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INTRODUCTION
"Tell el-Amarna, [is the] artificial name for the ruins of
Akhenaton, the new capital [established in Middle Egypt, in the sixth year
of the reign of Akhetaton about 1344 BC],
of Egypt founded by the religious revolutionary, Akhetaton, [about] 190 miles
south of Cairo. Pharaoh Amenophis IV
(1372-1354), changed his name to Akhetaton, and introduced a great heresy in a
different guise and a re-statement of an earlier belief in one sole god."
(Clayton p. 122) "As a mystic he was
remarkable, but as a ruler a disaster." (Posener p. 5) "The Amarna Letters reveal
much about conditions in Palestine in the era
just prior to the arrival of the Hebrews, and contain names of cities, rulers,
and peoples useful in the reconstruction of the political geography of Palestine at this time."
(Miller p. 15) See the Egyptian Maps for
the location of Amarna on the Nile
River.
"In 1886, according to ‘Eduard Meyer not a single document
existed to attest the authenticity of the Old Testament as history,' a year
later the Amarna Tablets, a whole library of correspondence between the kings
of Egypt and the princes of Palestine and Syria in the days of the
Patriarchs, came forth. But the [great] revolutionary discoveries came with the
finding of two other libraries, those of Ugarit
and Qumran."
(Nibley p. 52) Ugarit
will be the subject of a future study, Qumran, or the Dead Sea
Scrolls, has been the subject of numerous studies and tapes in this
series. What was available to attest to
the Book of Mormon in 1886? Not Much. But for both the Bible and the Book of
Mormon, discoveries by the hundreds were to come in a great cascade.
In 1967, Nibley identified "twenty major manuscript deposits
in the old world," and had this to say about No. ten in that list: "Tell
el-Amarna, where in 1887 two hundred cuniform tablets were dug up by peasants,
followed by hundreds of others, many of which were smashed and lost on the way
to the dealers." (Nibley p. 52-55) Now,
with recent publications of Amarna tablets and the discoveries made at this
ancient city, it can now be discussed,
and the contents explored for Book of Mormon parallels.
THE DISCOVERY
In 1887, an unnamed peasant woman, a native of Tell
el-Amarna, a sleepy little village on the Nile about 250 miles north, or down
river, from Thebes, was once again as
she was prone to do, out in the desert hunting for sebakh, (Payne p. 129) a
kind of nitrous soil used as fertilizer by the natives. At random she had chosen a place to work with
her spade, and beginning turning over the earth, she noticed several
rectangular pieces of old clay which impeded her digging. She tossed them aside
impatiently, and went on digging. She kept turning up spadeful after spadeful of
the same crumbling pieces of clay. Grumbling, she decided to move on, bent down
to pick up her gunny sack and noticed that the pieces of clay were covered with
even lines of edge-shaped markings. (Payne p. 130) This little peasant woman of Tell el-Amarna
had no way of knowing that these little clay tablets with the wedge-shaped
markings on them were Babylonian cuniform. Or that Babylonian cuniform was a
writing used by the rulers of the ancient world in their letters to one
another. Rather than use papyrus, they used
clay tablets, while they were still soft, and then baked them to preserve the
markings.
Thinking that the markings on the tablets might make them
valuable, the little lady from Amarna filled her gunny sack with 350 tablets
and headed back to the village, where she had a stroke of good luck. A neighbor
bought the whole sack full of tablets from her for the princely sum of fifty
cents, about a month's wages. She hurried off with her riches, and history
never again heard about her or who she was. Other neighbors hearing of her good
fortune went to the dig site and themselves recovered some tablets. (Sasson p.
2411) The neighbor was familiar with
dealers in artifacts and sold the tablets to a buyer who recognized the
wedge-shaped markings for what they were. But cuniform tablets had never before been found in Egypt. This was the first discovery in Egypt
of cuniform tablets. Because of this experts disagreed on whether or not they
were genuine or forgeries. The tablets passed from hand to hand, until Sir Wallis
Budge, the great Egyptologist, archaeologist, and cuniform expert, finally
settled the matter. (Payne p. 131) When several of the tablets were brought to him
for judgement, he studied them with growing excitement. The tablets were not
forgeries. On the contrary, most of them were ancient, and contained anguished
cries for help from cities in Palestine and Syria to a
Pharaoh about whom archaeologists knew almost nothing. The Tell el-Amarna
tablets, Budge announced, were "of very great historical importance." (Payne p. 131)
In 1892, Sir F.
Petrie finally discovered the source of the documents, the royal archives of Ikhenaten
(Akhenaten) at Amarna. The available collection [then] consists of 358
cuneiform tablets, being the correspondence, in the Akkadian language (some of
the letters are in Hittite), between the Egyptian court and the princes of Palestine and Syria,
[about] 1370-1348 BC, during the time of Israel's wanderings in the area.
(Nibley p. 53)
Having identified where the tablets had come from,
archaeologists began excavating in the empty desert behind Tell el-Amarna,
little by little, uncovering the half-ruined palaces, temples, royal roadways,
of a great buried city, built by Pharaoh Amenhotep the Fourth, [who for
religious reasons was] also known as Akhenaten, [one of the Pharaohs of the 19th
Dynasty 1570-1293] one of the most complex and extraordinary men in the history
of the ancient world. (Payne p. 132)
THE ARCHIVE
"Archive material, [tablets] then, more commonly survives by
chance, as incoherent groups of fragments-in fact, as rubbish. The prime
Egyptian example of an archive simply abandoned in situ was the royal
archive at Akhenaten's short -lived capital of Akhetaten (Amarna), from which
came the Amarna Letters." (Sasson p. 2203) "The cuniform scribal tradition is an
unbroken one, lasting at least thirty-four centuries. In particular the
tradition of the so-called lexical texts, designed for scribal training, can be
followed for the whole of that period. ...The Instructions of Shuruppak, (Erickson Aug 2005) can be traced from Old Sumerian
version, (about 2400 BC, from the
literary archive found at Abu Salabikh), to a Middle Assyrian translation about (1100
BC), while Sumerian cultic lyric poems
of about 1800 BC were still being copied--almost
unchanged--but accompanied by interlinear
Akkadian translation--at Babylon in the first century BCE." (Sasson p.
