

Bantu jóka ―snake‖

Kongo nioka ―snake‖, Swahili nyoka ―snake‖, Lolo, Ngala, Poto,

Ngombe, Kele njo ―snake‖, Xhosa majola ―snake‖

Egyptian iqrw ―snake‖

A REEVALUATION FOR SOME OF THE EGYPTIAN SIGNS

Space will not allow me to go through each entry above as this is just a preliminary essay. This will be

reserved for a larger volume. For now I will tackle a few of the signs that I feel have alternate

vocalizations than what is given in the Esperanto Egyptological works.

PREFIXES OR SUFFIXES?

The conventional way of reading the mdw nTr script is threatened under the weight of new data coming

from the African school of scholars who live African cultures and natively speak African languages. A

pioneer in the approach to the study of Egyptian hieroglyphs is the renowned philosopher, linguist,

theologian and Egyptologist Dr. Mubabinge Bilolo of Congo. He has written several publications over the

past 40 years on various aspects of Egyptian thought. One text that informs our study here is his article

titled ―Du nom Imn a Bi-Bweni: Exemple de la vitalite de ciKam et de ―Saintes doctrines philosophiques‖

pharaoniques dans le Cyena-Ntu‖ (The name Imn in Bi-Bweni: An example of the vitality of ciKam and

the Pharaoh‘s "Holy Philosophical Doctrines‖ in the Cyena-Ntu (Bantu Family)).35

35

In the book edited by Kalamba Nsapo and Mubabinge Bilolo, Renaissance de la Theologie Negro-Africaine:

Melanges en l‟honneur du Prof. Binwenyi-Kweshi. (2010).

Page 36 of 62

It is thought that the -y ending of words in Egyptian is just an ending, or the so-called nsbe suffix on

nouns to form adjectives. But there may be another function to them as compared to a similar feature in

Bantu. In Table 1 above I mentioned that the glyph, with the sound value of /y/, derives from a /g/

sound: g>y. The singular form of this glyph is given the sound value of /i/ and I also suggested that it

could be gi, bi, or ci. For the bV-form

Egyptian bai ―palm frond, rib of palm leaf (used as flooring)‖

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *bawVʔ- ―grass‖

Berber: *buH- 'grass'

Western Chadic: *bway- < *bwaʔi- 'kind of wild grass'

Central Chadic: *baʔ- 'leaf, annual plant, weed' 1, kind of grass' 2

East Chadic: *bwaʔ/yi- 'k of grass' 1, 'k of plant harmful to crops' 2

ciLuba bilu "grass:

ciLuba lu-beji "bush, grass"; di-beji "leaf, paper"

ciLuba bi-soosa "grass, legumes"; bi-seki "legumes"

The suggestion is that the double reed glyph can also act as a prefix on the noun and when it does it

carries the bi-, ci-, or gi- prefix sounds. A case involving bi- will be made below in the following table as

it pertains to root m-n in Egyptian:

Table 3: Bi-Menyi in ciKam36

(<-mwena ―things (Bi-) designed (Mweni),‖

the verb -mwena = -monena, -

monyina

= Malu maMona Business / problems, meetings,

experiences

= Bi-Mwe(ne)nu visible monuments, visible

souvenirs/memories, statues

= ciMwenu monument, remembrance, by

which we continue to see a person,

to remember her, mirror,

manifestation

= Bi-Monu property, possessions, property that

we have seen (bi-Mwena) = one

possesses

= Bi-Moni those / who see it, look, beings who

possess = who see

The corresponding forms in ciLuba informs us that the suffix -y is prefixed as bi-. It is noted by Mi-Ra

(1995: 98) that the -y can be dropped. We discover however, that convention may still force the

pronunciation. For example, a single pot determinative (with the sound value of nu) would force the

prefix ci- as in ciNwinu ―drinking pot.‖ Notice that the nu pot in Merotic has the kh- sound value. Ci- is

just a palatalized variation of kh-. Also, the ―cup of water‖ glyph in Linear A has the sound value of ki-.

But since has three, thus plural, the prefix is bi- thus giving us bi-Nwinu. Therefore, the pots may

serve as affixes on the root as well.

36

Nsapo and Bilolo (2010: 120).

Page 37 of 62

PAYING ATTENTION TO THE GLYPHS

The glyphs are going to tell you everything you need to know. However, one must be acculturated into an

African mind-frame to discover how the glyphs are communicating with us. The following excerpt is

from Ernst Cassirer‘s book Language and Myth. In this work he describes a way of conceptual

associations that would inform our interpretation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs directly.

Here we may adduce a further striking example of this ―teleological construction of language,

which I owe to a verbal communication form my colleague Professor Otto Dempwoldff. In the

Kate language, which is current in New Guinea, there is a word bilin, which denotes a certain kind

of grass with tough stems and roots that are wedged firmly in the soil; the latter are said to hold

the earth together during earthquakes, so that it does not break apart. When nails were first

introduced by Europeans, and when their use became popularly known, the natives applied this

word to them—as also to wire and to iron rods, in short, to everything that served the purpose of

holding things together. Similarly, one may often observe in nursery language the creation of such

teleological identities, which do not meet our class concepts at all, and seem to defy them.

(Cassirer, 1946: 41n17)

This same philosophy is responsible for the meaning of the very mn glyph itself. When we look at

the glyph, we notice a ―base‖ with vertical ―bars‖ sticking out of it. A Bantu perspective interprets this as

a comb or kind of brush. It represents anything with objects that are spread out in a row whith vertical

projectiles stemming from the base. Such as in ciLuba:

mana "Toes"

menu "Teeth"

minu / munu "Fingers"

mwana / mwanya ―Gap between teeth‖

(lu) mona = ―dart, sting‖ (think of a stingray. Its ―sting‖ is that which extends from its body, the tail)

bwIminyi ―comb, comb hair‖

The idea of being ―fixed‖ has been transferred to items which are fixed inside a base. The Egyptian

writing script provides images for the projectors, but it doesn‘t appear to provide a name for them. This

may be resolved by exploring some possible terms in ciLuba.

Table 4

Imana, imanika, mwimane, dimanin Erect (cimana = wall, partition). Remain standing in

a fixed position. Stable

munwe, nyomwe, umwa ||

▬ munana; dimonu; mulala, muladika Obesity, swollen (derived from nana meaning

―stretch, extend‖). Mulala = palm branch, palm

frond.

▬ ala, alolola, shinda, shama ololoka, nema » Bend, bow, spring, bulging belly

┴ shalama, zalama/ jaalama : shindamana, shindika,

shadika ; shikamina ; shikama, shikamina ;

shika/zika/jiika, asa, dishikamina

Grow, stand up, stay, dwell, place, to complete, be

finished, to be fixed on a base. Support (of

existence).

┬ fufuma, andamuna, talamuna, Out of isolation, to be noticed, to stand out.

Every aspect of the symbol can be represented with an m-n root (from the base, the gap and the

projectiles). By knowing the African languages, you can read the signs without going through the

Egyptological dictionaries. The objects of the environment of the Nile Valley and Great Lakes Region

still retain their ancient names to this day. For example:

Page 38 of 62

Table 5:37

Glyphs ciKam ciLuba

Kap, kp Kapia; Kam(onyi)

xt, sDt; rkh; tA; psi; Abw; tkA; srf, psi< fS(i)

Ta, oTa, yoTo > Ḫiota; Hyoto; Ciota; Kota; Ket(a,e); ciPisha; mPisha, Tuka;

nTooka; nKang; Lukang; Lukeka; Lukekesh; Lakuka; Kalanga (rkh >krh);

Kangila (khr); Aba; ci-Aba; -abw>Baba, Boba, Buba (w>b)

nsrsr, nSrSr Nsonsol, noshel, nosheshel; Losheshel(a,e); Shila

Sntr; bA Ntole-Ntole, Ntola-ntola; Ntolesh; Ba, Bwa, Kam(onyi), Kam (onyia); Sundula,

Sentedi

DA; wDA Endu, Inda, Ndu > mw-Endu; mw-Inda;, Tumba; Banda (w>b); Undu >m

ta; xt Ta, Ota; Cioto; Kioto; Kota; Twa; Cianga

Ax; AxAx Kank(a,u), Kanga; Kangala (dikangala); Kenke; Keka; ci-Minyi, ci-Munyi; ci-

Keka, diAnga (Ax.t)

bA Buta, (lu-, ka-)Buta. Nyunyi wa Bwa-Bwa-Bwa; Ba (ka-Ba ka nyunyi; mu-Ba;

bu-Ba); La-Ba; Bemba; Owa>Cyoa

, wbn, Axw, psD Ubala; ubanda; banda; anga; wang, wenga

Ra; hrw; SSw; itn Lo(u,a,i)>Li-L(u,o)>DiLu, Di-Lo, Ri-Ro; u-Lilu; Li-Ba>Di-Ba; Kulu; Sese;

Shosha; Tanya; Tanga

Getting back to mn, in Egyptian we have the following root:

mn = be fixed, stick fast (in), be attached (to); remain (in), dwell (in), be vested (in); be firm,

established, enduring (of king)

mn = be permanent, be fixed, firm, deposited, stowed, recorded

The ti determinative in the second example above may not be a determinative at all, but a prefix. This can

be represented in ciLuba as ci- or si-. In ciLuba this word is given as:

Simana,

(Mana)

stand, be standing, stand up, rise, come to a stand, stop, remain

stationary, keep in a particular place, be erect, high, steep, be steadfast, be

established, be steady, be immovable

To explore all the possibilities of this term and what it reveals would require a volume unto itself. Suffice

it to say that by exploring those languages to the South of modern day Egypt helps us to fill in the gaps

that modern Egyptology leaves as a result of their narrow world-view which leads to limiting research

questions and answers to follow.

