Egyptian Proper Names and Loanwords in North-West Semitic (review)

THE JEWISHQUARTERLYREVIEW,XCII,Nos. 1-2 (July-October, 2001) 155-165 Review Essay YOSHIYUKI MUCHIKI. EgyptianProperNamesandLoanwordsinNorth-West Semitic (Society of Biblical LiteratureDissertationSeries 173). Atlanta: ScholarsPress, 1999. Pp. xxv + 327. Thomas Schneider, University of Basel Researchin loanwordsandthelinguisticsof borrowinghas seen arenewed interestin recenttimes in the field of Ancient Near Easternstudies, notably by JamesE. Hoch, SemiticWordsin EgyptianTextsof theNew Kingdomand ThirdIntermediatePeriod (1994) andPaul V. Mankowski,AkkadianLoanwords in Biblical Hebrew (2000). The twofold natureof loanwords,both as lexical units and as culturaltokens, grantsthem an importantstatusas indicatorsof culturalinfluence from abroadand the way borrowingswere handled in theframeworkof a given linguistic system. They areaptto reflectthe social andhistoricalconditionsunderwhich languagecontacttook place and the flexibility of the matrixlanguage,which adaptsborrowingsin phonological , morphological,andsemanticrespects.They bridgethe gapbetween linguistics andculturestudies, especially researchof alterity. The monographof Muchiki, a revised version of the author'sPh.D.thesis (theforewordis datedfromMarch1999)submittedto theUniversityof Liverpool in 1990, supervised by K. A. Kitchen and A. R. Millard, focuses on lexemes borrowed into Egyptian from the individual North-West Semitic languages (Phoenician and Punic, pp. 9-54), Aramaic (pp. 55-203), Hebrew (pp. 205-273), Ugaritic (pp. 275-287), and, though not North-West Semitic, the Akkadianof the Amarnaletters (pp.289-311). The geographic (from Ugaritto Leptis Magna) andchronological (1350 BCE-50 CE) spread of this material with its individual loan backgroundsis considerable; the largest partof it being, though, Hebrew and Aramaicfrom the second half of the firstmillenniumBCE. Even so, the materialpresumablyreflectsa wide variety of loan relations: differentgeographic places, social strata,textual and communicative spheres of borrowing.The same applies to the reasons for the borrowing.A wide rangeof motivationscan be adducedfor borrowing itself andthe post-integrativehistory of loans: lexical gaps, innovation, style, prestige, social status, andmentality.Apartfrom some remarksat the end of his study(pp. 322-325), Muchikiavoids this analysis fromthe realm of culturalstudies and focuses on one segment of linguistic integrationof loanwords:phonology. "The purposeof this study is to establish, from the North-WestSemitic side, the phoneticcorrespondencesbetween North-West 156 THE JEWISH QUARTERLYREVIEW Semitic (Phoenician,Aramaic,Hebrew and Ugaritic) and ancient Egyptian chronologically" (p. 1). The starting point for evaluating phonological correspondencesin the case of borrowings must be a description of the phonological system of source and matrix languages (and their diachronic evolutions during the time of lexical interference)such as demonstratedin the classical study by W.Brunsch,"Untersuchungen zu dengriechischenWiedergabenagyptischer Personennamen," Enchoria8 (1978) 1-142 (notused by Muchiki).Of greatest importancein this respect is an awareness of the relationshipbetween phonemic inventory and graphemicrepresentationon both parts. Muchiki could have profitedfromthe diligent chapter(pp. 399-437) in Hoch's1994 studyon Semiticloansin Egyptiantexts.ThoughMuchikievidentlyknewthis study (cited on p. 1, n. 1), he obviously did not trulyuse it; in rareinstances he refersto it, such as "cf. Hoch no. 318" on p. 244, whereasin virtuallyall otherrelevantcases, such as otil or nrvp, thereis no referenceto this study. Unfortunately,Muchikidoes not offer any generaldiscussion of the phonological systems of eitherNWS orEgyptian.ForEgyptian,he sporadically refersthroughouthis study to J. Vergote'sPhonetique historiquede l'Egyptien (Louvain,1945)andJ.Osing'sarticleinLexikonderAgyptologie3 (1980) 944-949. Recent developments in Egyptianphonology studies would have been easily accessible throughW. Schenkel'sEinfiihrungin de dgyptische Sprachwissenschaft(Darmstadt,1990), andA. Loprieno'sAncientEgyptian: ALinguisticIntroduction(Cambridge,1995), bothof which aremissing from Muchiki'sbibliography(cf. now C. Peust, EgyptianPhonology [Gottingen, 1999]). Thisneglect appliesequallyto therecipientlanguages,whereneither adiscussion of the individualphonologicalandgraphemicsystemsis offered nor any referencemade to the bulk of recent standardmonographictools.' 1 E.g., for Phoenicianand Punic, S. Segert,A Grammarof Phoenician and Punic (Muinchen,1976); for Aramaic,and especially Egyptian Aramaic,I. Kottsieper,Die Sprache der Ahiqar-Spriiche(Berlin, 1990); V. Hug, AltaramdischeGrammatikder Textedes 7. und6. Jh.s v. Chr.(Heidelberg, 1993); M. L. Folmer, TheAramaicLanguage in theAchaemenidPeriod (Leuven, 1995), andnow T.MuraokaandB. Porten, A Grammar ofEgyptianAramaic(Leiden,1998),pp. 1-42; forHebrew,K.Beyer,Althebrdische Grammatik:Laut- undFormenlehre(Gottingen, 1969); J. Blau, On Polyphony in Biblical Hebrew(Jerusalem,1982); J. L. Malone, TiberianHebrewPhonology (WinonaLake, 1993);A. Murtonen,Hebrewin its WestSemiticSetting.Part2: Phonetics andPhonology. Part3: Morphosyntactics(Leiden, 1990); D. Volgger, Notizenzur Phonologie des Bibelhebrdischen(St. Ottilien, 1992); and recently, S. L. Gogel, A Grammarof EpigraphicHebrew (Atlanta, 1998); for Ugaritic,J. Huehnergard,Ugaritic VocabularyinSyllabicTranscription (Atlanta,1987);S. Segert,ABasic Grammar of the UgariticLanguage,4th ed. (Berkeley, 1997); D. Sivan,A Grammarof the Ugaritic Language (Leiden, 1997); J. Tropper,"Das...