B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

“Pharaoh” : PR‘H : prxX : pA ra Ax XA : “The Ra: Body and Soul”

The scholarly view that “Pharaoh” : PR‘H allegedly means “great house” in Egyptian is untenable. Scholars have no explanation for the final he/H. Moreover, on only a tiny handful of occasions during 3,000 years of pharaonic Egypt is any native Egyptian attested as referring to the king of Egypt as “great house”. Surely we on the b-hebrew list can do better than that.

The basic linguistic mistake made by scholars in analyzing this word is to assume that the Hebrew letter ayin would necessarily render the Egyptian phoneme ayin. In fact, Egyptian ayin was a much softer sound than Hebrew ayin. The Hebrews treated the sounds of Egyptian ayin and Egyptian aleph as being vowel sounds, and as such omitted them in the Hebrew defective spelling of Egyptian names.

(i) Per the unanimous and correct view of the last two letters of “Potiphar” : PW+YPR, we see that pA ra in Egyptian, meaning “the Ra”, is rendered by the Hebrew letters PR [peh-resh]. Thus the first two Hebrew letters in "Pharaoh" : PR'H mean "the Ra".

To put the same matter another way, the best-known one-syllable Egyptian word featuring p is pA, meaning “the”, and the best-known one-syllable Egyptian word featuring r is ra, meaning the Egyptian sun-god Ra. (We must a-l-w-a-y-s apply defective spelling to Biblical Egyptian names. Each VC or CV syllable is rendered solely by the Hebrew consonant.)

(ii) Moving now to the third Hebrew letter in "Pharaoh" : PR'H, the Hebrew letter ayin was n-o-t used to render the Egyptian phoneme ayin in Hebrew defective spelling. Not. Rather, the Hebrew letter ayin was instead used to represent a ghayin, and as such to render the only one of the three Egyptian heths that was similar to ghayin (differing only as to whether it was voiced). So the Hebrew letter ayin as the third letter in “Pharaoh” : PR‘H is a ghayin, and renders the Egyptian heth that Buurman transliterates as x.

The best-known one-syllable Egyptian word featuring x is Ax, meaning “soul” or “spirit”.

(iii) The softest of the three Egyptian heths, transliterated by Buurman as X, would be expected to be rendered by the Hebrew letter he/H. The best-known one-syllable Egyptian word featuring X is XA [being a shortened, attested version of XAt or X.t, where the final t was subject to lenition in the Late Bronze Age], meaning “body”.

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If we apply defective spelling, and carefully think through which Hebrew letters would rightly be expected to be chosen to render the 3 different Egyptian heths, the following results:

“Pharaoh” : PR‘H : prxX : pA ra Ax XA : “The Ra: Body and Soul”

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

“Pharaoh” : PR‘H : prxX : pA ra Ax XA : “The Ra: Body and Soul”

The historical name “Akhenaten” means: “Soul of Aten”.

The Biblical name “Pharaoh” : PR‘H : prxX : pA ra Ax XA : “The Ra: Body and Soul” is simply a grander, Year 13 version of the historical name “Akhenaten”:

(a) The “Akh” in “Akhenaten” is identical to the Ax: ayin/ghayin/‘ in the Biblical name, in both cases meaning “soul” or “spirit”. [Because Egyptian has 3 heths, it made sense to use the Hebrew letter ayin, functioning as a ghayin, to render this one Egyptian heth that is similar (except as to voicing) to ghayin.]

(b) pA ra : peh-resh/PR is a Year 13 update of Akhenaten’s historical name, because by Year 13 Akhenaten favored “Ra” over “Aten” as to nomenclature. We know that, because Akhenaten’s first four daughters were named after “Aten”, but his last two daughters were named after “Ra”. As to the pA/“the” preceding Ra, Akhenaten was the first Egyptian to use the word “the” before a god’s name, thus giving a monotheistic reorientation to Egypt’s previous polytheistic worship of Ra as but one god among many. [Later the Egyptian word “the”/pA became devalued, and lost its monotheistic implications when preceding the name of an Egyptian god. But in Year 13, pA/“the” before the god’s name Ra was outrageously monotheistic.] The Hebrews had a vested interest in emphasizing Akhenaten’s monotheism, since at that time the Hebrews were the only other monotheists in the world. The Hebrews hoped that Akhenaten might help them with their terrible Year 13 problems regarding Yapaxu, who was the new, anti-tent-dweller princeling ruler of the Hebrews’ beloved valley in southern Canaan.

(c) Adding “body” : XA : he/H at the end of this name simply made it grander. Once again, the Hebrews were trying to secure Akhenaten’s help regarding their manifest Year 13 problems, so it behooved them to embellish the Patriarchal version of his name.

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The phrase at Genesis 41: 46 translated by KJV as “Pharaoh king of Egypt” is in fact not that utter redundancy, but rather is: “Akhenaten, king of Egypt”. The entire mindset of the Patriarchal narratives reflects the first Hebrews’ monumental historical problems in Year 13, which they hoped Akhenaten might resolve or at least alleviate. The Biblical name “Pharaoh” : PR‘H : prxX : pA ra Ax XA : “The Ra: Body and Soul” is a grander, Year 13 version of the historical name “Akhenaten”.

[To correct an inaccurate statement I made in my prior post on this thread, if the Biblical word “Pharaoh” dates to the mid-14th century BCE or earlier, then in that time period there is only a single instance of the king of Egypt being said to be “big house”.]

P.S. Pursuant to the foregoing analysis, (i) “Potipherah” should reflect the historical name of Akhenaten’s Captain of the Guard in Year 13, and (ii) “Potipherah” should reflect the historical name of Akhenaten’s high-priest of Aten from On in Year 13; b-u-t if and only if one is willing to do what no university scholar has ever done in print: a-s-k what all three of those names (Including "Pharaoh") would mean if defective spelling applies.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

The “Akh” in “Akhenaten” is possibly the Hebrew אח or חי 'alive'. One needs to be on his guard dissecting biblical names, but the "aten" fraction could be אדון ADON, 'Lord', (the Greeks, after all, made ATENA out of ADONAH, and PALLAS out of בעלת) or, "naten" could be נתן NATAN, 'give'.

Isaac Fried, Boston University