THE TWISTED FLAX AND ITS -S- VALUE 37

Nsapo and Bilolo (2010: 118-119).

Page 39 of 62

In Table 1 above I proposed that the glyph, with its current value of /H/, should actually have an /s/

value as well. This is based on compared data for ropes and to twist as well as the value given in the

Linear A script.

PWS ta ―hand‖, Stewart has Proto-Akanic *-sã ―tie up‖ (< *ta). Ewe (Rongier) sà ―tie a knot‖.

The sign is simplified from ―cord‖, ―wick of flax‖. There may be a reference to tying bales.

Egyptian Styw/Stw "to tie, bind"; hi "secure a rope, tie up (boat); šs ―rope‖.

We note here the commentary by Campbell-Dunn‘s in his article ―The Egyptian Connection‖ (2011)

which speaks on the Egyptian glyphs borrowed by the Minoans. It is interesting to note that:

Linear A has a sign, Packard 31 SA ―flax‖, which occurs in variants with a loop. This loop recurs

in Gardiner V6 , phonetic šs ―cord‖, ―rope‖. Boyd (1974:72, No.75) has Adamawa reflexes sàl

―corde‖. Sumerian has sa ―corde‖, with various expansions of this syllable that refer to objects

with cords. The Egyptian šs may be reduplicated. Gardiner comments that there has been much

confusion with V33 ―bag of linen‖, in the words ―linen‖, ―cloth‖. Gardiner V5 is

sometimes given the phonetic sa (it is a looped rope). See Shaw & Nicholson (2008:278) sa, with

sa amulet. In Budge (1922:89) it is listed as 21.28, sa “amulet, protection.‖ Gardiner V28 is a

―wick of twisted flax‖ with phonetic h. But is this not evidence that Egyptian h = s ? Egyptian also

has (Gardiner S29 ) s, (ś) for ―folded cloth‖ (unknown originating word), held by statues of the

dead. We don‘t know the vowel. But Mande siri, M siti ―lier‖38

. Sumerian has šita4 ―to tie, attach‖.

But also Sumerian kiri2 ―corde‖. Does i = a? And if so is there a difference in meaning? Niger-

Congo k > s.39

The known directionality of certain sound changes is a valuable clue for reconstruction. By directionality

we mean that some sound changes which recur in independent languages typically go in one direction (A

> B) but usually are not (sometimes are never) found in the other direction (B > A). Many languages

haved changed s > h, but change in the other direction is almost unknown: h > s. Given that the languages

around Egyptian, and the Egyptian language itself has an -s- root for ―to tie, rope,‖ we argue then that the

/H/ sound for ―twisted flax‖ derived from /s/ which ultimately came from /k/ (Proto-Afro-Asiatic *kanVw-

"plait, tie"). It‘s possible, however, that Egyptian /H/, in regards to ―rope‖ derived from a kh sound.

Semitic *šurr- 'navel, navel string'; Egyptian: wsr.t (20) 'rope, cord'; East Chadic: *siʔVr- 'rope,

thread'; Bedauye (Beja): sar 'tendon'; Warazi (Dullay): *sur- 'rope';

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *habal- (?) "rope, tie, plait"; Semitic: *habl- 'rope'; Akkadian: eblu (ḫabālu)

'tie (with a rope)' Mari <WSem); Hebrew: häbäl; Arabic: habl-; Geʕez (Ethiopian): habl; Western

Chadic: *baHal- 'tie'; Hausa: ba/illa; Sura: bal [JgS]; Geji: balìwì [Kr N 422]

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *ḫVwit- "tie, sew"; Semitic: *ḫVwit- 'sew'; Western Chadic: *HwayVt- 'untie';

*Hadah- 'tie, untie; Saho-Afar: *hid- 'attach camels in Indian file'; Low East Cushitic: *hit- 'tie;

High East Cushitic: *hit- 'tie'; [Notes: Cf. *hawid- 'tie, sew; thread']

The fact that the vast majority of the words for rope in Egyptian begin with an s-type sound, we argue that

the V28 glyph may have had an /s/ sound as attested in related languages and in Linear A.

38

Lier is French for ―link‖ 39

I inserted the hieroglyph symbols. Dunn doesn‘t place them in the original article, just the Gardiner classification

coda.

Page 40 of 62

Table 6:

ciKam ciKam Alternative

Hau ―person, body, flesh,

frame‖ (<ha ―I, myself‖). s ―man, person‖; sA ―man‖

HTAt "bread" sTt "bread, bread

dough";

Sat bread, cake

Hwi beat, strike,

press (grapes), go, go to [ verb ] sw kill

Sw ―be harmful, be dangerous‖

HAt neck, brow, forehead

(Vygus Database)

XX ―neck, throat‖

aHa ―neck‖ (of meat)

w-srt neck

SAt (neck area)

HAt beginning (of region),

foremost, the best of, first SAa beginning

xAbyt / Swbyt shadow, shade

QUAIL BIRD

The G43 glyph is described as a quail chick and is given the sound value of /w/. Looking into related

languages we can see general words for bird that begin with w-:

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *wacVʕ- ‗bird‘; Semitic: *wasʕ- 'little bird'; Egyptian: wd_ʕ 'grey crane' (OK);

Proto-Semitic: *wasʕ- 'little bird'; Arabic: wasʕ-, wasīʕ-;

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *waw/y/ʔ- ‗k. of bird‘; Semitic: *waw-at- 'kind of bird'; Egyptian: wy.t (med)

'kind of bird'; High East Cushitic: *wayy- 'dove'; Proto-Semitic: *waw-at- ‗kind of bird‘; Judaic

Aramaic: wāwǝtā 'stork' [Ja. 376] (wātā according to [Levy WTM III 505]).; Gurage: Gog. Sod.

Muh. Msq. wawat 'crow' [LGur. 673].; {Notes: Tentative as the semantic difference between the

terms under comparison is substantial}; Proto-High East Cushitic: *wayy- ‗dove‘; Burji (Bambala,

Dashe): wayya;

However, given that this sign is of a quail chick specifically, I looked for this specific bird and came up

with a b-form that seems to fit the glyph more accurately.

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *bar- ‗quail; partridge; dove‘; Semitic: *bVr- 'kind of bird; pigeon'; Berber:

*barr- 'quail, partridge'; Egyptian: b(a) 'kind of bird' (a); Western Chadic: *bVr- 'quail' 1, 'dove' 2,

'crested crane' 3 , 'pigeon' 4; Central Chadic: *bVr- 'k. of bird' 1, 'wild pigeon' 2; East Chadic:

*bar-/*birbir- 'partridge, quail'; High East Cushitic: *bur- 'partridge'; Dahalo (Sanye): mbāre

'egret'; {Notes: Cf. EDE II 431-2. Probably, a separate root *(m/ʔa-)bar- 'crane, egret' must be

Page 41 of 62

reconstructed including Eg b(a) 'jabiru', W.Ch Jimbin abur- 'crested crane' and Dahalo mbāre

'egret'}

Therefore we assert that the quail chick glyph has a b-r root and a slight variation is found in the ancient

Egyptian language: par ―quail,‖ par.t ―quail,‖ pAa.t ―quail,‖ w ―quail,‖ wAr ―chick, young bird.‖ Here b>p

and b>w. This is just the Kongo-Saharan general word for bird (which is actually a global term for ―bird,

fly‖).

BIRD Sumerian buru5 ―bird‖

BU “bird”

RU “demonstrative/plural”

Ngombe mbulu ―bird‖

Mande bō, bū ―bird of prey‖

Mangbetu pupu ―big bird‖

―Bantu‖ (Johnston 1922: 255) bun ―bird‖ (Kwango-Kasai Group), also buru, bulu, mburu, puru etc.as in

Ruwenzori-Semliki languages (p. 256)

[Malay has burung ―bird‖, prefixed to bird names as a classifier]. [Mangbetu bulu ―man, speech‖]

<*B = b *U = u *R = r *U = u

There was a shift from b>w in some of the Afro-Asiatic languages. The /w/ ―rope-loop,‖ used as a

substitute at the ends of word for the quail chick sign, derived from a word meaning to ―bind‖ in Kongo-

Saharan.

BIND Sumerian bar ―to bind‖

BA “bind” -r

PWS báli ―to bind‖

PWN BOP ―bind‖

Bantu bop ―bind‖

TogoR *bále ―bind‖

Mande gyala ―bind‖ ?