2205) "Chancellery practices reached Ebla in Syria
from Sumer through Kish... and Mari in the third millennium and ... Babylonian
scribal procedures...reached the Hittite Empire and also Syria again, this time through the Hurrian state
Mitanni,
in the second Millennium. From Syria
they were transmitted to Egypt
and are known from the tablets found at Akhenaten (Amarna)". (Sasson p.
2205) The linkage throughout the ancient
cities and over many centuries, is clear from this summary. In the Jaredite and Nephite histories, and
names, this linguistic history is well preserved. Each of the great Empires, and each of the
great cities, is being examined for the tablets they have yielded to see what,
if any, parallels there may be to Book of Mormon names. The search is exciting, and it is most
rewarding and productive. Some twenty-three cities have been identified with
tablet discoveries that could be important for the study of Book of Mormon
names. These are in addition to the ones already studied and presented in this
web series.
THE AMARNA LETTERS
The Amarna "letters record the first expressions of Assyria's independence from Babylonia and
represent the dialects of each of
these powers. Those from Mitanni
represent the final decades of that Kingdom's sovereignty and reveal something
of the Hurrian influence there.
There are also letters from the Hittite
empire and copies of replies from Egyptian
rulers. ...a significant aspect of these letters has been the discovery of
Canaanite [Phoenician] influence in the lexicon, phonology, morphology, and
syntax of the Akkadian language in
which they are written." (Hess p. l) An
early work The Tell El-Amarna Tablets, provided
transliterateded text, and an English translation. (Mercer) A history of the publication of the texts on
Amarna was summarized by A.F. Rainey in 1978. .. "to which should be added the
work of Moran." (Moran, preface and Murnane p. xi) A large portion of the letters were written in
Byblos
[Phoenician] ... "Moran discovered the key to the grammar of the Amarna letters
...the ...system [was] almost wholly Northwest Semitic and thus closely related to
...contemporary Ugaritic language and
of enormous significance for understanding the prehistory and early history of
Hebrew." (Moran, viiii) see also (Erickson, Reformed Egyptian 29 Jan 2005) At least Ten "languages were identified in
the Amarna Letters, including Amorite,
Hebrew, Phoenician, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Egyptian, Indo-Aryan [related to Sanskrit] , Hurrian, Anatolian, and Kassite." (Moran p. 6) Communications
in ancient times had been extensive.
There is a great deal of worth in the study in the Amarna
Letters, but only a few items will be selected for this study where the
emphasis is on the contribution made to names in the Book of Mormon. Among the Amarna Letters were eight that were
significant for continuing the debate among scholars as to the identification
in the ancient texts of the Island
of Cyprus. Scholars found in the Amarna Letters
references to letters of Ugarit from the king
and governor of Alashiya, which has been the name given to Cyprus by the
more astute scholars. (Cline p. 41) A
certain tablet, has this to say: "Say to the king of Egypt, my brother: Message of the
king of Alashiya, your brother." (Merrillees p. 38, where the full tablet is
shown with translation) There were also
tablets discovered at Ugarit
from the king and governor of Alashiya. (Cline p. 41) To help resolve this question of the origin
of the clay of the Amarna tablets, the clay was subjected to petrographic and
XES analysis and was found to match the clay beds found only on Cyprus. (Cline
p. 41) Now many studies have been made
in the Near and Middle East tracing the clays that pottery and ceramics have
been made from and sourcing the clay back to original clay beds. (Goren) Die-hards, not understanding the specificity
of petrographic and XES analysis just won't believe. Even with the Book of
Mormon evidence so abundantly confirmed from these ancient discoveries there
will be die-hards who won't believe. But their disbelief does not change the
veracity of the truth. This technology
is one I have used very often including a recent work to establish links and
work out the sources of clay for pottery and ceramics of Anasazi Cultures north
of the Colorado River and into Nevada areas.
DISCOVERY OF THE
HITITTES:
It was two letters in the Amarna collection, written in an
unknown language, sent by the King of Arzawa to Akhetaten. They had come from a place later identified
as Bogazkoy in Turkey.
The ruins had been discovered by Charles Texier in 1834, but remained
unidentified. In 1906 Hugo Winckler tracking down all he could find began
excavations at Bogazkoy, finding hundreds of tablets, and identifying the ruins
as Khatti, the Kingdom of the Hittites, and recovered a lost civilization.
(Guterbock, Hans G., in Sasson p.
2766)
The letters reflect the rise, at that time, of a dominant
power to the north, the Hittites, who were
beginning to challenge the long dominance of the region by Egypt, and another
group was mentioned which was complicating the political situation in the
entire Levant, or Palestinian area. "A class of outsiders known by their West
Semitic label ‘apiru (or habiru) [thought to refer to the Hebrews then settling
in the Promised Land, who] further complicated the political situation by
encouraging diverse populations to rebel against their own leaders." (Sasson p.
2411) The Book of Joshua tells the story.
