Egyptian and Ethiopian Languages

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Chris Watts
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Egyptian and Ethiopian Languages

Post by Chris Watts »

Bit hard to find a clear answer on the web for this one. I would like to know how different the languages were between what the Egyptian and Ethiopian spoke around the 700 BC era. Would it have been likely that they were similar? If anyone has a clear and simple web reference to this that I could read please?
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Jason Hare
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Re: Egyptian and Ethiopian Languages

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I have friends who are Egyptologists, but I don’t know that they are familiar at all with Ethiopian languages (are you talking about Amharic, Geʿez or something else?). I’ll see if I can get any kind of information on this.
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Chris Watts
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Re: Egyptian and Ethiopian Languages

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Jason Hare wrote: Wed Oct 27, 2021 12:44 pm I have friends who are Egyptologists, but I don’t know that they are familiar at all with Ethiopian languages (are you talking about Amharic, Geʿez or something else?). I’ll see if I can get any kind of information on this.
Thank you, Jason. Everything gets a little confusing in reading about the Ethiopic language and trying to figure out from the details what the consensus of agreement is regarding the similarity between the language spoken in Egypt and Ethiopia area during the 8th century BC. The only biblical clue, if it indeed constitutes a clue, is that Moses married (second wife) a cushite and the cushite and Midian peoples were in frequent contact just accross that short strip of water, plus other biblical texts show how Cush and Midian were very much intermingled. Having said this, Moses and this Cushite woman married and so understood each other quite well, she probably came from Midian anyway. But the issue I wish to resolve is whether Ethiopian was indeed a seperate language from the Egyptian, or in other words would Ethiopian have been so different that it would have been a strange language to the Semitic peoples, I have read about the various dialects briefly, but still at a dead end.

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Jason Hare
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Re: Egyptian and Ethiopian Languages

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I have invited one of my Egyptologist friends to come and read the thread to give me some direction. I’ve asked if he’d like to the join the forum and perhaps answer himself. He is also engaged in the study of biblical and mishnaic Hebrew. We’re currently working through נִדָּה Niddah together in the Mishnah. Hopefully, you’ll get a bit of direction in the coming days with regard to your question.
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Re: Egyptian and Ethiopian Languages

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Chris Watts wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 6:47 am
Jason Hare wrote: Wed Oct 27, 2021 12:44 pm I have friends who are Egyptologists, but I don’t know that they are familiar at all with Ethiopian languages (are you talking about Amharic, Geʿez or something else?). I’ll see if I can get any kind of information on this.
Thank you, Jason. Everything gets a little confusing in reading about the Ethiopic language and trying to figure out from the details what the consensus of agreement is regarding the similarity between the language spoken in Egypt and Ethiopia area during the 8th century BC. The only biblical clue, if it indeed constitutes a clue, is that Moses married (second wife) a cushite and the cushite and Midian peoples were in frequent contact just accross that short strip of water, plus other biblical texts show how Cush and Midian were very much intermingled. Having said this, Moses and this Cushite woman married and so understood each other quite well, she probably came from Midian anyway. But the issue I wish to resolve is whether Ethiopian was indeed a seperate language from the Egyptian, or in other words would Ethiopian have been so different that it would have been a strange language to the Semitic peoples, I have read about the various dialects briefly, but still at a dead end.

Chris watts
The short answer is that they would have been very different. The region of Ethiopia is presently home to many languages from the Nilo-Saharan and Afroasiatic phyla. The region of Cush (when the Bible speaks of Cush) likely does not include Ethiopia at all. The Egyptians refered to a region of Kush (Egyptian kꜢš) which extended to southern Sudan. Egyptian is not Semitic, although it shares many structural and lexical similarities. Already in 3000 BCE there would have been no mutual intelligebility, the Semitic and Egyptian families split some millenia before that.

As for Moses' wife when she is called a Cushite it probably means that she came from northern Sudan which mixed extensively with Egypt, may have spoken Egyptian, or have leared whatever language was spoken in Midian at that time, it is hard to say.

Jordan Furutani
Last edited by jordan17182 on Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Egyptian and Ethiopian Languages

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Hi, Jordan, and בָּרוּךְ הַבָּא to our little webspace!
jordan17182 wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:11 pmThe short answer is that they would have been very different.
This is what I expected your answer to be. I don’t really see how the languages would have been at all related within the historical period from which we have remaining linguistic fragments and texts.
jordan17182 wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:11 pmThe region of Cush (when the Bible speaks of Cush) likely does not include Ethiopia at all.
That does surprise me to hear. I think most people today just assume that Cush כּוּשׁ is a reference to Ethiopia. Maybe that’s just an assumption or an anacrhonism that people make based on Hebrew from a later period.
jordan17182 wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:11 pmThe Egyptians refered to a region of Kush (Egyptian kꜢš) which extended to southern Sudan.
How might you put into IPA? Does it represent a specific vowel in Egyptian that isn’t representable by the common transliteration schemes?
jordan17182 wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:11 pmEgyptian is not Semitic, although it shares many structural and lexical similarities.
I’ve seen people on Facebook recently asking if Hebrew got its 1cs independent pronoun (אָֽנֹכִי) from Egyptian ankh (I’m not sure of the proper transliteration of it). I argued that it was more directly related to the ʾnk that we see in the Mesha Stele (אנך). I’m sure you saw that I asked about it on NBLM at one point this week.