Mangbetu oba ―be attached‖

PCS *ba ―to tie‖

*B = b *A = a *L = r

From this b-r root came these variations in Afro-Asiatic :

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *bar- 'thread, band'; Central Chadic: *mV-bar- 'thread'; Masa: mbaro [Mo]

'thread'; East Chadic: *bār- 'thread'1, ' rope'Kwang: ba ru 1 [Jg] 'thread, rope'; Jegu: búrre [Jg]

'thread, rope'; Saho-Afar: *bōr- < *bVHor- 'loin-cloth' , 'band'; Saho: bor 'kind of loin-cloth, band';

Afar (Danakil): booruu, boor'; Omotic: *būr- 'belt'; Kafa (Kaficho): buuroo, buro 'belt'; Mocha:

buro 'belt'

When b > w, then we got these variations in Afro-Asiatic :

Page 42 of 62

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *waʔar- (?) ‗plaited cord‘; Egyptian: wʔr.t (LM) 'cord, rope'; Western Chadic:

*wVr- 'plait‘; Ankwe=Goemai: wǝr ‗plait‘; Borean (approx.) : WVRV ‗rope, thread‘; Eurasiatic :

*wVrV ( ~ *HurV); Afroasiatic : *waʔar- (?); Sino-Caucasian : *rVHV; Austric : PAA *rɨaj

'thread, tuft of hair'

The Egyptian term waf ―to curl up, to contract (of toes)‖ may be of importance given the coiling nature of the rope glyph (see also faA "lock of hair"; wrr.t "the curl on front of Red Crown"). The chick and the rope

glyph should carry both the /b/ and the /w/ sound depending on dialect: e.g., Middle Egyptian wr (used

for baby chick); mA ―new‖; Coptic beri ―new, young, a young thing‖; ciLuba bwana ―children, young‖;

mbedi, a-mbedi ―first, debut, early.‖

ARM / HAND SIGN

It is my contention that the D36 ―arm/hand‖ glyph, with sound value /a/ or /a/, derived from PWS *ka

or *ba ―hand, arm.‖

ARM Sumerian á ―arm, strength‖

KA “arm”, “strength”

PWS ka, bua (ba) ―arm‖ [BU = β] Sumerian kalag ―strong‖

C-loss [k > h or b > v] Sumerian a5, aka ―make‖

PWN BUAK, GWAL, KA (KYA), KWÁN ―arm‖ Sumerian Á-KAL ―strength‖

Bantu gado ―arm‖, bóko ―arm‖ Sumerian áh, ahi ―arm strength‖

―Holoholo‖ bokó ―arm‖, kal‟ ―to cut‖

Mande bolo, bolo-kala, kãmba-kala ―arm‖, wa ―arm, strength‖

ES Didinga kalkic ―armpit‖, kom ―be strong‖

*K = # *A = a *B = # *A = a

Checking against Linear A we notice that Packard sign # 77, Egyptian D36, has the vocalization of se.

The k > s is a common sound shift and if borrowed from Egyptian, they borrowed this at a time when the

consonant was still attached to the glyph. We know that there was a velar stop sound by cross checking

with Semitic. Satzinger (2003: 234) notes that comparatists assert the regular sound correspondence

between Semitic a (and ḡ) and Egyptian a. We assert here that this is the case because a was initially a k/ḡ

sound.

Prefixes and suffixes alike tend to be eroded and lost due to weak accentuation (Campbell-Dunn, 2009b:

8). This may have been the case with the D36 glyph, representing either ka or ba: Egyptian arq ―to

complete,‖ Kikongo kalunga ―complete‖; Egyptian arq ―tie, bind,‖ Kikongo kalunga ―tie, bind‖ (kanga

―to tie up‖); Egyptian arq ―corner, angle, edge,‖ ciLuba diTengu ―corner,‖ diTungi ―corner‖ ; Egyptian aA ―great, leader, chief, master, commander, elder,‖ ciLuba nkole(a) "Prominant or Powerful Man," Nkole(a)

≋ Nkwele(a) "God" (bankole(a) "spirits"), kalunga ―Great chief‖; Egyptian anx ―beetle,‖ ciLuba cijàngàlà

≋ cijàngàlàlà ―beetle, scarab.‖; Egyptian aAy "to grow up, mature, senior, excess (over), difference (in

mathematics)," ciLuba -kola "grow, increase, aging."

VULTURE BIRD

Page 43 of 62

The G1 glyph is that of a vulture and has the sound value of /A/. Modern Egyptian dictionaries claim

this sound is a glottal stop. More recent investigations have uncovered that this glyph is actually an /l/ or

an /r/ sound. Anselin (2011: 49) provides us with a brief demonstration of this fact.

b3 < *b-l, „soul‟ (Old Kingdom; Wb I, 411; on the identification of /3/ as /l/, see above and

Anselin 2007a): West Chadic (Nigeria): Angas-sura: bĕl, ‗reason, sense, to be wise, intelligence,

understanding‘ (Takács 2004, 31); Central Chadic: Matakam (Cameroon): *bl, ‗genius, spirit,

mboko‘, belbele-hay, ‗genius‘; Niger-Congo: Fulfulde (Cameroon): ηbeelu (ηgu), ‗principe vital

de l‘homme – menacé d‘être dévoré par les mangeurs d‘âme‘ (Noye 1989, 40; see also, Anselin

2007b, 92); Semitic: *bāl, ‗spirit, mind‘; Aramaic: bl, ‗spirit, intelligence‘; Northern Syriac: bālā,

‗reason, attention‘; Arabic: bāl, ‗attention, consciousness, mind‘ (Takács 2001, 6).

si3 <*s-r, ‗to understand, know > god of the knowledge‘ (Old Kingdom; Wb IV 30, 1-21), written

with the hieroglyph of the cloth (Gardiner S32); si3.t, (Pyramid Texts; Coffin Texts variant, sr3.t,

identifying /i/ as a reflex of /r/): Central Chadic: Mofu-gudur: sǝr, ‗to know‘ (Barreteau 1988,

198); Merey: sǝr, ‗to know‘ (Gravina et al. 2003); Udlam: -sǝr, ‗to know‘ (Kinnaird and Oumate

2003); Muyang: sǝr, ‗to get to know‘ (Smith 2003).

m33 < *mVl, ‗to see, look, examine‘ (Old Kingdom; Wb II 7, 1-10, 7), phonetically written with

the hieroglyph of the sickle (Gardiner U1), the phonetic complement of the vulture (Gardiner G1)

or the determinative of the eye (Gardiner D4) (Kahl 2004, 166-7): Cushitic: Agaw: Bilin: miliʡy-,

‗to look, examine‘; Kemant: mel-, ‗to examine, observe‘; Eastern Cushitic: Oromo: mal-, ‗to

think‘; Sidamo: mal-, ‗to perceive, advise‘; Somali: mala, ‗thought‘; Burji: mala, ‗plan‘ (Anselin

2001). Omotic: Wolamo: mil, ‗to believe‘; Kafa: mallet, ‗to observe‘ (Dolgopolsky 1973, 180).

We can verify that the G1 glyph has the value of /l/ or /r/ by examining the word for ―bird‖ or ―vulture‖ in

the Afro-Asiatic languages.

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *raHaw/y- ―bird‖; Semitic: *rahw- or *raʔ- 'crane' or 'red kite'; Western

Chadic: *ray(aw)- 'bird'; East Chadic: *rāy- < *raHay- 'vulture'; Low East Cushitic: *raHaw-

'large bird' ; Hebrew rāʔā 'red kite'; Arabic rahw-; Proto-Semitic: *rahw- or *raʔ-; Proto-

WChadic: *ray(aw)- 'bird'; Bolewa: rayo, yaro [Bn:22], met. yaro [CLR]; Karekare: ra yi [ShV];

Ngamo: ra yi [ShV]; Bele: raawi [ShB]; Proto-EChadic: *ray- ‗vulture‘; Migama: raaya [JMig]

{Notes: cf. Dangaleat úriya 'heron' [Fd]}; Proto-Low East Cushitic: *raHaw- 'large bird'; Arbore:

raw.

As we can see, the G1 sign more than likely comes from East Chadic *ray ―vulture.‖

REED LEAF

I argue here that the M17 glyph, commonly rendered either /i/ or /j/, should be rendered (at least

initially) as gi (ci, bi). In some dialects it may have been used to denote /n/ (/m/) as well. We know it was

initially gi- based on compared forms.