It is clear from the Letters there was a market-driven economy in Egypt at this
time, and class distinctions. (Sasson p. 1383)
There was a large gold hoard found in 1920, of gold bars, roughly made
rings, silver figurines, scraps of previous metals, probably a jeweler's stock,
or perhaps even a thief's loot. (Sasson p. 1384) It is apparent that trade and
gift giving, particularly of gold, was a diplomatic given. (Sasson p. 1380)
Although Egypt had a written and an epistolary tradition as
ancient as that of Mesopotamia, [it was very cumbersome and took a specialist
to read it] the correspondence of the Egyptian court, both for its
international affairs and with its vassals in southwest Asia, was conducted not
in the language of the Egyptian Empire, but in the Akkadian language, and in
the Akkadian cuneiform script [which was also used by Hittites, Hurrians, and
others]. Egyptian writing was just too esoteric. In fact "peripheral Akkadian,
served during the second millennium as the lingua
franca, the diplomatic and trading language of the ancient Near East." (Sasson
p. 2412) The Book of Mormon names reflects this in detail. Therefore, there is a great deal of general
information found in the Amarna Letters for languages of the region, and
Akkadian Language specifically. This all
sheds light on the Book of Mormon names.
"By the time of the Amarna period, people of the eastern
Mediterranean regions had been bilingual—in some regions multilingual—for
centuries; they wrote Mesopotamian languages, but conversed in their local
languages." (Sasson p. 2412) This spread cultures, styles, idioms, words,
wisdom, and technical terms throughout all the languages, which continue even
to today. "In the Amarna Period (late
fifteenth and fourteenth centuries BCE) cuniform Babylonian was the written
lingua franca of the Near East, including ; pharaonic Egypt." (Gordon, in
Sasson p. 2786) By then the twenty-nine
or thirty-letter alphabet of Ugarit
had spread to the ends of the earth. (Gordon in Sasson p. 2786)
THE REIGN OF THE JUDGES
In the Book of Mormon between 91 BC and AD 30, the Nephites
were ruled by a series of judges. This period and the judges are discussed by
Largey. (Largey pp. 474-475) The subject
could be the basis for an extended study.
"The Syro-Palestinian states under Egypt's rule were all governed by
princes called in the Amarna Letters hazannu,
‘chief magistrate', mayor, regent'. A
parallel West Semitic term is ‘spt', which means ruler or judge." (Sasson p.
589) A knowledge of such practices may
have been transmitted down through the Brass Plates. The Brass Plates were the
vehicle for a lot more than has been understood in the past. The Late Bronze
Age (the second half of the second millennium until about 1200) is probably the
phase of the pre-Hellenistic history of Syria
and Palestine
that is best known to us because of the amount and diversity of written sources
that have survived. Among these sources is the archive from Tell al-Amarna (the
site of Akhenaten) in Egypt.
This archive, which includes the correspondence between two pharaohs of the Eighteenth
Dynasty and rulers of Asian cities and nations, may be the most important
source of knowledge of Palestine
under Egyptian rule. For this reason the Book of Mormon could be examined more
thoroughly through this eye glass of the Amarna Letters than it has been.
THE PHOENICAN-MAYAN CONNECTION
The alphabet of Ugarit (Phoenicia) was polished into a twenty-two-letter
alphabet of the Northwest Semites, and at Ugarit
there developed a shorter alphabet as in the Phoenician-Hebrew-Aramaic
alphabet, which is what was used in the Book of Mormon. (Erickson 18 May 2005) Americanists
specializing in Mayan inscriptions, noted that the indigenous peoples of
Central America had lunar zodiacs in which the signs had alphabetic phonetic values, found also in China and the Old World.
A Mayan zodiac includes the direct sequence of a hand sign followed by a sign
called ‘lamat' or ‘lambat', after which came the water
sign. ‘Hand' (specifically "palm of
the hand') in northwest Semitic is ‘kapp',
which in Hebrew becomes ‘kaf'. Kaf is also the name of the Hebrew
letter ‘k' (Erickson 18 May 2005) and corresponds to the Greek ‘kappa'. Then comes the letter ‘L', ‘lamed' in Hebrew, Lamda
in Greek, lamat/lambat in Mayan. Then comes ‘water'
which is ‘mu' in Egyptian, Akkadian
and Greek, and yields the letter ‘m'.
There is a striking direct sequence of ‘k-l-m' in the Phoenician-Hebrew-Greek, Latin, and Mayan alphabets, connecting the
New World and the Old, all embraced in the lunar
zodiacs, showing global application.
