Sublimis curru verrit Pavor; ipse gubernat, Ipse auriga sedens, currus; et naribus horret Per nemora, et valles, Siculæque per ardua terræ." REMARKS On Sir W. Drummond's Version of some Egyptian Names in the Old Testament. SIR, NO. 11. TO THE EDITOR OF THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL. I Shall now add some further remarks, which tend to confirm the meaning of No-Ammon, as mentioned in my last, and to which M. Akerblad has shown me the road in his Lettre sur l'Inscription de Rosette; yet has himself turned at last, as I conceive, into a wrong bye-road. It must be ever borne in mind, that the Coptic language abounds in a superfluity of that part of speech, called Articles, as also does Greek, as well as English and French, yet not in so great a degree as the Coptic; for although in all four languages, articles are often in use when unnecessary and superfluous, yet the Coptic has also this peculiarity, that the article often follows the noun instead of preceding it, and it has also sometimes two articles, one preceding, and a second article inserted after the same noun. Through this excess it has sometimes happened, that an article employed in the original Egyptian tongue has so adhered to the noun through long usage, as at last in the modern Coptic, corrupted and deduced from the ancient Egyptian tongue, the annexed article has become an integral part of the noun itself; so that it must be separated again, in order to ascertain what the noun was in its original state. This seems to have been actually the case with respect to the name of God, as employed in the Coptic translation of Scripture, which is every where Noute, or Ph'noute, the Ph' being an aspirated Pi, having the vowel omitted, and being the article to masculine nouns, signifying always the, while Te is the feminine article, but instead of preceding, is as often placed after the noun, as Ph' is before it sometimes, however, Te precedes the noun, and sometimes it both precedes and follows the noun, of which I will give the following example from Woide's Coptic Lexicon, in order that readers may be thoroughly sensible of the superfluous use of articles in that language, and the consequent propriety of sometimes withdrawing the articles, which may happen to adhere to ancient Egyptian words, but to which the Copts (not reflecting that the noun had already an article to attend it) have superadded a second article. The very same duplication of an article has sometimes happened in French and English, in words borrowed from Arabic; thus al, in alcoran, is the Arabic article the, to which in French, as well as English, is superadded a second article, The alcoran, L'alcoran, and al thus becomes an integral part of the noun; the same in Alchymy, Algebra, &c. The same has happened also to the Coptic language after it became intermixed with Greek, Latin, and Arabic words, by Egypt being successively conquered by the Greeks, Romans, and Arabians, which rendered the original Egyptian as much a dead language in later ages, as Arabic is in England and France. Now Woidé gives these examples-" Pi, articulus masculinus ut i Græcorum, (p. 76)-Te articulus fœmininus; postponitur foemininis ut Pe masculinis (103):" sometimes, however, te, the, precedes as well as follows, as here, ne t'phro te, erat hyems, it was the winter, Johan. x. 22. (59) Phro is winter, ne is was. So also pi precedes, and pe in some cases follows, as en l'arche ne p'sachi pe, in principio erat verbum, Joh. i. 1. In t'arche the te adheres to arche, principium, the beginning; and in p’sachi the P is pi, adhering to sachi, verbum, and yet followed by pe, the, again. Ti likewise, another article for masculine nouns, sometimes precedes and sometimes follows, (179, 198.) It was necessary to give these examples, that readers may see, that in modern Coptic it is difficult to distinguish an article adhering to a noun from an integral part of the noun itself; much more difficult then it must be to make that distinction in ancient and original Egyptian words, whenever pi or pe, ti or te, either begin or terminate those words. The case is the same with respect to ni, ne, for ni is the article for our the, when it is joined to plurals, and when it precedes, but ne when it follows a noun; ne is, moreover, both singular and plural, for est, sunt, which again renders it difficult to distinguish the article from the auxiliary verbs est, sunt. Sometimes also han is the plural article instead of ni, and again adheres to the noun, as here, "ne hanouori gar ne, erant enim (yàp) piscatores," Matth. iv. 18. The second ne seems to be a duplication of the plural article han prefixed and adhering to ouori, piscatores, and the first ne is erant; and in such cases the second pe, te, and ne, serve, as Woidé says, for a sign, that the first ne is in the imperfect tense erant, and not the present sunt, (61.) These examples prove again how necessary it is to strip every noun of the supernumerary articles, which follow, as well as precede it, before we can discover what the original naked noun is itself. Hence noute, God, sometimes takes the masculine article pi before it, which, when aspirated, becomes phnoute, the God; at other times it takes the feminine article before it te, and becomes tnoute, Dea; but the last te may perhaps be only a duplication of the first article te, not an integral part of the original noun, which, however, through time, and our imperfect knowledge of the language, may have at length adhered to it. In the