Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Isaiah's Knowledge of the Egyptian Language

  

Isaiah, an educated Judaean aristocrat, was acquainted with the Egyptian language and culture. This can be seen, for example, in his use of the expression פי יאור (i.e., p3-itrw) 'the Nile' (Isa. 19.7), פי יאור is usually translated 'the mouth/side/brink of the Nile'. It is well known that יאור derives from the Egyptian word itrw. In Isaiah's time (the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty) itrw signified 'water in general, rivers, arms of the Nile'. In order to signify 'the Nile', itrw had to be defined with the masculine definite article p3, that is, p3-itrw. Isaiah, aware of this grammatical rule, adds the Egyptian definite article. Another example may be the difficult word כפה (Isa. 19.15). This seems to be an abbreviation of the Egyptian hrd-n-k3p, the title of commoners adopted by the palace (Moses, for example, would have been a hrd-n-k3p). the title itself had fallen out of use by the time of Isaiah, but his use of the word demonstrates a knowledge of ancient Egyptian social institutions. Isaiah also knew of the five names of the Pharaoh. (Isa. 9.5) Furthermore, the phrase עיר ההרס יאמר לאחת is syntactically Egyptian. In Egyptian, when a person or city receives a second name or nickname X, it is referred to by the phrase X dd.tw n.f 'X says one to him'. (Sarah Israelit-Groll, "The Egyptian background to Isaiah 19.18," in Boundaries of the Ancient Near Eastern World: A Tribute to Cyrus H. Gordon, ed. Meir Lubetski, Claire Gottlieb and Sharon Keller [Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 273; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998], 300-301)