(Cyrus H. Gordon, in Sasson p. 2786) When
comparing the twenty-two letters of the Phoenician alphabet to the "Chinese
special graphs [twenty two in all] known as the ‘ten heavenly stems' and ‘twelve
earthly branches', it was noted that some of the twenty-two Chinese graphs were
in Ugaritic cuniform. The letter ‘m'
appears in the exact form that it appears in Ugaritic, and the letter ‘s' has the same shape as the cuniform
letter for ‘z' in Ugaritic." (Cyrus H. Gordon in Sasson p. 2786) Gordon
also noted other cuniform signs in the Chinese graphs. The Chinese graphs are
used for calendrics-as a numerical system, and for alphabetizing. (Cyrus H.Gordon
in Sasson, pp. 2785-86)
"There are two major historical sources for the early
history of the Philistine [the Sea Peoples, the Phoenicians] in the ancient
Near East: Egyptian records and the biblical narratives." (Trude Dothan in Sasson
p.1267) "References in the Amarna
letters indicate that as early as the fourteenth century BCE, seafaring
warriors were already serving as Egyptian mercenaries at Byblos," (Trude Dothan
in Sasson pp. 1267-1268) and elsewhere, and had set up independent states of
their own throughout the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic, (Bierling p. xii)
and trading for and on behalf of Egypt, and other nations, as far away as west
and south Africa, Britain and India. (Moscati
pp. 78-81)
CONSONANT DOUBLING AND DOUBLING OF VOWELS:
On the highly technical side, an examination of the Book of
Mormon names on pages 532-535, show a number of names with unusual consonantal doubling. Examples include Ammon, Ammonite, Ammonihahite, Ammoron, Gallim, Giddonah, Giddianhi, Gidgiddonah, Gidgiddoni,
Irreantum,
Middoni, Rabbanah,
Sherrizah, Amnigaddah, and Uzziah. The last name is found in the Jewish Tanakh, (Mandel p. 528) with two variations, Uzza, and
Uzzi, all three mean ‘strength or forceful'. At this point we will not consider
the Vowel Doubling, also found in the Book of Mormon. Counting the Biblical name there are fifteen names
with Consonant Doubling. Could Joseph Smith have picked up on the Biblical name, Uzziah, to derive fourteen other names
with consonantal doubling? Doubtful! Is there some underlying principal involved that
Joseph Smith may not have been aware of but which shows up in the names in a
way that confirms the Book of Mormon text was an ancient texts obeying rules of
Onomastic Science and grammar? One of the unique contributions to the Book of
Mormon made by the Amarna Tablets and Letters, is an understanding of Consonant Doubling, to the benefit of Joseph Smith as a true translator
working with a authentic ancient text.
"The scribes of Amurru,
[the ancient Amorites, note the doubling in the name] both in earlier and later
periods, were consistent in their denotation of consonant doubling ...They
regularly marked consonant doubling in their writing and exceptions are quite few." (Isre'el
p. 61) Here it is pointed out that it
was a feature of earlier and later writing. The feature of consonant doubling is
related to grammar. "Exceptions are
usually connected with forms which are recognizable and nonhomograhic, such as
forms in the iparras (‘present-future') verb, or other common
words. [But] in earlier texts the
use of the word ta-na-din-mi, meaning ‘you will give' was used for tanaddinmi in the later texts. Anuma, which means, ‘now, here', was common in later texts, but
anuumma was used in most of the
earlier texts. Hamutis meaning ‘promptly'
was used for hammuttis, (Isre'el p. 61) but it has two consonantal doublings. Note
that our own English word ‘common',
follows this as well. It seems that there was also a tendency to avoid more
than one denotation of doubling within
a single word. Izzaazunim meaning ‘they
were standing' was used for izzazzuni.
And innirir meaning ‘to help'
was substituted for innirrir. (Isre'el p. 62) Most often, then, the consonant doubling found
in the Book of Mormon reflect an earlier use of the names, such as the name
Amnigaddah, which is a Jaredite
name, he was the 35th descendant of Jared. Consonantal doubling in nouns, verbs,
non-verbal forms and other forms, is also found in the Amarna Letters. (Isre'el
pp. 62-66) Of course, Joseph Smith had
plenty of time, 85 days or less, to figure this all out and keep it correct!
THE VOWELS
"The Akkadian
language, which borrowed its script from the Sumerian, inherited signs for four categories of vowels: a, u,
i, e. Akkadian speaking scribes used these signs for writing their own language, and in the dialects which had
significant differences in pronunciation between the vowels e and i, their usage of the signs indeed reflected this difference."
(Isre'el p. 71) "In the language of
these [ancient] scribes the phoneme i had
two different realizations, depending on its length: it was pronounced i when it
was either short or
long and accented, e when it was
long and unaccented....in the majority of cases the Amurru scribes did differentiate between signs signifying the vowel e and signs signifying the vowel i."
(Israel
p. 72) These signs were visible and readable in the cuniform styles on the
Tablets. For this and other reasons it was imperative for Joseph Smith to get
the Spelling of the names absolutely
correct and too make sure Oliver got it exactly correct as well. We can then
conclude that the names now, in the Book of Mormon, correctly reflect the
various signs that were on the ancient texts indicating the various vowels, and
consonants constructs that were to be maintained through time, with foreknowledge of just how the
grammarians and philologists were going to reconstruct the languages and
finalize the translations. So, "which is the best English translation? It is
that which renders the Akkadian original [or any original text] as if its
author would have written it himself in contemporary English." (Isre'el Vol II,
p. 4) Ponder this as you contemplate the
‘English' text of the Book of Mormon and its names.
MORPHOGRAPHEMIC SPELLING
"There are, however, various occurrences in which there is
an apparently superfluous denotation of consonant
doubling...Classified as (l) Purely Graphic,
and (2) Phonological." (Isre'el p. 62) "Graphic doubling is a spelling tendency
found elsewhere in Akkadian which is in effect, a type of morphographemic spelling...according to this spelling habit, stems
are spelled as if they were separate units, and then a sort of ‘phonetic
complement' is added. This type of morphographemic
writing is usually found in specific verbal forms, and as a rule the last sign
of the stem is a CVS sign." (Isre'el l, p.
62) e.g., Ikalluunim meaning ‘they eat', idinnunim,
‘they give', isbattunim, ‘you will
put', liispurraam ‘may he send
here', [and with double doubling] tasapparra, ‘may you write me'." (Isre'el p.
62) Note the double vowels in some of
these words. This is also common in Book of Mormon names. In a non-verbal form
you have: "assummikama, meaning ‘for your sake'." (Isre'el p. 62)
"Phonological consonant doubling is attested in all period
of Amurru Akkadian, in both letters and legal documents, and should be
considered as a reflection of a feature of the spoken language, whether
Akkadian or the substrate dialects. It is found in various formations replacing
of an expected vocalic lengthening."
