James Bejon

#Question for learned colleagues. This comes from NE Jordan. The potent cross carved below could be as early as the 4th century, but is it possible to date the 'dotted' cross? Art history is very far outside my area of expertise, but the answers could be helpful in interpreting the site...

Some dialectal words for the hedgehog together with possible cognates in Classical Arabic, just because.

Some dialectal words for the hedgehog together with possible cognates in Classical Arabic, just because.

Looking at a paper on Ancient Egyptian language interaction. To my mind, ⟨ḏ⟩ ends up corresponding to far too many things. I’m happy enough with: /z/: ḏr.t ~ זֶרֶת = ‘span’, /ṣ/: ḏbꜥ ~ אצבע = ‘finger’, /ṭ/: ḏbꜥ ~ טבעת = ‘seal’, /s/: zjr ~ סִיר ~ زِير = ‘bowl’ (my claim), and /t/: ḏbꜢ.t ~ תֵּבָה = ‘ark’.

If anyone is aware of early references to the rainbow as made up of a particular number of colours, please let me know. Intrigued to know if its ‘sevenfoldness’ is a relatively modern idea.

Safaitic names in NʿM have notably different suffixes to others, in part perhaps reflecting the popularity of the name Nuʿmān? If anyone has bright ideas as to why, I'd be keen to know.

New book - "The Khoiak Festival: A Glimpse into Ancient Egyptian Festival Practice," by Dr. Ann-Katrin Gill. Per description, "The first comprehensive analysis of... one of the most important festivals in ancient Egypt." #Egyptology #AncientBlueSky www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/The_Khoiak_F...

This looks great!

The Hebrew שֶׁנְהַבִּים (‘a tooth of elephants’) seems to be a kind of loanblend—Semitic ‘tooth’ (שֵׁן/שִׁנַּיִם) plus Egyptian Ꜣbw (‘elephant’, which is why Elephantine is called Yev today). Egyptian Ꜣ > Hebrew h is odd. Could the unusual name Shinab (שִׁנְאָב) reflect a more standard correspondence?

There used to be rhinoceroses in what is now the Sahara desert , and the people who lived there depicted them on stones !

An interesting phenomenon for ignorant Semiticist folk such as myself: s > h in Ancient Greek.

BES26 has concluded. Incredible new discoveries. Some will go directly up on OCIANA and others will require full-length publications. Stay tuned.

I keep coming across the word תקף = ‘deed of entitlement’ in Nabataean inscriptions. This reminds me of Daniel’s לְקַיָּמָה קְיָם וּלְתַקָּפָה אֱסָר (‘decreeing a decree, enforcing an obligation’). Question: Since תק׳׳ף means ‘to strengthen’, is the otherwise unusual להגביר ברית (Dan. 9.27) an Aramaic calque?

Rather intrigued by the word שְׁקַעֲרוּרָה—‘a dip/hollow’. Sort of looks like שק׳׳ע = ‘to sink’ combined with ق-ع-ر = ‘to be deep, hollowed out’. Is this a thing in Semitics?—a portmanteau? One that comes to mind from modern Hebrew is דחפור = ‘bulldozer’, combining דח׳׳ף = ‘push’ and חפ׳׳ר = ‘dig’.

I love things like this!

THREAD: Below is a neat word—the Ruus Al Jibal šamrūḫ = ‘the stalk of a bunch of dates’ (or something like that). Its Classical form is šumrūḫ. If I recall, @phdnix.bsky.social has shown that Cv₁CCv̄₂C > Cv₂CCv̄₂C (in a pre-Classical dialect?),…

Could someone explain to me how this is supposed to work? h-qhl gets written qhl’/qhlh by an Aramaic speaker and later repatterned?

In Biblical Hebrew, רִצְפָּה can signify ‘pavement’ or ‘coal’. I assumed (why I’m not sure) that they shared a root. But, presumably, the pavement word is cognate with رَصْف and Syriac rṣp = ‘paving’, while the coal word is cognate with رَضْف = ‘heated stones’ and Syriac rʿp = ‘ash-baked bread’.

