Adolf Erman and Herman Grapow cites the
cognate preposition r as the usual
reaction of the verb nw or nw3 (“see”
or “look”) (13). Regarding the preposition l-
in Liahona, the liquids r and l were frequently indistinguishable or interchangeable in Egyptian
writing, a form which Nephi says he used (see 1 Nephi 1:2) and which Moroni
states had been used for Mormon’s abridgement (see Mormon 9;32-34).
A well-known example of the aforementioned r for l phenomenon is the Egyptian translation of “Israel” in the
Merneptah Stele, line 27: yisr3r.
There was, in fact, no standardized writing for l as distinct from r in
Egyptian until Demotic times (600 BC- AD 400), and even at that late stage many
words with l and r continued to be spelled interchangeably. [13] With the graphic
nondistinction between r and l, sixth-century bilingual Judahites
would have noted the correlation between the Egyptian preposition r and Hebrew preposition lě. The pronunciation of the Egyptian preposition
r, which was already sometimes being
written as I during the Twenty-Second
and Twenty-Third Dynasties, continued to weaken to e-, ero= by Coptic times.
[14] Nevertheless, the interchangeability of r and l in Egyptian
writing and the significant semantic overlap between Egyptian r and Hebrew lě make them handy candidates for interlingual calquing.
Thus, if the final element –na (;[’]nā’) can be accounted for as an Egyptian element, Liahona need not be considered a “Hebrew”
expression per se, particularly if the lě-
can be viewed as a calqued form of the Egyptian preposition r. The possible objection that Liahona constitutes a mixed-language
construction is mitigated if not obviated. Nevertheless, whether Liahona is analyzed as Hebrew of
Egyptian, syntactical irregularities exist. In either language, the fronting of
a prepositional phrase followed by a verbal construction represent a kind of hyperbaton,
which denotes a “departure from ordinary word order,” or hysteron proteron, a “form
of hyperbaton” with “syntax or sense out of normal logical or temporal order.”
[15] The syntax of Liahona emphasizes
the divine name yāhô in a fronted prepositional
phrase. [16]
During Lehi’s time, the commonest Egyptian
term expressing the idea of “to look” or “to see” was the verb nw, earlier nw3. [17] The Egyptian imperative form of nw sounds almost identical to –[vowel] nâ or ‘ānâ (“whither?”),
as evident in later Coptic nau and
its imperative anau. (Compare
especially the Demotic form of the imperative ‘i nw, which includes the aleph
[‘i], whence the initial a and thus the pronunciation ‘ānâ/anau). [18] The *liahu > *liaho (û > ô)
transformation as a lowering assimilation is plausibly helped by the a vowel that follows in the imperative
form of nw/nw3 (see ‘I nw/anau). If Liahona, so derived, originally ended in a pronounced rounded vowel
(*-naw/-nao), a defective (shortened), unvoweled spelling may have simply
left such unwritten. [19] (It is also possible that the Lehites pronounced [‘i] nw
as –[a > o]na.)
Thus, in the speaking and perhaps in the
unvoweled writing of the expression Liahona
(*lyhw’n[‘/h]), it is possible to both hear and see an inquiry, “To Yahweh,
whither?” but perhaps more particularly
an imperative, “To Yahweh, look!”—that is, “Look to the Lord!” or “Look to God!”
The latter imperative phrase actually works as a response to the former
question. Beyond the important issue of knowing whither the family should go
from the compass, Nephi comprehended that receiving ongoing revelation involved
constant looking to Yahweh (or having faith in Christ). (Matthew L. Bowen, “Look
to the Lord! The Meaning of Liahona
and the Doctrine of Christ in Alma 37-38” in Kerry M. Hull, Nicholas J.
Frederick, and Hank R. Smith, eds., Give
Ear to My Words: Text and Context of Alma 36-42 [Provo/Salt Lake City: BYU
Religious Studies Center/Deseret Book, 2019], 275-95, here, pp. 277-79)
Notes for the Above
[13] John Gee notes that “in Dynasty 19 a new
attempt is made to distinguish r and l graphically, although this does not
become standardized until Demotic.” John Gee, An Outline of Egyptian Grammar (unpublished, 2006), 7
[14] See Gee, Outline of Egyptian Grammar, 7, and Jaroslav Černý, ed., Coptic Etymological Dictionary (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976), 31.
[15] Richard A. Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1991), 86, 89. Hysteron proteron = “latter before” or “the
latter (in place of) the former.” Edward Hirsch, A Poet’s Glossary (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), 291.
[16] Some examples of lengthier fronted
adverbial phrases include Genesis 2:16b (“of every tree of the garden thou
mayest freely eat”); 2:17 (“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
thou shalt not eat of it”); Isaiah 62:6a; and Joel 2:29 (MT 3:2)
[17] See Erman and Grapow, Wörterbuch, 2:218; and Raymond O.
Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle
Egyptian (Oxford: Griffith Institute/Ashmolean Museum, 1999), 127.
[18] See Černý, Coptic Etymological Dictionary, 113.
[19] Older Hebrew writing tended to be “defective”
rather than “full” (plēnē), that is,
lacking additional written waws (w/o/u), yods (y/i) and hes (h/long
vowel) to guide pronunciation.