(Isre'el Vol. l, p. 63) This
appears also to be the case in the Book of Mormon, reflecting the modified
Hebrew that was spoken by the Nephites. Specialists in such things can pursue
this for rich rewards.
IRREANTUM--CHANGES THROUGH TIME OF CONSONATAL
DOUBLING:
In Semitic nouns: Hiittam, meaning ‘sin', went from hiittika, to hitaika. (Isre'el Vol.11, p. 63).
But of special interest to the Book of Mormon students is the peculiar
name Irreantum. After eight years in the wilderness, Lehi and
those traveling with him came to the sea (apparently the Arabian Sea) which
they called Irreantum, ‘which being
interpreted is many waters' (1 Nephi 17:4-5, Largey p. 339) We are still looking for that name to
substantiate its meaning and usage. In the Tanakh, ‘Ir', means ‘city' (l Chroncles 7:15), and in ‘Iri' (l Chroncles 7:7)
you have the meaning of ‘Urbane'. (Mandel pp. 214-215). So the prefix varies little in meaning from
language to language. In the Amarna
texts from Egypt,
we do have a name in which the consonant doubling of ‘rr' does occur, following a vowel of ‘i', and is used as in the Book of Mormon as a prefix, the name is: irresutiya. The suffix
is different, so in the Amarna name the meaning is ‘my aid', in this the prefix
‘irr' means ‘aid'. There is a hypocoristic ending in both names,
in one it is the mimation, ‘-um', in the other it is the Yahweh,
God, abbreviated to an ending of ‘ya'. The name may then mean: ‘God is my aid' for
the Amarna name. The Book of Mormon interprets Irreantum as meaning ‘many waters'. This suggest an astute
awareness that this name could be interpreted differently, so its meaning in
the way Lehi used it was provided,
showing internal awareness of a peculiar name, and so in the Book of Mormon its
meaning as applied to it's use for ‘many waters' was specifically provided. That
may have been the meaning given this ancient name in reformed Egyptian. In the Amarna text from letter No. 157, to the Egyptian King from
Aziru, (Isre'el p. 17) it is more
related to a word with similar spelling in Boghazkoy Akkadian, (Isre'el Vol. l,
p. 63) with Hittite overtones. That may be the reason the ‘interpretation' was
also provided in the Book of Mormon texts so as not to confuse it with a
similar name form northern Mesopotamia, used differently than in Egypt. All of
this is a very subtle confirmation that Joseph was reading from an ancient text
and getting the names correct under divine prompting. He could not have
conjured up out of thin air this prefix
of ‘irr', then compound his
situation by giving it an interpretation out of line with the rules. Later on
in the Amarna text, the name irresutiya
became ireessutiia, dropping the
double consonant of ‘rr', but
picking up a double consonant of ‘ss', but retaining the same meaning. Later forms of names occur where the double
consonant of two ‘r's is reduced to
one ‘r' in the name irimaiaassa,
with the peculiar addition of two vowels and another consonant doubling of ‘ss's, which may be Egyptian. (Hess p.
90). And irsaappa which is Hurrian,
which may also be a shortened form of irsappa
from Ugarit.
(Hess pl. 90) Thus, some of the Book of Mormon names are very demanding, and definitely
suggest name histories involving a number of languages and different historical
periods of time. Thus the Book of Mormon
is being technically highly consistent,
allowing for specialized and particular knowledge only now being revealed from
the study of the ancient tests in the last three decades.
DROPPING DOUBLE CONSONANTS
Sometimes the name would change greatly when the double consonants were dropped, especially in the Assyrian formation of
abstract nouns, where ahhuta became
Ses-utta, still retaining the
meaning of ‘brotherhood', showing Assyrianisms. (Isre'el p. 63)
This also illustrates the difficulty in identifying a name because there
may exist another spelling with the same meaning. So in the search for name parallels, there
must be a simultaneous search for meanings.
In verbs you have hadaakku
meaning ‘I am glad' for the original hadaku,
or asbaaku, ‘I sit', for asbaku, where the change in doubling is
a vowel. (Isre'el p. 63) In the Amarna letters the name Addaya,
became adaya, and from a Nuzi
letter we have the name Attaaa,
attesting to a double consonant and a triple
vowel, which later became Ataaa, then
ataaaia, and finally Ataa. In Mari the spelling is close to
the Amarna aaddaa, with two double
vowels and a double consonant, which became adaa, and then adda, but
all the same name. (Hess pp. 19-21) This illustrates the challenge when hunting
for names in the ancient texts that might be similar to those in the Book of
Mormon.
In the Amarna texts there was what is called ‘The
General's Letters', which attests many
other similar spellings, which should be listed separately since they are not
attested sporadically but rather systematically." (Isre'el p. 64) But we don't have space for all of
these kinds of listings. " ...The General's letters, hence, exhibits a phonological
reality. Since similar forms showing consonant
doubling in the rest of the Amurru
texts are not confined to any other small subcorpus, we should think of the
same underlying phonological reality also for the rest of the Amurru corpus." (Isre'el p. 64)
Isre'el comments on all these forms, more than shown above,
and says they should be regarded as a feature
of the dialects which had entered into the Akkadian
spoken by scribes of Amurru,
[Amorite, or Western Semitic]. Similar
spelling occurs in Assyrian, though restricted to specific words, but it seems
to be a phonological trait specific to the area surrounding Amurru. [Western Semitic] "the
interchangeability between long vowel and consonant doubling is a common feature
sporadically attested in other Akkadian dialects too. ...[and] considered as
examples of Assyrian influence, [but] accepted because of a similar, pre-existing
phonological feature." (Isre'el p. 65) The trait was more general than
realized. Which is saying that parallels in the Book of Mormon have a strange technical
linkage to the Assyrian, Akkadian, and especially the Amurru names and naming
processes. One has only to recall that all of the Northern Tribes were in
boundary contract with the Amoritic
(Amurru) peoples and no doubt picked up a lot of their personal names, and
included them in their own name processing and genealogies, transmitting them
down through time in the Brass Plates. Further study will confirm this, because it is
a unique contribution to the analysis of Book of Mormon names and confirmation
that the Book of Mormon is an authentic compilation of ancient records with
many Onomastic levels demanding analysis.