REED

GI “reed”

Sumerian gi ―reed‖

Page 44 of 62

PWS gí, gíl, (git) ―tree‖, PWS ti ―tree‖

PWS gi ―root, vein‖

PWN GHI, (GHIM) ―be alive‖, PWN TÍ ―tree‖

Bantu cimb ―plant‖ (dig)

Ngombe gbie ―plantation‖

Mande yiri, B dyiri ―tree‖

Mangbetu gi ―clothing‖ (made from reeds)

Mangbetu gi ―riverbank‖

Mangbetu gilinda ―brushwood that won‘t burn‖

Mangbetu kese ―grass‖

Mangbetu ki ―wood for heating‖, aki ―to break‖

PCS ki ―to break‖

*G = g *I = i

Egyptian qqi ―leaf‖ PB *jánì ―leaf, grass‖

Further proof of this association can be seen by examining this glyph: . It is the reed leaf on top of a pair

of walking legs. These legs also carry the i(i) value. In Niger-Congo j and g interchange and in the Linear

A script the walking leg glyph, allegedly borrowed from Egypt, carries the sound value je. The fact that

the Egyptians used the reed and the legs together demonstrates that they have the same sound value and

one is reinforcing the other. We know the feet had a /g/ or /k/ sound preceeding the /i/ vowel because one

of the survivals in Coptic is pronounced hiĕ ―come, arrive‖ where k>h. This tells us that in related

languages, the word for foot should sound similar to the word for reed. This is exactly the case

Pronunciation

Linear A

= go

je

Egyptian

= go

ii40

FOOT Sumerian giri3 ―foot‖

KI, GI “foot”, “go” -r

PWS gi, gia ―to go‖

PWN GWÌA, KUA ―to go‖

Bantu gi ―to go‖

―Bantu‖ gere ―foot‖ (2, 2b, 2c, 2d, 2f, 4, 6a, 9a, 25), kire (6), geri (9, 9c) ―foot‖ (East Africa). This isogloss

and its meaning support an East African origin for the Bantu languages.

Mande se, M si ―foot‖

Mande se-gerè ―to go‖

Mangbetu gélégélé ―need to go‖

[The suffix –ri refers to the fact that there are two feet ; or may be verbal ―to be‖].

40

Coptic ĕi, i, ĕyĕ, iĕ, yĕ, ĕia, eya, hiĕ ―to go, to arrive.‖

Page 45 of 62

*G = g *I = i *R = r *I = i

This word for ―foot‖ is embedded in the Egyptian word sqr "step out (of feet in dance)‖ where s- is a

causative prefix. We note in ciLuba di-kàsà "foot, leg, trace" [Kiluba diikasa "hand"]; mu-kòlò(ù) "leg,

pair of shoes". This is more than likely a paleo-world root and is probably the origin of the English word

―go‖:41

O.E. gan "to go, advance, depart; happen; conquer; observe," from W.Gmc. *gai-/*gæ- (cf. O.S.,

O.Fris. gan, M.Du. gaen, Du. gaan, O.H.G. gan, Ger. gehen), from PIE *ghe- "to release, let go"

(cf. Skt. jihite "goes away," Gk. kikhano "I reach, meet with"), but there is not general agreement

on cognates.

With this knowledge, we may have to reanalyze the name of the great Vizier of IIIrd Dynasty, Imhotep,

as something more like kimHtp.

kimHtp or gimHtp

The sitting male determinative, A1 , may actually be a grammatical feature, a prefix on the noun with

the value of mu- or ka-(>sa) or both (muka > musa). Current dictionaries note that the A1 glyph carries

the /i/ or /s/ value. The i- value could come from a number of sources: e.g., PWN GHI (GHIM) ―be alive‖;

Compare NC (PWS) *di ―eat‖, *di ―be‖, PWN DI ―eat‖, ―be‖); Sumerian zi(g), (ši) ―life‖; Ngombe di ―to

live‖; PWS ni, nu, Wolof nit ―man, person‖; PWN NINTU, NITU ―man‖; Sumerian nitah, ni ―man‖;

―Bantu‖ (Johnston 1922: 343) mui ―man.‖ The same word for "life" is also the same word for "person":

Cf. Egyptian anx "life," anx "person, human being."

We also note = s ―man, someone,‖ z ―man‖ (in old kingdom). This is reflected in Negro-Africaines

as Coptic sa ―man, husband‖; Gangero (Kushitic) a-sa ―man‖; Kapsiki za ―man‖; Koro ò-sa ―husband‖;

Tunen (S. Cameroon) mò-sa, pl. bà-sa ―man‖; Mbochi (Congo) o-sí, pl. a-sí ―someone from‖; Sango zo

―man‖; Ngandi zo ―man‖; Mangbetu ma-si ―man, husband, male‖; Common Bantu +-si (mu-si, omu-si, o-

si, etc.) ―folk,‖ ―lives at.‖ One should also note zoe ―life‖ in Greek and eshe ―life‖ in Kiswahili. The full

pronunciation would be musi and would explain the correspondences in Bantu. If so, the name Imhotep

would be broken up something like, Gi+m+MuKatapa(u) (noting the rope determinative with sound value

/w/).

However, we can justify this feature in Egyptian by comparison with ciLuba. Where ever the A1

determinative is attached to a noun, and the noun regards a human being, then one can render the word

with a mu- prefix. An example will demonstrate this in Egyptian with comparison to ciLuba. The

following table will argue for a velar or nasal sound for the glyph, and then show mu- prefix on a few

examples. This table is still a work in progress as well.

41

www.etymonline.com

Page 46 of 62

Table 7:

Hieroglyph Meaning ciLuba Negro-African

= i

I, me, my n-/n-, m-, m-, m b-

même(a) ―me, I‖

Sumerian ĝa2-e ―I‖

Sumerian me-en-dè-en ―we‖

Sumerian me ―we‖

Sumerian mèn ―me, myself‖

PWS na ―I‖, ―this‖ (also ―we‖), ni ―I‖

PWN NI (INE) ―I, me‖

Bantu mi ―me‖, Mende nya. ―I‖

―Holoholo‖ iné ―moi seule‖, neenĕ

―moi‖ (pronoun)

Mande ne, ni ―me‖

Mangbetu nga ―what ?‖ (adj interr)

Mangbetu mê ―this individual‖ (sg or

pl)

Mangbetu ima ―moi‖

Mangbetu âma ―nous‖

Mangbetu aa ―our, ours‖

Mangbetu ana ―my, mine‖

Mangbetu nae ―our‖

Mangbetu nandra ―my‖

ES Mahas, Fadidja na, nai ―who ?‖,

Barea na, nan, Merarit na ―who ?‖,

Nuer, Dinka, Anuak, Lango ŋa ―who

?‖ etc

CN Kunama na ―who, which ?‖

(Greenberg) (polyfunctional na )

―Bantu‖ (Johnston) Becuana-

Transvaal ñka ―I‖, Cameroons-Cross

River ñga ―I‖

Also (Johnston (1922 : 448) ñgai,

ñgaye, ñzewe ―I‖ (with ye, we from

PWS g i ―this‖, ―to be‖).

[Niger-Congo did not originally

distinguish singular from plural :

―I/we‖ or ―thee/you‖].

= i, iw

Whereas,

when, was, as

while

eku ―whilst, as, while, at the same time

as‖

= i, in, inn

so, says, say aakula "talk, speak, utter, say, express"

zèketa ≋ -jèkeja ―talk‖

amba ―say, state, declare, expose,

slander, gossip, exalt, report, reveal,

publish, pricing (open negotiations in

market place)"

WORD

Sumerian inim ―word‖

NI “mouth” [ R ] -m

Sumerian enim ―word‖ (e-ne-èm)

PWS ni ―drink‖ (mouth)

PWS nú ―say‖

PWS nu, (ni) ―mouth‖, Atjulo ni

―mouth‖

PWS ni (+ nasal) ―name‖

PWS ni, nu ―person‖

Page 47 of 62

PWN NÍUNA, (NÚA) ―mouth‖

Bantu nua ―mouth‖

Mande du-mu-ni kè ―to eat‖, n.i-

mi ―to eat‖

Mangbetu ene ―as‖, ine ―he‖ ?

[ The original word has been

prenasalised ]. [Perhaps compare

Latin enim ―for‖].

SAY

GI “say”

[ R ] i- e-

Sumerian e, (ég, èg, íg) ―to say‖

PWS gi, gia ―to speak‖

PWS guè ―voice, speech‖, Ewe

gbè ―voice‖, Yoruba i-gbe ―loud

cry‖, Gbari e-gwe, e-gbe ―mouth‖

PWN GWAM ―to speak‖

Bantu gamb ―to speak‖

Bantu jued ―to speak‖

―Holoholo‖ jwĭ ―voice‖

Mande ku-ma ―to speak‖

Mande kã gbè ―speech‖

Mande o ye ―to speak‖

Mangbetu kwé ―insult‖

PCS *ve,* i ―vocal‖

= ii

come, return -ka-/ka- ―to, come‖

ya ―go, to leave‖

Sumerian ĝin, gin, gen, ĝi-na

―come‖

PWS g i, g ia ―to go‖

PWS kia (+ Nasal) ―to go‖, Mossi

k‟eŋ-γe ―to go‖, Grussi tjeŋ ―to

go‖, Kandjaga tjan ―to go‖

PWN GWÌA ―go‖,

Bantu gi ―to go‖, Bantu ji,j ―to

come‖

Bantu níin ―to ascend‖

Mande gyēru, dyēru ―to come and

go‖

Mangbetu ki ― a visit‖

Eastern Sudanic : Old Nubian ki

―to come‖, Nile Nubian & Old

Nubian kire ―to come‖

Central Sudanic : Moru εkyi ―to

come‖, Madi eki ―to come‖

(Nilo-Saharan : Berti kai ―to

come‖, Zaghawa koi ―to come‖)

PWS na ―to come‖

= i

I, me, my Bantu – mukwa ―person‖

mukwa/mukwǎ ―person belonging to,

originating in, descended from,

Sumerian –ĝu10 ―my, mine‖

PWS kù ―companion, accompany,

with, and‖ may be relevant as may

PWS kúá ―person, slave‖ etc.