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Re: Egyptian and Ethiopian Languages

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Jason Hare wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:36 pm
How might you put into IPA? Does it represent a specific vowel in Egyptian that isn’t representable by the common transliteration schemes?
Much as in Hebrew we don't have written vowels until Coptic, so Ꜣ is actually a consonant and corresponds to the hieroglyph 𓄿. It was thought in the 19th century to be equivalent to א so it is typically called "Egyptian Aleph." It's pronunciation is debated and changed over time. It started off as a liquid [l] or [ɹ] and eventually disappeared altogether. The transliteration is just two semitic alephs stacked on each other.
Jason Hare wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:36 pm
I’ve seen people on Facebook recently asking if Hebrew got its 1cs independent pronoun (אָֽנֹכִי) from Egyptian ankh (I’m not sure of the proper transliteration of it). I argued that it was more directly related to the ʾnk that we see in the Mesha Stele (אנך). I’m sure you saw that I asked about it on NBLM at one point this week.
I didn't see you ask about this on NBLM, but it is interesting. Proto-Semitic had a 1cs pronoun ʾnk which is cognate with the Egyptian jnk. It appears in Arabic if I recall correctly (also several dialects of Berber). There is a fair bit of difference in their usage, however. In Egyptian jnk belongs to the indepenant pronouns which means that it marks the subject of a null-copula clause, e.g. jnk s "I (am) a man." The Hebrew אני can be used much more broadly, e.g., אני שמרתי = Egyptian zꜢw.j
Last edited by jordan17182 on Thu Oct 28, 2021 9:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Egyptian and Ethiopian Languages

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jordan17182 wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 9:18 pmI didn't see you ask about this on NBLM, but it is interesting.
For reference: the link. Thanks for your reply.
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Chris Watts
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Re: Egyptian and Ethiopian Languages

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jordan17182 wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:11 pm The short answer is that they would have been very different. The region of Ethiopia is presently home to many languages from the Nilo-Saharan and Afroasiatic phyla. The region of Cush (when the Bible speaks of Cush) likely does not include Ethiopia at all. The Egyptians refered to a region of Kush (Egyptian kꜢš) which extended to southern Sudan. Egyptian is not Semitic, although it shares many structural and lexical similarities. Already in 3000 BCE there would have been no mutual intelligebility, the Semitic and Egyptian families split some millenia before that.

As for Moses' wife when she is called a Cushite it probably means that she came from northern Sudan which mixed extensively with Egypt, may have spoken Egyptian, or have leared whatever language was spoken in Midian at that time, it is hard to say.

Jordan Furutani
1. Hallo Jordan, thankyou for your reply. I would lie to make sure I understand this absolutely. Therefore would you say that around 700BC the Language spoken by those referred to as Cush in scripture would be as different from the Egyptian and Hebrew language as say German is from Russian. In other words there was no relation between them and utterly unintelligable to an Egyptian and Hebrew speaker? So they could not be compared to say the similarity between Dutch and German? I know I added in Hebrew but just wanting to be clear.

2. On a side note, Moses obviously had a relationship with his Father-in-law who was a Midianite priest, his first wife a Midianite,and there is evidence both scripturally and extra-biblical to make the assumption that Cush and Midian shared a common culture and language and were closely related in that much of the population could have been Cushite. If you ask for evidence I will have to spend a few days looking it all up because it was something I read about many months ago and it was a surprise to read this.

Appreciating the help here - thankyou.
chris watts
Last edited by Chris Watts on Fri Oct 29, 2021 4:33 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Egyptian and Ethiopian Languages

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Chris Watts wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 4:22 am Hallo Jordan, thankyou for your reply.
<snip>
Appreciating the help here - thankyou.
It seems that you’re thinking in German (because of the “hallo” instead of “hello,” much like I tell people “shalom” even when they don’t necessarily speak Hebrew), so I just wanted to point out in passing that “thank you” is two words in English; “thankyou” is a mistake in formal writing. I know that it’s just danke in German, but just to make your English that much better, separate those words out. I hope I’m not being too picky.
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