MIMATION IN AMARNA
NAMES
Mimation is the
use of ‘-m' in some form at the
ending of a name. Most frequently found in names before 700 BC, and most often
between 2100 to 1800 BC. (Jirku quoted in
Nibley Vol. 6 p. 288), not often after that. The Jaredite names attest to the
use of mimation in a number of
names, therefore it was utilized before the flood. The Ebla
and Mari names (2400-2000 BC) also
include some mimation, so mimation is ancient. The Brass Plates may therefore have included names with
mimation because in the "Egyptian and
Hittite records it is now clear that the dialects of Palestine and Syria dropped this mimation in the first half
of the second millennium BC., and it is preserved in the Bible only in a few
pre-Hebraic words." (Nibley Vol. 6, p. 288) There is a variety of mimation suffixes found at Amarna, they include: -mi,
-ma, -me-e, --m,
and -um. (Hess p. 202) One can
check the names of the Book of Mormon and find out how many names end with
these suffixes. There are quite a
few. There are other suffixes in the Book of Mormon names
not as yet found in the Amarna Letters, but are found in other discoveries.
These are described elsewhere. (Erickson 23 Feb 2005)
NUNATION
Nunation is the use of ‘-n' in some form as the ending
of a name. Most frequently found in names after
2000 BC. "Nunation itself, however, which is extremely common in the Book of
Mormon proper names (PN) is an old-fashioned thing which in Lehi's day was a
sign of conservatism and most frequently found
among the desert people. It turns up on old Hebrew genealogies in which ‘the
nomenclature is largely un-Hebraic, with peculiar antique formations in -an, -on, and in some cases of particular Arabian origin." (Nibley Vol.
6, p. 288). There are a variety of nunation suffixes found at Amarna, they include -na,
-n, -un. (Hess p. 202) which are only a few of the many varieties in the
ancient languages.
HYPOCORISTIC SUFFIXES AT AMARNA
The use of abbreviated
elements representing God are found
in many of the Semitic Languages, and also in Amarna, they include: -ia,
-ya, -e, -a, -di, -di-ya. Like the forms of mimation and nunation,
the Amarna Letters do not have all
of the various types of hypocoristic suffixes,
but enough to confirm that the Book of Mormon properly employed such elements
in many names. (Hess p. 202)
In addition, Amarna names also have theophoric suffix elements in Personal Names, that
include -abi-, ab-, adu-, -aia, -el, -l, ili, -elima, -an, -kil, -kili, -amr, -amur, -r, -arz, abni, -ni, -lu, -beel, -ahla, -ta, -la, and others. Some of these show up as suffixes on Book of Mormon names. Prevalent in the Book of Mormon
are endings with the -i. ia, iah, the latter is very common in Book of
Mormon names. "The vast Majority of Hebrew names found at Lackish [i.e., from records contemporary with Lehi] end the same
way, indicating that -iah names were very fashionable in
Lehi's time." (Nibley Vol. 6, p. 288) The
ending -iahu is found on many Hebrew
names which "become extremely common Book of Mormon name endings -ihah." (Nibley Vol. 6, p. 289) In a future study we will discuss the ancient
discoveries at Lackish.
AMARNA PERSONAL NAMES:
The personal names in the Amarna Letters provide many
parallels to Book of Mormon names. The
names found with the same prefixes, suffixes, or other aspect of the
personal names that may relate to Book of Mormon names is provided below. This is not exhaustive. It is preliminary to
the extent that other sources of Amarna Names not now available, these when available
will permit greater detail to be added to this aspect of Book of Mormons
studies. This present discussion it to
stimulate interest and study. One must also recall the limitations of the Phoenician
and Hebrew Alphabet when making selection of name parallels, "Since the Semitic
‘L' must always be rendered as ‘r' in Egyptian (which has no L), Helaman would in ‘un-reformed Egyptian'
necessarily appear as the typically Egyptian Heramon." (Nibley Vol. 6, p. 287)
Also see Erickson 18 May 2005.
AHA
The prefix ‘Ah', means brother. (Hess p. 22) The
name Aha (Alma
16:5) and Ahah (Ether 1:9, Alma 16:4-8), found in
the Book of Mormon also means brother. In the Tanakh, the spelling may include Aha, Ahb, Ahi, (its most frequent
form), Aho, Ahu. (Mendel pp.
29, 45) If the vowel is followed by a ‘z'
or two ‘zz's', the ‘Ah' prefix
will mean something different. (Mendal p. 45) Ahah
was the 40th descendent of Jared. This suggests that forms or prefix elements of the name were
obtained from the Jaredite records. However, ‘Ah', is very common in ancient Semitic languages. "In certain
common Semitic, predominantly logographically written name elements (ab- ‘father', ‘ah-‘ brother,' ‘il-
‘god'), an artificial distinction has been made between West Semitic and
Akkadian items in rendering the former systematically as Abi, Ahi, and il and then later as abu, ahu, and ilu. This convention does not imply that the
relevant elements were necessary so realized (readings ab, aba, abi, bi, ah, abh, ahi, ha, hi, il and ili are also
possible in both West Semitic and Akkadian names) but simply serves to bring
order to the chaos of variants and to make finding the appropriate entries
easier. (Radner p. xxiii) The exact
match to the Book of Moron usage is found in Aha (the ‘a' being a
hypocoristica) based on West Semitic, ‘ah'
or Akkadian ‘ahu'. (Radner p.