plural, noute takes han before it, and becomes hannoute, Dei; the last te in this case still remaining in the plural, whether it be masculine or feminine. But as ni is both a plural article also, and beside this the sign of the genitive case, like of the, it becomes a doubt, whether even the first n of noute be an integral part of the original noun, or be only the article ni adhering to the noun, so that n'oute may have meant originally either the gods, or, of the gods: thus ti baki n'oute might have meant the city of god, or, of the gods or goddesses. But whether the last te be an original part of Woidé gives these examples, phnoute, Deus, dialecto Saidica est pnoute, phnoute n'te ninoute is Deus deorum. Tnoute, Dea, ninoute and hannoute, Dei, vel Deæ, (Daniel ii. 11.) p. 63. The word n'te above means of the, and is a sign of the genitive case, as ni is, whether in masculines or feminines of the nominative plural; so that the above phrase means God of the Gods or the word, or an adhering article only, as the preceding n' of noute may possibly be likewise, seems a matter of doubt: so that the word, stript of this article te, behind, would thus become nou, or noo; but if stript of both articles before and behind, it would be reduced to ou, or oo. Now, that it ought to be, and was originally, destitute of both those articles, M. Akerblad has shown some material evidence to prove; for Diospolis parva is still called Hou, i. e. the town of the God, viz. Ammon, or else in the plural of the Gods, for Osiris and Isis were worshipped at Thebes as well as Ammon: but in the Rosetta stone he found the aspirate homitted, and the name reduced to ou, or oo, which, by itself, answered to Dios. Yet in some Coptic MSS. he found Diospolis with the aspirate inserted, and called hou, or hoo. It is hence presumeable then, that Thebes, the diospolis magna, was called hoo likewise, which Akerblad has indeed proved to be actually true, for in a Coptic MS. vocabulary, mention is made of a district called the nome of hoo, which was the nomus Diospolis of ancient authors, that is, the Thebaid, as it is also still called from Thebes being the metropolis of it; for most of the cities in Egypt stand on the West side of the Nile, the opposite East side being mountainous, close to the river, but Thebes was the principal city placed on the East side, except a small part of it on the West side also; hence the whole district on the East side obtained the name and contained the nome of Thebes, still called the nome of Hoo by the natives. This certainly gives strong presumption, that Thebes itself was by the natives anciently called hoo, or else oo, without the aspirate, since it was able to communicate this name to the whole district on the East side, called otherwise Thebaid; and oo appears here again just as in the native name of Diospolis parva. To this may Goddesses. This excess of articles, both before and behind, makes it very difficult therefore to decide, when te is an article or not in any particular case, if it begins or ends a word, and ne also. "Thebæ nunc Diospolis vocatur,-pars quædam in Arabiâ, ubi civitas est, pars etiam in ulteriore (ripà)." Strabo, lib. 17. 1 . ures be added another testimony from Kircher, if we could depend upon him, but he was too apt to give way to his own conject:"now he says, that he found the native name of Thebes to be Si-oout; the last part of this name resembles the name n'oute, but what Si might mean is not known, (Woidé, p. 93.). and there is another city in Egypt nearly of this name. We shall, however, find below some farther testimony to an apparent connexion between noute and noo, the native name for Diospolis. It appears then, that noute, when deprived of its subsequent article, would become noo, and in Greek might be written Nw; but the long w of the Coptic, which has the very same form as the Greek w, was apparently pronounced oo, for the Coptic' has the short o beside, and also the diphthong ou; and, moreover, the long w of Lower Egypt is often turned into oo in the dialect of Upper Egypt (p. 193.): so that hoo, or oo, seems to be the right pronunciation. Akerblad has also mentioned, that in one Coptic MS. of the national library, he found ano instead of nho; this may be the remains of the Coptic han, which before hoo would be the plural article, and thus han-noo would mean the Gods, or, of the Gods, as if more than the single Ammon were included in the name, and the same may be expressed by n'oo only, if the n be an ellipsis for ni, of, or the plural article, and not an integral part of the word. These examples show still farther the difficulty of deciding with certainty, whether n'oute was originally all one word, or has two articles adhering to it, more especially as in the beginning of Genesis, for Deus creavit terram, the Saidic dialect has up-noute instead of noute, for Deus. This practice of adding, taking away, and altering syllables and words, with ́particles annexed, augments the difficulty of finding out what the original word was in any case, or what parts of it are merely articles connected with it; what different forms the same word puts on in the different variations of it, the following farther example shows: n'hot is fides; but what a number of variations it is subject to, will be seen in the following words, all implying fidelity in some mode or other. In the scriptural translations it is sometimes found to be narte, tenarte, tennarte, enhot, venhot, senhot, tenhet, tenhot, eutenhet, patenhotou, |