Page 48 of 62

outcome of‖

mùkalà "youngest brother, young

sister"; "newest member"

[The concept ―I‖ may be expressed as

―this person‖, ―your humble servant‖

etc].

PWS gu ―he‖, Tschi o ―he‖, Guang o

―he‖, Ewe wò ―he‖ etc

Bantu (Johnston) gu ―he, she‖

Bantu (Meinhof) γyu, γu ―he, she‖

―Bantu‖ ñgu ―I‖, ñgu ―my‖

Mande o, wo ―that man etc‖

Mangbetu u ―there‖

Bangi, Ngala ngai ―I‖

[Crossover of different pronouns and

demonstratives].

Egyptian Hau ―person, body,

flesh, frame‖ (<ha ―I, myself‖)

= i

O!, say,

utterance

mwakù ―word, speech‖

mwakulu "language"

mwakudi "orator, speech"

Sumerian e, (ég, èg, íg) ―to say‖

PWS gi, gia ―to speak‖

PWS guè ―voice, speech‖, Ewe gbè

―voice‖, Yoruba i-gbe ―loud cry‖,

Gbari e-gwe, e-gbe ―mouth‖

PWN GWAM ―to speak‖

Bantu gamb ―to speak‖

Bantu jued ―to speak‖

―Holoholo‖ jwĭ ―voice‖

Mande ku-ma ―to speak‖

Mande kã gbè ―speech‖

Mande o ye ―to speak‖

Mangbetu kwé ―insult‖

PCS *ve,* i ―vocal‖

= iir

A plant bisoosà "grass, legumes"

cisoosa "blade of grass"

biseki "legumes"

cisèki "plant" (in general)

muci "tree, plant"

cikùnyiibwa "plant"

cisanjì "entire plant including leaves,

stems, roots and tubers, foot."

Mangbetu gi ―kind of tree‖

(protective)

PWS gu ―cotton plant‖, Yoruba e-gu

―cotton tree‖

PWS gí, g íl, (gít) ―tree‖

PWN GHI, (GHIM) ―be alive‖

Bantu gu,i ―arrow‖

Mande yiri, B dyiri ―tree‖

Mangbetu gi ―kind of tree‖

(protection)

Afro-Asiatic: Chad: Njei kadi ―tree‖:

Egyptian xt ―tree‖

= iri

Do, make -enza- "to make, do, act, behave, have

the appearance of, take the appearance

of, take place, to suffer"

cyenji "factor (math), component,

agent"

cyenza "person who manufactures"

cyenzedi "act, mathematical operation"

dyenza "action, treatment"

bwenzelu "methodology"

Enzeji- "causative"

Enzeka "happen, occur"

Sumerian aka ―make‖

PWS ka ―hand‖, ―open‖

PWN KA ―hand, arm‖

PWN KHANT ―cut‖ (off)

Bantu ka ―hand‖

Bantu gado ―arm‖

Bantu kat, kant ―cut‖

―Holoholo‖ kal‟ ―to cut‖, ha ―to give‖

Gur *ŋa ―make‖

Mande kè ―to make‖

Mande tigè, tikè etc ―cut‖

Mangbetu ogo ―cut‖

Page 49 of 62

mwenji "he / she makes or acts , author

of an action , agent"; "he / she who

makes"

k > z(j)

PCS *ga ―cut‖

Sumerian ki ―do‖

PWS kia ―to do‖

PWN KIT ―to end‖

Bantu gid ―make‖, kít ―to make‖

Mande kè ―to do‖

PCS *ki ―to break‖

Mangbetu âki ―to break‖, ―to cause,

invent‖, ―to destroy‖ etc

Khoisan : Hatsa cikina ―make‖

I argue that the glyph had a /k/ or /g/ value initially. When the A1 determinative is added to this glyph

for the word ―I, my, me‖ we get in Bantu MuKwa ―person, person belonging to, etc.‖ In Bantu mu-

/ma- are equivalent in regards to human beings or human activities. Therefore ―O, say, utterance‖ is

ciLuba makwu ―word, speech.‖ The /g/ becomes palatalized in ciLuba in the next example. Egyptian

―do, make‖ is ciLuba mwenji "he / she makes or acts, author of an action, agent"; "he / she who

makes." In ciLuba j and z interchange.

This example, and the one to follow, has the A2 determinative, but we treat them the same in terms of

vocalization. We know the seated man determinative carries the m- value because of convention not

known by many researchers in regards to African ontology. The word ―a plant‖ in Egyptian can

be rendered muci ―tree, plant.‖ The root in this example is -ci- which comes from -ti- ―tree‖ which itself

derives from -gi- ―a kind of tree.‖ In African societies trees are grouped in the ―human noun-class‖: in

other words they are thought of as human beings.42

Therefore, the mu- prefix would be attached to the

word for ―tree, plant.‖ You have to wonder why the sitting man is there for a general word for plant. The

seated man has his hand to its mouth and this lets us know that the plant is one that is edible.

iqr ―trust, trustworthy, skillful, excellent, pleasing, well to do, superior‖

iqr ―a trustworthy man, an epithet of Thoth, wiseacre‖

43

This root in ciLuba is -kela "develop by repeated excercises, train, educate, educated"; kolesha "raise,

educate, help them grow"; bukedi "education"; kolesha, "salute, desire to do well, increase, grow,

strengthen, support the power of somebody, keep one's courage, encourage" lukèlà "training"; Mukela

"educated man, educated, trained"; mukelelu "council." See also kaloolo(u) "goodness, generosity, care,

cleanliness, eloquence" and -a muhongo ―skilful, cleaver, ingeneous.‖

The Y1 glyph, as a determinative, is used to represent ―thoughts‖ or (abstract) ―ideas.‖ Its sound

value is dmD or mDAt which are words used to render the idea of ―books.‖ To render a word in Bantu that

42

See Imhotep (2011) for examples of this in African cultures. 43

Wisacre ―A person with an affectation of wisdom or knowledge, regarded with scorn or irritation by others; a

know-it-all.‖

Page 50 of 62

conveys the idea of ―speech‖ and/or ―philosophy/thought,‖ you would put a prefix on the root, something

like ki- as in kiSwahili ―the WaSwahili language.‖ The Y1 glyph may have served a similar purpose. It is

used in Kikongo, for instance, as a term signifying ―the art of‖ as in kiNdezi ―the art of babysitting‖; moyo

―life,‖ kiMoyo ―vitalism‖ (the art of regenerating energy, the science of healing). It should be noted that in

Egyptian the word qA.t means "thought, plan, device, plot." If this is the case in Egyptian, then our second

example would demonstrate that the M17 reed glyph acts as a prefix and the determinative could give

clues on how to pronounce the prefix (whether it should be pronounced ci-, ki-, bi-, etc.). In Kiswahili, the

ki-/vi- class includes individuals with certain titles such as kiOngozi/viOngozi ―leaders.‖ This is probably

what‘s going on in Sumerian for the word ki-ngal ―commandant‖ (gal ―big‖; lu-gal ―king‖) which later

came into English as the word king (German könig). This could possibly be present in the word iqr.

We can do this for another term as well: Egyptian mniw ―herdsmen‖:

Table 8:

ciKam Meaning ciLuba Meaning

mniw ―herdsmen‖ Mu-Moni, mu-Muni,

mu-Mune

Breeder, pastor

mniw ―herdsmen‖ muna Domesticator, breeder

mn ―a man, someone‖

Muntu

Munu / mwunu

Muena/Mwena

a person, human being

Man, human-being (<Munu

Kam= black man)

Person

mnw ―a kind of priest,

ministrant‖ Mumanyi learned

This reveals another angle by which we can check our research. The dictionaries give the A1 glyph values

of i- and s-. But the above should inform us that it also carried the value mn ―man‖ (muntu) or simply ma-

/-mu-. The glyph can be transcribed as in, inn in Esperanto Egyptology for which I think should also be

rendered mi-. The following will demonstrate why.

Table 9:44

ciKam ciLuba Meaning

mnw ―trees, plantation‖

Mani Leaves, foliage

mnw ―trees, plantation‖

Mani, manyu [bi-Mani ?] leaves, plants, greenery

mena sprout, germinate, grow, ci-mena

"that sprouts, who believes"

44

See Nsapo and Bilolo (2010: 124) with additional insights from myself.