56) Thus, the ‘Ahu' forming the Amarna Letters is ancient Akkadian, and the Aha in
the Book of Mormon, Jaredite records, is West Semitic, but both mean the same: brother,
and both are ancient. The form Aha,
as used in the Book of Mormon, is also found in the Tablets of Mari. (Hess p.
22, Erickson 29 June 2005) Nibley has identified an Egyptian general who
bestowed on his son the name Aha, meaning
‘warrior', a name borne by the legendary first hero king of Egypt. (Nibley Vol. 6, p. 286)
AMARON
In the name Amoron,
(Omni 1:3) the interest is in the prefix ‘Ama'.
It is also the prefix in the
names: Amaleki, Amalekite, Amalickiah, Amalickiahite, these last four are all
variations of Amaleki, just with
different suffixes, all used
correctly in different parts of the Book of Mormon. No one ever said Joseph
Smith had a chart to keep the names correct and to refer back as to how he used
the names from time to time. Another prefix
in Amaron, is the element Amar, meaning ‘chosen', (Akkadian, Radner p. 98) found in the Amarna
Letters, where it seems to mean with the hypocoristicon suffix ‘a',
‘chosen of God', which may have also been the name given for the tribe
of Bedouin, known as the Beni Amran, who had set up an encampment on the east bank
of the River, "two centuries [and a half] ago, on the edge of a great dry
circle entirely occupied by a city which had been razed to the ground...Amarna is
much more than an unparalleled site for excavation." (Posener p. 7) These two prefixes are discussed in more detail in Erickson August 2005. The Am, (Radner p. 97) Ama, and Amar, prefixes are common in Egyptian, (Hess
p. 28) quite often in the use of the Egyptian God Amon. The prefix of Ama is also well known in Iranian.
(Radner p. 97) there the meaning is ‘attaching force'. There are many pages of names with the Am prefix.
(Radner pp. 97-102) There are eighteen
names with the ‘Am' prefix in the
Book of Mormon. How did Joseph keep them all correct and straight?
AMGID
"Amgid was a Jaredite King (Ether 10:32) who reigned at a
time when the Jaredite kingdom was divided. After many years of fighting with
his rival, King Com, Amgid was deposed, and Com gained ‘power over the
remainder of the Kingdom'." (Largey p.
46) There are three elements in this
name, used at different times in processing names, they include Am, Amg, and the name itself Amgid.
The last two can be compared with Amga of Anatolian origin. (Radner p. 101)
AMMON
Ammon (2 Nephi
21:14) is an important character, one of the sons of Mosiah. In his name there
is the double consonant discussed above, in this case, ‘mm'. In the Amarna Letters,
the prefix Amm appears in two names,
Ammiistamri, (Hess p. 189) and Ammunira. Both of these names are from the Ugarit area. The first is the name of a King of Ugarit,
and the second is the name of a leader of Beirut.
(Hess pp. 31-33) The prefix Amm
means ‘paternal uncle'. There are many names having this prefix in the
Neo-Assyrian Empire. (Radner pp. 103-106)
There are six names with this prefix
in the Book of Mormon list, Ammon, Ammonite, Ammonihah, Ammonihahite,
Ammoron, all derived from Ammon,
with modifying suffixes. As discussed in this series, the Amm prefix is also found in Egyptian names.
ANI-ANTI
Ani-anti was a Lamanite
village (Alma
21:11). The prefix Ani in West Semitic seems to mean ‘fastidious', (Radner p. 111) but
may have been used differently in the Book of Mormon. In the Amarna letters the name anati, the prefix ‘an' should be
read as ‘an', perhaps Akkadian for
‘to, for'. In Akkadian the name anuia has "A
hypocoristic suffix with a
diminutive sense...although rare in Akkadian Personal Names, it appears
frequently in Amorite (Western Semitic) Personal Names." (Hess p. 201) So the prefix
‘ani' is found as West Semitic
elements in West Semitic Personal Names. (Hess p. 200)
AMNOR-AMNIHU-AMNIGADDAH
Amnor is named
along with three others in Alma 2:22, it is also listed as an amount of Silver,
the amnor, in Alma 11:6, and an amnor of silver was as great as two
senums. (Alma
11:11) The prefix of interest is ‘Amn'
. This prefix found in the three Book of Mormon names as shown. In the
Amarna Letters there is found the name Ammunira.
Eleven variations of this name is given (Hess p. 32) only one has the ‘Amn' prefix, Amnr, an
Ugaritic name. (Hess p. 33) "Although there are different forms of ending
for this Personal Name, the differences do not reflect case vowels. Rather,
they suggest differences in style and origin." (Hess p. 32) Another
name in the Amarna Letters is amurbaluk/haddu.
(Hess p. 33) In this instance the name
is West Semitic. "Depending upon how the
verbal element is understood...Amur
reflect the verbal root ‘[a]mr',
which can carry the meaning ‘to see' ‘to speak'". (Hess p. 33)
"The language represented by this Personal Name, Ammunira, is a nominal sentence name, composed of a DN (God name)
followed by a predicate (nwr meaning
‘light, fire') describing an attribute of the DN [God name, meaning]: ‘ammu
is the light.'. In Ugarit the name becomes amnr [which would read the same as Amnor and Amnihu] with the GN [God
name] appended as a suffix, meaning: ‘amnr is the light'". (Hess p. 33) The ‘r'
appended on a name generally means ‘sees', such as has the discussion of
the name Coriantimur, which means ‘Corian
has seen or does see God'. (Erickson, 23 Feb) The Ugarit name is the closest
comparison to the Book of Moron names, Ugarit was a huge commerce center just
north of the northern boundaries of the Ten Tribes, which they may have very
well utilized, picking up on the Ugaritic usage of this as well as many other names.
