Muchiki Yoshiyuki. Egyptian proper names and loanwords in North-West Semitic

Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999. — xxxv, 357 p. — (Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 173).The purpose of this study - a revised edition of a doctoral thesis, University of Liverpool, 1990 - is to establish, from the North-West Semitic side, the phonetic correspondences between North-West Semitic (Phoenician/Punic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Ugaritic) and ancient Egyptian chronologically. In other words, the present study deals with how North-West Semitic scribes wrote Egyptian in their Semitic writing systems, with concentration on consonantal correspondences. In the introduction it is pointed out there has been considerable confusion over phonetic correspondences between the languages, which go back to the fairly common unawareness of scholars that Semitic and Egyptian transliterated each other's languages differently with respect to the consonants. This comparative approach enables the author to establish the historical changes and real sound values of Egyptian consonants, which are to a large extent obscured by the extreme conservatism in the Egyptian writing system. Therefore, it is very difficult to establish sound values on the basis of hieroglyphic writings. In contrast, Semitic scribes when writing Egyptian tried to transcribe it as they heard it, and therefore their records reflect directly the real sound values of Egyptian. Appropriate materials for the purpose are: Egyptian personal, divine and geographical names as well as Egyptian loanwords transcribed into Semitic. To this end, the author methodically investigates in five chapters Egyptian names and loanwords in Phoenician/Punic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic and in the Akkadian of the el-Amarna Tablets. In each chapter the four categories of names and words are inventoried and the phonological correspondences analysed, while in the first three chapters an introductory section is added on the dates and provenances of the documents used from the several languages. On the basis of the examinations, the Egyptian names and loanwords are classified as "possibly," "probably" or "certainly" Egyptian.