Page 51 of 62

mnw ―trees, plantation‖

Manya45

to know, awareness, knowledge

(di-Manya, bu-Manyi)

46

mnyt ―plant root‖

mnDi ―seed, grain‖

inyt ―date stones, kernel, flax seeds‖

diMiinu seeds, seeds/grains reserved for

planting

diMina Action of sprouting, of

germinating

ciMeni, ciMena What grows, germinates = plants

Manya to know, awareness, knowledge

(di-Manya, bu-Manyi)

The M1 tree-glyph can be rendered in Egyptian iAm, im, imA, nbs and nht. In KiSwahili, for instance,

the m-/mi- class contains nouns of ―plants and trees, non-living things, some body parts of the body, and

some nominalized verbs.‖47

So the word for ―trees, plantation‖ could possibly be rendered im-mnw (mi-

Manyu). Keep in mind that A = l and l often interchanges with n in Egyptian. imA can easily become mnw.

The glyph, for grammatical purposes and being a plant, could be rendered mi-.

THE GLOTTAL STOP48

Our last section will focus on how the study of the evolution of the glyphs reveals different aspects of the

Egyptian language. These revelations could only happen by examining the languages south of Egypt from

where the Pharaonic culture emerged. In keeping with our focus on the vocalization of the glyphs, we will

tackle the letter A in English and its evolution from Egyptian through Caananite, Greek and Latin.

*******************

From here we can see that the initial k/g sound found in the Kongo-Saharan languages became a glottal

stop (‗) in the Semitic languages (k-l, k-n > „-l, „-n). The glottal stop is produced when the vocal folds are

45

Ciluba reveals a relationship between mani/Manyu "leaves, foliage" and Manya "knowledge, awareness", as it

reveals the relationship between Ngandu, Nganda, Nyandu, "papyrus" and ganda, kanda, nkanda "book paper" or

kandu " binding law, force of law. " 46

It should be known that the M2 ―herb‖ determinative can be rendered as Hn, Hrrt, i, or is in Egyptian. The i-form

may derive gi-. 47

Danie Prinsloo, Albina R. Chuwa and Elsbe Taljard ―The Lexicons of Africa‖ in African Voices: An Introduction

to the Languages and Linguistics of Africa, Eds. Vic Webb and Kembo-Sure, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 229. 48

This section is taken from the author‘s 2011 work Passion of the Christ or Passion of Osiris: The Kongo Origins

of the Jesus Myth. However we expand on our initial findings here.

Page 52 of 62

compressed, or pinched together, and then released as pressure builds up. In the production of these

sounds the glottis is used as a piston, both to produce sounds by sucking air in (implosives) and by

pushing air out (ejectives). The glottal stop is a phoneme in Arabic, in other words it is a sound that

distinguishes one word from another. It isn't a phoneme in English, but an allophone i.e., a variant of a

sound, a variant of the phoneme /t/ in English's case. That means that pronouncing the word water with a

glottal stop i.e., wa'er does not change the meaning of the word in English as it would in Arabic. In

African-American Vernacular English (kiKala) you will often hear people pronounce the word heaven as

hea‟em: replacing the /v/ with a glottal stop and the /n/ value turning into a /m/ sound.

GJK Campbell-Dunn in his Sumerian Dictionary (2009b: 8) further enlightens us on possible

developments of the glottal stop in the regions of the Middle East. In discussing the Lost Laryngeal, he

states the following:

In his introduction Chantraine briefly alludes to Indo-European ―laryngeals‖, (attested in Hittite as

h, but generally lost in other Indo-European languages), which we have explained elsewhere

(Campbell-Dunn 2008) as remnants of old Niger-Congo CV prefixes. We regard the glottal stop

onset of German words with initial vowel as further evidence for Niger-Congo CV prefixes in

Indo-European. The glottal stop reflects a reduced consonant. Prefixes and suffixes alike tend to

be eroded and lost due to weak accentuation. In Sumerian old prefixes tend to be reduced to

meaningless vowels; old suffixes tend to be reduced to a consonant, which becomes meaningless,

weakens and is attached to the preceding CV root.

We find this same activity in Hebrew as will be shown further below. The glottal stop may derive from a

host of different consonants. As Allen (2010: 15) noted in regards to Egyptian, the glottal stop ‗ may have

sounded like English d as in deed, and in Middle Egyptian it may still have had that sound in some words

in some dialects. In regards to „ayn, I believe that it derived from an initial k/g value with the y was

inserted to aid pronunciation now that a stop was not present.

Campbell-Dunn continues to add insight into this phenomena in Indo-European which we see happening

in Semitic. He informs us that:

The Hittite “laryngeal” h is traceable to weakened Niger-Congo consonants (often from a prefix), but lost in most IE languages. See Lehmann (1955), Keiler (1970) etc for the IE details. Sumerian h is from PNC k, as in hada 2 “brilliant”, ha-ra-an “road”, where ha = *ka. In many ways it resembles Hittite h. It is a remnant. Often it can be omitted, leaving a bare initial vowel (ara “road”). So it must be a weak fricative, like the various Indo-European “laryngeals”. Compare the Niger-Congo prefixes in h, the Khoisan h of Hazda etc. Laryngeal Theory grew out of the work by De Saussure (1887) on vocalic coefficients. (Campbell-Dunn, 2009b: 8)

Many publications speak about how in different languages the glottal stop replaces the k sound. The

Yorkshire dialect of English in Northern England is such an example. However, it is less common than

the replacement of d or t with a glottal stop in this dialect.49

The Dravidian language glottal stop in initial

position may derive from an initial h,50

which itself often derives from k/kh.

In Hebrew, The aleph א sign (the first sound in the Hebrew alphabet) is used as a consonant in initial and

non initial word positions and is represented by a glottal stop /‘/, /ʔ/; or it can be silent. The ancestral

forms of this sign are as follows:

49

See for instance KM Petyt, Dialect & Accent in Industrial West Yorkshire, John Benjamins Publishing Company,

1985, p.147 50

See Murray B. Emeneau Dravidian Studies: Selected Papers, Motilal Banarsidass Publications, 1994, p.25

Page 53 of 62

Modern

Hebrew

Rashi Phoenician Paleo-Hebrew Aramaic

aleph א

However, this form is older than Semitic and derives from the word #kV ―cow, head, ox‖ (ga ―horns‖);

Mande ku ―head‖ (lost prefixes affect the initial consonant: T/K), CN Moru kuru ―head‖, Berta alu, kuru

―head‖; Afro-Asiatic : Semitic : Aramaic gulgulto, ―skull‖ (cf Golgotha); Sumerian kir ―cow‖ (fem);

Mande gama, dama ―ox‖; Mangbetu ga ―horn‖; Sumerian gud, gu4 ―ox‖; Egyptian kA.t ―female bull, cow‖

[>Axt ―Hathor cow‖ > Aht ―cow‖51; iHt ―cow‖ > iht ―celestial cow‖]; kA ―cow‖ [ - ]. The kA root is

really k-l and we will see below why this is important to note.

Ayele Bekerie in his book Ethiopic, an African Writing System (1997), provides us with a historical

context for the evolution of the term that became the Hebrew aleph, which ultimately became our English

letter A (through the Greek alpha). The evolution can be seen in the following image:

The letter A in English is simply an upside-down set of cow horns. In the Ancient Egyptian writing script

this sign had the sound value of ka. The word ka in African languages can mean, ―elder, king, head,

power, force, grandmother, ancestor and chief.‖ With ka being the head, it is the beginning of all things

and is why it is also associated with ―God‖ (Egyptian Kaka ―god‖, Luvale-Bantu Kaka ―God‖; PWS ka ,

kaka ―chief, king‖ (head of the tribe); PWN KAKA ―grandfather, master‖).

The Semites adopted the ka symbol, but called it something else in their language. But there may be an

alternative explanation for the Aleph association with this glyph by the Semites. The word aleph could

actually be Egyptian. The term aleph in Semitic would derive from the Egyptian word:

xrp ―bull for slaughter‖

This term is associated with the word xrp ―to present, bring, provide, make offering of, dedicate, to

subject to.‖ The aleph (Alpha > A) is the beginning, or ―head‖ of the Alphabet, in part, because of another

association by play on a similar word: xrp ―govern, control, administer, act as controller, direct

(someone).‖ Compare with the Sumerian word kapar ―shepherd‖ (meta-thesis?). This would coincide

with our Kongo-Saharan root ka meaning ―head, chief, king, grandfather, master, etc.‖ And if there was

51

See also qdt ―cow, bull‖ > idt ―cow‖; A > d.

Page 54 of 62

any thought that the x-r-p root begins the alphabet by coincidence, then the Egyptian word xrp

―start, begin, be the first, manage‖52

should release all doubts. Aleph begins the alphabet because it

literally means ―the beginning‖ (the head) and is a degraded form of Egyptian xrp.