NIMRAH
Nimrah is a Jaredite name found in Ether 9:8-9. The prefix ‘Nim' appears in the name nimuiutriia,
with perhaps Egyptian connections. (Hess p. 118) The ‘Nim'
is a GN, [Gods name] and that Amarna name would read ‘God is truth, rightness,
justice'." (Hess p. 118) The short two Book of Mormon names may mean simply ‘Nim is God' or ‘God is God'. In the
Tanakh there are two names with this prefix,
Nimrod, (the son of Cush, grandson
of Ham), and of uncertain meaning, and Nimshi. Nimshi
was the father of Jehu, the commander of King Joram's army who seized the
throne of Israel.
(Mendel p. 409)
PAHORAN
Pahoran was the chief judge of the Nephites about 68 BC. (Alma 50:40) He was the
father of many sons and died about 52 BC. (Hel l:2-4) In the Amarna Letters,
the name Pahanate contains the
essential consonant prefix ‘ph', in the Book of Mormon, Pahoran has the prefix Paho, little different than the Paha in the name Pahanate. Some six name variations with this prefix
occur in the Amarna Personal Name list (Hess p. 121) the general meaning may be
rendered ‘the servant of God' which Pahoran certainly was. (Hess p. 122) Another name in the Amarna Letters is Puhuru, a variant spelling of this name
in ancient Emar is Pahura, and only
requires the abbreviated suffix for
god, a nunation or ‘n' ending. to be
nearly a match for the Book of Mormon name.
The Pahanate variation given
by Hess is interesting. "The language
represented by this PN (personal name) is Egyptian." (Hess p 122) The prefix paha means ‘the servant' the suffix
is a hypocoristica for God. The suffix
‘ran' in Pahoran, is found in the Nineveh
tablets as [as a prefix] (ranquira) and in Babylonian names such
as ‘ranu', (Baker p. 1032) from
tablets from Nineveh
and in ancient Nuzi as Pahuur. (Hess
p. 130) The name is not found in the Hebrew Tanakh. Most likely the name came from Lehi's
Egyptian or Phonecian connections.
RABBANAH
This name is interpreted in Alma 18:13 to mean ‘powerful or great king',
referring to Ammon who was thought
of as being the Great Spirit. The New Testament usage of a
similar prefix found in the name is Rabboni. (John 20:16) "The title is related
to ancient Near Eastern cognates designating ‘greatness'." (Largey p. 672) In the Amarna Letters, two names have this prefix, rabiilu, meaning El' god is
great/my healer (Hess p. 130), and rabusiidqi,
with the West Semitic logogram representing ‘rby' meaning ‘great'. (Hess p.
131) Both of these names convey the significant meaning as given in the Book of
Mormon, to be ‘powerful or great king'. This name has been discussed in detail.
(Erickson The Governor's Archive Aug 2005)
SAM
Sam was the third son of Lehi and older brother of Nephi. (l
Ne. 2:17) The name Sam is also a prefix in two other names in the Book
of Mormon, both of them are Biblical: Samuel and Samaria. In the Tanakh there are four names
with the prefix, Samlah, Samson, Samuel, and Samgar-Nebo. (Mendel pp. 450-453) The name has been found in ancient Tablets
from various ancient discoveries, (Baker pp. 1081-1087) and the name has been
discussed in this series. (Erickson Aug 2005) . In the Amarna Letters the prefix Sam occurs in the name samuhadda.
(Hess p. 140) The prefix in West
Semitic, Akkadian, means ‘name, son, posterity' as the first element in the
name samuhadda. Samuhadda means
‘Posterity of Haddu'. (Hess p. 141) In
the West Semitic language the name sama-eda, the prefix is derived from the roots ‘sm' meaning ‘name' and ‘yd'
meaning ‘to know', or to ‘hear', other names often use the meaning ‘heard' for
the prefix. (Baker p. 1081) In the West Semitic name Sama'-il, the name means
‘God has heard', where the ‘-il' is
the abbreviation for Elohim, or God.
(Baker p. 1081) There are many names
with this prefix. (Baker pp.
1081-1087) In the Amarna Letters, there is an Ugarit name, samulanuim, An Amorite name, samuu,
(nearly a match for Sam) and a Hebrew name Samuel,
(Hess p. 141) which is Samuel in the Bible.
Given that the Book of Mormon is altered Hebrew written in reformed
Egyptian, the name Sam without the
hypocoristicon ending would have been used with or without the endings.
SHUM
Shum is first mentioned in the Book of Mormon in Alma11:5 as
a gold piece, but it was also used as a name for a Valley (Moses 7:5) and a
people (Moses 7:7) during the days of Enoch, so it is an Adamic name. The Jaredites
records and the Brass Plates could have transmitted this name into the Western Hemisphere. In the Amarna Letters Shum, like Sam, can mean "a name' or ‘son, posterity', which is also the
meaning of Shem ‘shm', in the Tanakh. (Mendel p.
492) Like Sam, it is ancient, Adamic
in origin. This name has been discussed in more detail in this series.
(Erickson, 15 Apr 2005) Joseph Smith's use
of the various forms and elements of the Semitic names is internally consistant and correct.
In letter No. 209, of the Amarna Letters, the prefix ‘sum',
sm, is identified specifically. (Hess p. 181)
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