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Berberse woorden in een brief..

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Berberse woorden in een brief..

Berichtdoor Reader » do 07 feb , 2008 2:29

[...]I think I have found Berber etymolgies for four Egyptian proper names.
I giv them to you for what they are worth.
Those names are Ammon, Themis, Thebes or Thebais, and Thoth. I shall proceed with them separately and in order.
1- Ammon: This, as you well know, is the name of the Egytpian Jupiter. It appears, however, that he was not of Egyptian, but of Libyan origin. Propertius, 1.4, eleg. 1, calls hims Jupiter Libycus.
Lucan in his Pharsalia, lib. 10, v. 511, speaks of him also as a Libyan God, the only one that had a temple in that country. It is related in our books of mythology, that Hercules, crossing the Libyan deserts with his army, on his way to India, an perishing with thirst, implored the aid of his father Jupiter, who appeared to him in the form of a ram, and scratching the earth with his foot, a spring of water immediately spouted up. Thus, all the accounts we have of Jupiter Ammon point to a Libyan origin, and it is well known that his celebrated temple was not in Egypt, but in an Oasis, supposed to be that of Siwah, in the desert of Barca, where the Berber idiom is stimm spoken.
Yet the etymology of that name has been sought for almost in every language, except the Brber, which ought to have been the first recurred to. The most generally adopted is, that this word is derived from the Greek ??? which signifies sand; because, forsooth, Ammon's temple was in the midst of a sandy desert. It was forgotten that the Oases are fertile sports, rich in the vegetable productions, and abudantly watered. But it would seem that in the opinion of some learned men, the Greek and the Hebrew are the only legitimate sources of etymological research.
M. Champollion tells us, in the Tbleau Général prefixed to his volume of plates, No. 89 a, that the name of Ammon, which phenetically is abbreviated by Men, apears to have been formerly pronounced Amen or Emen: If he is well founded in this assertion, the etymology of the word seems obvious, for Aman is the Berber language signifies water, and what name can be better appropriated to the God who first supplied the Libyans in their sandy deserts with thta invaluble element? Is it not natural to suppose, that it was not the sandy Jupiter but the Jupiter of water, who was honoured in the splendid temple which religious gratitude erected to him? Egypt, which owed her fertility to the waters of the Nile, must have adopted that worship at an early period, and the God of water might well have been placed at the head of the heavenly protectors of that country.
Whatever you may think of this etymology, it is certainly preferable to any one hat my be derived from the Greek language; for, how can it be supposed that it was spoken or even known in Egypt in the remote times to which the worship of Ammon may be traced? M. Chamollion's researches have proved to us tha it existed as far back as the reign of Sesostris. Therefore the derivation from ??? must be considered at this day as utterly inadmissible, and no better one has been suggested taht I know of. I proceed to the next Egyptian name.

2-Themis, The ancient Egyptians, according to Champillion, wrote ???. This goddess was the daughter of heaven and earth. In the Grecian mythology, she was the goddess of truth or justice. The Greek version by Hermapion, of her hieroglyph, found on an obelist, is ???; Now Themis, in the Berbe language, signifies fire, the great element principle of nature, and the symbol of purity. The Romans and we derived puritas and purity from ??? fire, the purest of all the elements; why could not the name of the goddess of purity be derived from a Berber word having hte same sound and the same signification? I submit this etymology to you. It may serve, at least untill a better one shall be found.

3-Thebes, Thebais, Histoy records, that after the demise of Menes or Osiris, Egypt comprised four dynasties: Thebes, Thin, Memphis and Tunis. Thebes was the capital of Thebais, in what the ancient geographers call Egyptus Superior, or upper Egypt. The following passage from Diodorus appears to me, if not fully to establish, at least to give great probability to the Etymology which I shall presently mention. In the fifth book of his history, De Osiride et Iside, he says: ??????? ... "It remains to be said of Osiris, tha he built a city of one hundred gates in Thebais, to which he gave the name of Mother".
The explanation of this passage can only be found by recurrin to the Berbe language. In that idion, Thebais or Thebaish signifies the breat of breast of a woman, mamma, while Tamazegth is the dug or test of an animal. If by metonomy we say mamma for mother, may not the same licence be allowed to Osiris? The celebrated Thebes, the hecatompylos of Homer, corresponded in magnitude and wealth to the populous and fertile district of Thebais. That region and its splendid capital merited the appellation of mother country and maternal city, and in this sense, probaby, the Greeks adopted and we still use the word metropolis.
From Champollion we learn that munumental inscriptions prove mouth to have been the ancient Egyptian word for mother. He cites Plutarch in confirmation: and that author ideedd says, that the Egyptian ???, indicate, desiguate mother by the term mouth. May not the word have thamouth, thamooth, thamorth, which in Berber signifies the earth, our common mother, or thamattooth, a woman; or at least a derivation from some of these words? Who knows what change have taken place in Egyptian tongue, during no many centuries; what words, what synonyms, what proper, what figurative expressions may have been lost or sustitued for each other in the course of so many ages? It is a remarkable fact, that the Berber (in district, at least) have lost their original names for father and mother, and now use the Arabic words for these parental relations. Nothing informs us that city of Thebes was ever called mouth by the Ancient Egyptians; but we know it was called mother, and the strong analogy of its name, and that of its province with the Berber words above mentioned, seems sufficient, at least, to put us on further inquiry.
4- Thot or Thoth: This god was the Egyptian Hermes or Mercury. Theut, thut, or Thot in the Berber language signifies the eye, and this appellation seems to me distincly to characterise the winged messenger and plenipotentiary of the gods, and the vigilant guardian of Juno. The early Greek historians relate, that when Osiris set out on his expedition, with the view of trversing the globe, he left the adminstration of his kingdom to his wife Isis, and appointed Thoth to be her counsellor. Vigilance and prudence, therefore, must hav been the qualiities that recommended him to that hight trust. The Egyptians, according to Champillion, ignorant of the author of their phonetic signs, attributed the invention to Thoth, who was esteemed the father of arts and sciences. With these qualifications, he might weel have been entitled the allegroic name of the eye, so well adapted to the objects of his celestial office.
Bron:
On the Language, Manners, and Customs of the Berbers, or Brebers, of Africa. Communicated by William Shaler, Consul of the United States at Algiers, in a Series of Letters to Peter S. Du Ponceau, and by the Latter to the Society
William Shaler
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society,

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Ik weet niet wat gemeeschappelijk is tussen een consul en een Egyptoloog. Maar toch, laat dit zien dat het niet vreemd is om bepaalde Egyptische namen met Berberse woorden te associeren.
Reader
 
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