Kongo-Saharan informs us that the -p is a suffix and this -p suffix is prefixed in Bantu. Egyptian xrp

becomes ciLuba bakulu ―forefathers, ancestors‖ (p > b); mukùlù "old, ancient, grandfather, forefather,

Chief, Director, President, chief wife of a polygamist (household)"; bakùlù "ancient, antique, older,

primordial, primary, supreme" (<kulu).53

In traditional African societies, the village is run by the elders,

and more importantly, the ancestors (the ones who come before). The chief is representative of the person

who founded the village. The chief, the head of household, and the ancestors are the ones who ―direct‖

the community (or house) and govern‘s it into prosperity. This is reflected among the pastoral Egyptians

in the term xrp ―drive (cattle), lead, get ahead (with work), undertake (works), advance.‖

The -p being a suffix is reinforced by Semitic words for cattle where it is primarily prefixed: e.g., Hebrew

bākār ―cattle,‖ Arabic bakar ―cattle,‖ Epigraphic South Arabian bqr ―cattle,‖ bˀr ―bull,‖ өwr ―bull,‖

Eblaitic ba-ka-lum ―cattle,‖ Ḥarsūsi bɘkɘrɘt ―bull,‖ Mehri bɘkɘreet/abkaar ―cow,‖ Soqotri faˀahar ―bull,‖

fatar ―calf,‖ ˀalf ―heifer,‖ Ugaritic ˀalp ―bullock‖ (Blench, 2010: 7-8).

It is my contention that the /x/ sound was dropped and/or became a glottal stop in Semitic and this is how

we get aleph instead of something like khaleph. Again, glottal stops are just weakened consonants and as

we can see from the examples immediately above, the glottal stop ˀ takes the place of /ḳ/. That the glottal

stop takes the place of /ḳ/ can be further demonstrated in the Arabic word caliph (خليفة‎ ḫalīfah/khalīfah)

which means ―head of state‖ and is a name for a ruler in an Islamic Ummah. This would be cognate with

our Egyptian term xrp ―govern, control, administrator, direct (someone)‖54

(xA ―office, bureau, hall‖; HAt xA ―herdsmen‖) and ciLuba mukùlù "old, ancient, grandfather, forefather, Chief, Director, President, chief

wife of a polygamist (household)"; bakùlù "ancient, antique, older, primordial, primary, supreme"

(<kulu). The caliphates are simply the Bakulu (Kikongo) ―the elders‖ (see Fu-Kiau, 2001) among the

Bantu.55

The Grammar and Dictionary of the Buluba-Lulua Language by W. M Morrison (1906: 232) informs us

of a variant of this root kulu (kelenge) and its relationship to leadership.

Office, n. The name of the office is made by prefixing bu- to the root of the title; as,

mukelenge, bukelenge, "chieftship." appoint to, v. see APPOINT.

This operates in the same fashion as ki-/vi- in Kiswahili which is attached to the titles of persons. The bu-

prefix may be a byform of ba-

MAN Sumerian pab ―father, brother, man,

chief‖ (pap)

BA “man, chief ” [ R ]

PWS bá, bábá ―father‖, ―king‖, ―chief‖

52

Compare the root to ciLuba iikija ―start, make‖; cyaShilu "start, at the beginning, foundation, realization" 53

See also PB *-kodo- ―ancestress, female line‖; *-kúdú ―big, senior, adult‖ 54

For a more fuller discussion on the word xrp as an administrative term in the Old Kingdom, see Toby A. H.

Wilkinson Early Dynastic Egypt, 2001, pp. 114-128 55

A reflex may exist in Yoruba where the phonemes are a by-product of meta-thesis: Yoruba egbére ―gnome‖

(Hebrew geber ―valiant man‖); Yoruba al-ágbára ―powerful man‖ (Hebrew gibbowr ―powerful man‖); Igbo agbara

―powerful oracle,‖ agbara/abala ―great spirit‖; Hebrew gebu

wr-ah ―power‖; Yoruba agbára ―power.‖ Here the b-k-r

root becomes k-b-r.

Page 55 of 62

PWS –ba ―they‖, PWS –ba ―someone‖

PWN BA ―they‖, PWN BHÀBHÁ ―father, grandfather‖

Bantu baba ―grandfather, father‖

―Holoholo‖ baanĭ, ―who‖

Mande fa-fa ―grandfather‖

Mangbetu bae ―white man‖

Mangbetu pa ―father‖

CN Kunama aba ―man‖

CS Lendu ba ―man‖

ES Lotuko (x)aba ―man‖

*B = p *A = a *B = b *A = #

Men were traditionally the heads of the household and protectors of the village, thus the elevated status

for ―man.‖ Male is synonymous with ―bigness‖ and ―strength‖ and the terms become used to convey

―power.‖

The convention in the Kongo may be found in Egyptian. For example, the ruling elite were known as pat

(Wilkinson, 2001: 114).56

The word zAb or sAb means ―judge, dignitary, senior (in titles)."

Wilkinson (2001: 116) defines zAb as ―noble, official.‖ This term looks to be a palatalized form and/or

dialectical variant of xrp. The root would be sr ―nobleman, magistrate, official, great one, chief‖ (<Hry

―master, upper, top‖; HrHr ―in charge of‖); Yoruba asalu ―a title of honor among the Ogboni people,‖

awujale ―supreme king‖ (Egyptian wsr ―Osiris‖); Igbo ozo ―title of high degree,‖ eze ―to honor, to

participate, and to assume a role of privilege.‖ Here we see x > s.

Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *carw- "elder, chief"; Semitic: *sarw(-ay)- ~ (?) *sVran- '(military) chief,

prince; Proto-Berber: *zVwVr- "'precede, be the first'"; Ayr: ǝžwǝr; Ahaggar (Tahaggart): ǝhwǝr;

Tawllemmet: ǝžwǝr; Taneslemt: ǝšwǝr; Qabyle (Ayt Mangellat): zwir; Proto-WChadic: *car(am)-

"chief"; Warji: cāra [SNb ]; Daffo-Butura: saram [JR]; Proto-EChadic: *sVr- (<*n-sVr-) "adult";

Tumak: sǝ ri [Cp] [Notes: Ch *s-> Tum h-, *ns- > s-, for initial prefix cf. CCh Mafa nʒar- `be

older then (person, thing)' [BMaf] (nʒ- < *nc- is normal)].

As we can see, once we get to the Chadic, the -m morpheme (Bantu m-/b-) becomes apparent. This *sVr

variant derives from Kongo-Saharan kVl (PWS ka ―father, king, chief‖ + l (article);57

PB *-kúdú ―big, senior,

adult‖58

; PWS ku, kul ―old‖; PWS kuì ―big‖; PWN KÚ ―old‖, KWUL ―be big‖; Mangbetu kumu ―old person‖;

―Holoholo‖ kul‟ ―increase‖: PWS gán ―big, chief‖; PWN (GHIDU) ―head‖; Mande gāna ―war chief‖). The Semitic

entry is problematic for me and it appears they are equating two different words which are unrelated.

Proto-Semitic: *sVrw(-ay)- ~ (?) *sVran- "(military) chief, prince"; Ugaritic: Cf. srn 'prince'

(DUL, 770); Hebrew: Cf. sǝra ni m 'Stadtfürsten' (pl.) (KB deutsch, 727); Arabic: sarīr- 'dignité

royale, royauté' BK I 1076, sarw- 'chef, prince', srw 'ê. genéreux et d 'un caractere ma le ' BK I

1085; Epigraphic South Arabian: Sab s1rwyt 'campaigning force' (considered a Gz loanword by

56

pat is also a word meaning ―mankind, patricians.‖ 57

Or this could be the result of a ku- prefix on a -l(e,a,u) root. The Ku-class contains nouns created from verbs that

use the prefix indicating the infinitive marker to express the act of doing, becoming, or the state of being. This could

also just be a seriel noun. 58

The PB form kúdú would be closer to the Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *gad- "old age group, elder"; Proto-Semitic: *gadd-

'grandfather, ancestor'; Arabic: gadd- 'grandfather, ancestor', gdd [-a-] 'be considerable, be respectable (of men)';

Proto-EChadic: *gad- (<*gaHad-) "old"; Mobu (dial. Kwang): gād-atē [Jg]; Ngam (dial. Kwang): gade [Bn?];

Proto-High East Cushitic: *gad- "age group, generation"; Burji (Bambala, Dashe): gada; Proto-South Cushitic:

*gad- "old man"; Alagwa (Wasi): (?) gar-mo; Burunge (Mbulungi): gad-uwa [Notes: Ehr HRSC 297. If Alg reflects

a different root *garVm- it might be compared with CCh *gurVm- 'become old': Mofu gurm].

Page 56 of 62

Müller) (SD, 128); Geʕez (Ethiopian): sarwe 'army, troops; military leader; virile, robust' (LGz

515); Tigre: sǝrot, pl. särwat 'relation, tribe, kind' (LH, 178); Tigrai (Tigrinna): särawit 'army'

(KT, 678); Amharic: särwe 'leader' (LGz 515, K 491) (< Gz?); East Ethiopic : Zwy. tor särawit

'army' (LGur, 563); Gurage: End tōr särawit, So sǝrayǝt 'army' (LGur, 563); [Notes: Highly

problematic. Ugr and Hbr are considered non-Sem loanwords. Arb is otherwise related to Akk

šarru 'king' < Sem *šarr- < Afras *sarr-.]

It is my contention that the words for ―army, military, etc.,‖ derive from a word for ―war, fight‖ or ―large

group.‖ While a military leader is part of an army, I think the ancients understood the difference between

a leader and the army itself.