In Biblical Hebrew, רִצְפָּה can signify ‘pavement’ or ‘coal’. I assumed (why I’m not sure) that they shared a root. But, presumably, the pavement word is cognate with رَصْف and Syriac rṣp = ‘paving’, while the coal word is cognate with رَضْف = ‘heated stones’ and Syriac rʿp = ‘ash-baked bread’.

First, popularizing publication of our @unileiden.bsky.social project 'From 𐤀 to Α'. Co-written by the whole team, we introduce some of the questions surrounding the birth and spread of the early alphabet that the project tackles. Get the whole issue at www.karwansaraypublishers.com/products/anc...

Interested to hear thoughts on עֵרָבוֹן (‘pledge’). Akkadian has erubātu = ‘pledge’, and Ugaritic has the verb ʕRB = ‘to pledge’. So what about Greek ἀρραβών (4th cent. BC)? Would this be a Canaanite loan of some kind? Does Canaanite r come into Greek geminated-ly?

Wondering if the Egyptian qꜣb.t = ‘breast, chest’ is cognate with (South?) Semitic words like Arabic/Amharic qalb = ‘heart’ (Geez ‘wish’), Mehri qāb = ‘heart, intention’, etc. No cognates in Akkadian or NW Semitic to my knowledge. thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/159290

Wondering if the Egyptian qꜣb.t = ‘breast, chest’ is cognate with (South?) Semitic words like Arabic/Amharic qalb = ‘heart’ (Geez ‘wish’), Mehri qāb = ‘heart, intention’, etc. No cognates in Akkadian or NW Semitic to my knowledge. thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/159290

Egyp. bꜢq = ‘to shine, be bright/clear’ seems a nice cognate of Sem. בר׳׳ק ≈ ب-ر-ق = ‘to shine, flash’ etc. Not sure why it’s written with the tree det. Poss. because (iirc) bꜢq can also denote an oil tree (perhaps oil itself; not sure). If so, reminiscent of צה׳׳ר = ‘shine’ > יצהר = ‘oil’.

Just heard a cool idea (courtesy of a Joseph Habib presentation) that Ugaritic <z> was affricated. This strikes me as nicely explaining at least a couple of unexpected occurrences of <ḏ>: ‘iron’ = Aram. <przl>, Arabic <firzil>, Ugar. <brḏl> ‘gold(en)’ = Heb. פז, Aram. <pzwz>, Ugar. <pḏ>

Dear #Arabic speakers. Do you recognise this saying? Or have an equivalent one? الطيور على اشكالها تقع

Arabic inscriptions from Mauritania : The schama here is the same as that of some Tifinagh inscriptions . We have here : Ana + name + verb to love + name Like the Tifinagh : Nak + name + verb to love + name

Dear Biblical folk. In most evangelical commentaries, Genesis 2 is read as a zoom-in on Day Six (e.g., with the creation of ‘plants of the field’ viewed as grains that weren’t created on Day Three, etc.). Is anyone aware of work on Genesis that interacts with this view?

Dear Biblical folk. In most evangelical commentaries, Genesis 2 is read as a zoom-in on Day Six (e.g., with the creation of ‘plants of the field’ viewed as grains that weren’t created on Day Three, etc.). Is anyone aware of work on Genesis that interacts with this view?

I don’t read German well enough to distinguish what’s nicely written from what isn’t, but some of Wellhausen’s work reads very nicely in translation.

I don’t read German well enough to distinguish what’s nicely written from what isn’t, but some of Wellhausen’s books read very nicely in translation.

I love R, but the behaviour of ifelse when you combine scalars and vectors is really unintuitive. E.g., Guess the result of the line behaviour. ifelse(1 == 2, "Yes", c("Yes", "No"))