The -p suffix may have gone through another sound change, p > f, and found its way into the word itf ―father, a class of elderly priests.‖ But as we noted before, this /f/ sound may have originally been /b/. In

Kalenjiin (Nilo-Saharan) this word is Poiyoot ―a priest, father‖ (Coptic paiwt) and as we can see here the

-p suffix is prefixed in Kalenjiin (and Coptic). We see this also with the word nb ―lord, master, owner,

possessor‖ in Egyptian. This same word in ciLuba (and common Bantu) is bwena ―lord, owner, possessor,

family, member, quality of‖ (bwen(a,e) < ena59

> mwena (ben/beena); bwana; bwina). A check for this

sound order can be made with Egyptian nb "tie, wind up, unwind"; ciLuba bunya "bend, fold."60

When searching for an etymology for the word caliph, all sources I have access to can only trace the word

to Arabic. Given our research above, this informs us that, more than likely, this is a loan into Arabic and

probably by way of Egypt. One example can be seen in the etymonline.com database.

caliph (n.) late 14c., from O.Fr. caliphe (12c., also algalife), from M.L. califa, from Arabic khalifa

"successor," originally Abu-Bakr, who succeeded Muhammad in the role of leader of the faithful

after the prophet's death.

Getting back to the word aleph, it is interesting the Wiki entry on the etymology of this term:

In Modern Standard Arabic, there is a word يف ,"ʔaliːf/ which literally means "tamed" or "coy/ أل

derived from the root |ʔ-l-f| from which the past tense verb آلف /ʔaːlafa/ means to "to coy". This

has sometimes been connected with the name of alif in folk etymology. In modern Hebrew, the

same root t |ʔ-l-f| (alef-lamed-pe) gives "me'ulaf", the passive participle of the verb "le'alef", and

59

ena "owned, family, member, the owner, possessor, one who, who is responsible for, manufactures, sells, native,

characterized in, the quality of." There may be reflex in Egyptian: n(y) ―of, upon, in, belong to‖; ny ―us, our, them,

we two, they.‖ We mentioned earlier that in ciLuba l and b interchange and this possibly being the case in Egyptian.

We also have in Egyptian nri ―power‖ (<nb ?). See also qbs / qAs ―to bind, to tie‖ (A = l). With b interchanging with

m (as well) and r interchanging with n, we can see the reversed order in mr (nb?) "bind together, to tie up, fasten,

choke, be bound." 60

The ciLuba term bunya (≋ -vìnya) is a derivative form of vùngula ―unfold, roll, unroll, twist‖ < vùnga ―wrap, roll,

fold, twist, wound.‖ This term in Egyptian would be pXr (=vùngula) ―roll (papyrus), turn, turn about, revolve (of

sun), move about (of limbs), surround, enclose, travel around, traverse (a region), twist or distort (what is said)."

ciLuba ambika ―attach, devote, apply‖ appears to be related as well. A variant of vunga is –lunga "bind, connect,

make ends meet, weaving, making chains"; tenga ―tie, bind.‖ This is reflected in Egyptian as irq "tie on"; arq "to

bind, basket (a woven basket?), bent up, raised, give a curve to a ship's hull planking." The word mDAt (with noun

forming -t suffix) "papyrus roll, book, letter, dispatch, amulet, spell-book, bandage" may also be a variant (p>m, X >

D(j/g); r > A). Egyptian mDAt = ciLuba mukanda ―book, letter, document‖ (< Eg. Ax "papyrus thicket" > wAD "papyrus

plant" (>art "papyrus scrolls"; awrt "papyrus roll, scroll, list, tablet"); Dt "papyrus stem, papyrus leaves" > Adw/idHw

"the delta marshes, greenery, plants"; drf "papyrus, writing, script, title‖: ciLuba-Bantu ng-andu/ny-andu/ny-

anda/lu-ny-andu ―papyrus‖; MuKandu ―order, law, legislation‖; ngAnda/Ganda ―royal court‖; mwAnda ―history,

affair, problem‖; bwAnda ―very fine thread‖ (which is manufactured with di-Diba = fabric, carpet or papyrus paper

"). See Nsapo & Bilolo (2010: 117-118).

Page 57 of 62

means trained (when referring to pets) or tamed (when referring to wild animals); the IDF rank

of Aluf, taken from an Edomite title of nobility, is also cognate.61

This entry would fall in line with our findings here. So we note that the glottal stop in Hebrew is simply a

weakened CV prefix and it is evident in the evolution of the very name for the sign used to denote the

sound. Through this we discover that the Egyptians may have had a convention where the -p or -b

phoneme was used to denote leadership. Early African languages showed free word order, so the affixes

could be placed at the beginning or ends of words as grammatical features were once whole words with

distinct meanings.

CONCLUSION

We set out to lay the ground work for verifying the phonetic associations for the basic monoliteral glyphs

in the ancient Egyptian language. We did this by looking at the terms in indigenous African languages for

the objects being depicted and suggested correspondences for those glyphs. We often verified our

suggestions by looking into the Vai, Linear A and even the Merotic script which had similar signs. We

come to discover that a few of the later Egyptian forms suffered from phonetic reduction. The cause of

these phonetic reductions, as far as it is known, was a strong stress on the root syllable. As noted by a

number of scholars, the Egyptian society and language develops from a pool of cultures that converged in

the Sudan. Different traders, negotiating with foreign speakers, exaggerated the stress on the root syllable

of their words, to make their meaning easily understood. Thus they simplified their language to the

essentials and abolished its elaborate grammatical structure. This is a common procedure in forming a

lingua franca and this can be seen in languages like Sumerian, another Kongo-Saharan language.

The evidence that Egyptian once had a productive set of classifiers can still be detected in the so-called

silent determinatives. Sumerian and Egyptian provide us with detailed and concrete insights into the early

vocabulary and grammar of Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo.

As mentioned earlier, Egyptian derives from a pool of languages and there is another phenomenon that

must be considered that majorly affects language change. In many parts of Africa, in times of conflict,

wife abduction was once widespread. It is the wives who often spoke a different language or dialect from

their husbands. They, in turn, taught this, with greater or lesser success, to their children, however the

language of the males dominated. We note that among the Sumerians, the women spoke a separate dialect

called EMESAL. As Diop (1974, 1991) has often pointed out, the Egyptians were constantly taking wives

from other places. See M. Leenhardt, (1946), Langues et dialectes de l‟ Austro-Mélanésie, Paris, for a

discussion of the effects of mobile female speakers on native languages. As stated by Leenhardt:

Les indigenes…ne mettent point la guerre en cause quand ils décrivent les changements

de langue en une région: ils accusent seulement l‘action des femmes...Les femmes

enseignent aux enfants leur langue maternelle.

The natives…do not point to the war involved when they describe changes of language in

a region : They blame solely the action of women…Women teach children their mother

tongue. (Leenhardt, 1946 : xvi)

This reminds us of the famous Narmer palatte which allegedly depicts the successful military campaign to

unify Egypt. What happened to the women of the conquered territory and what language(s) did they teach

their children? What impact did this have on the development of Egyptian?

61

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph (retrieved November 21, 2012).

Page 58 of 62

This is what they regard as a major cause of language change. As the languages concerned at this early

period were already related, it is this process (among others) that inevitably leads to doublets and

byforms, as well as profound grammatical changes in a language. Thomason and Kaufman (1988) remind

us of the importance of dialect interference in the process of language change. Leenhardt (1946) and

Darkwah (2005) remind us that it was normal for speakers to speak several different languages and this is

more fundamental than the well-known phenomenon of linguistic taboo which prohibits the use of words

of conquered peoples and of the names of important chiefs, etc. Thomason and Kaufman (1988) also

informs us on how the competency of the bilingual speakers, in the secondary language, affects language

change as well.

These are the contexts for which we must understand the development of not only the Egyptian language,

but of Egyptian society as well. Our associations in this essay point to the earliest formations of the

language(s) and they help to set a guideline for determining the pronunciation of Egyptian words.

Because of the nature of dialects and/or other languages in this region throughout its history, I do not

believe you can reconstruct a vocalization schema for Egyptian that speaks for all periods without doing

the necessary work of reconstructing proto-Egyptian. I ultimately think that it cannot be done using the

comparative method, for Egyptian is a mixed language—as a result of language contact of many different

families converging on the Nile as a result of the drying of North Africa. To determine the proper

phonemes associated with the glyphs, one must engage the Kongo-Saharan, Cushitic and Chadic

languages. From this pool of cultures is where Egypt began and it is from this pool of cultures from which

we must start to look for answers to our questions regarding the hieroglyphic writing script; not Semitic.

Page 59 of 62

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Websites

Canaanite Dictionary

http://canaanite.org/

Yorùbá Online Dictionary

http://www.yorubadictionary.com

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CiLuba Dictionary

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The Beinlich Egyptian-German Wordlist

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/er/beinlich/beinlich.html

Bible Study.com

http://www.biblestudytools.com/

Ancient Scripts

http://www.ancientscripts.com/

L‘Egyptologie par Dou Kaya

http://doukaya.over-blog.com/article-introduction-au-seminaire-d-egyptologie-57165207.html

Radical Linguistics Alexander Aberfeldy, 2010

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Nostratic Online Database (Afro-Asiatic)

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