by
Damien F.
Mackey
This short Part Two is not primarily about
Senenmut.
It is really about the close similarity
between ancient Egyptian and Nahuatl.
Nahuatl appears to add the letter “l” which
is uncommon in Egyptian, as noted in Part One in relation to the Egyptian,
“Senenmut”, representing Hebrew “Shelomith” (or Solomon).
“One very
obvious characteristic of the nahuatl language is the extensive use of
the letter "l" in most of the words, either as ending
to the words or juxtaposed to consonants and vowels within the words. One of
the very apparent characteristics of the ancient Egyptian language is the
almost total absence of the use of the letter "l"
within most of its word-concepts. The letter "l"
appears as an ending of words only a handful of times in E.A. Wallis Budge's
work, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary. It would appear that this
very dissimilar characteristic between these two languages would discourage
anyone from considering a comparative analysis of possible linguistic
correspondence between these two very apparently distinct idioms”.
Thus
writes Charles William Johnson, in his fascinating article:
Linguistic Correspondence:
Nahuatl and Ancient Egyptian
Nahuatl and Ancient Egyptian
According
to Johnson:
In our more detailed
analyses of the possible correspondence among words of the ancient Egyptian
language and nahuatland maya, we have seen that some
word-concepts are almost exactly the same in phonetic values. Furthermore, the maya
glyphs and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs share extremely common designs in
similar/same word-concepts.
Today, the idea of
linguistic correspondence among the Indo-European languages is a widespread
fact. From the still unknown Indo-European mother language it is thought came
Sanskrit (and the contemporary languages of Pakistan and India); Persian; and
Greek, Latin (and many contemporary European languages). The correspondence of
similar/same words among the Latin languages is quite visible, with Spanish
words, for example, resembling those of French, Italian and Portuguese. English
resembles the Teutonic ones, such as, German, Dutch and the Scandinavian
languages.
On the other hand, no
apparent linguistic correspondence has been observed between ancient Egyptian
and languages such as nahuatl or maya, at least to any
significant scholarly degree. In the aforementioned essay, we have examined
numerous correspondences between word-concepts (and some glyphs) between the
ancient Egyptian language and the maya system. The word for day name in maya
is ahau, which means place or time in ancient Egyptian. Hom is
ballcourt in maya; hem means little ball in ancient Egyptian. Ik
means air in maya ; to suspend in the air is ikh in ancient
Egyptian. Nichim signifies flower in maya; nehem means bud,
flower in ancient Egyptian. And so on, for hundreds of word-concepts that we
have examined in the comparison of these two languages.
When similar kinds of
linguistic correspondences were perceived by William Jones, in the latter part
of the eighteenth century, between Sanskrit and other languages, such examples
were sufficient to convince scholars that all of those languages probably came
from a mother tongue, the Indo-European language. Today, when linguistic
correspondence is observed between the ancient Mesoamerican languages and
ancient Egyptian, scholars are unwilling or hesitant to accept the idea that
the same laws of linguistics may apply. The reason for this is quite simple:
there is no historical basis for considering the possibility that the peoples
of these different languages had any physical contact among themselves.
Physical contact among the peoples who descended from the Indo-European family
is established by historical data. There is no obvious historical data to think
that the peoples of ancient Mesoamerica and the peoples of ancient Egypt ever
met or came into physical contact with one another.
Nevertheless,
historical data aside for the moment, let us examine some of the obvious
examples of linguistic correspondence between nahuatl and the ancient
Egyptian language.
One very obvious
characteristic of the nahuatl language is the extensive use of the
letter "l" in most of the words, either as ending to
the words or juxtaposed to consonants and vowels within the words. One of the
very apparent characteristics of the ancient Egyptian language is the almost
total absence of the use of the letter "l" within most
of its word-concepts. The letter "l" appears as an
ending of words only a handful of times in E.A. Wallis Budge's work, An
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary. It would appear that this very dissimilar
characteristic between these two languages would discourage anyone from
considering a comparative analysis of possible linguistic correspondence
between these two very apparently distinct idioms.
However, as we
eliminate the letter "l" from the nahuatl words,
the remaining phonemes (listed in brackets) resemble the phonemes and morphemes
of ancient Egyptian in many cases. Let us offer only a few of such examples to
consider a possible linguistic correspondence between these two fascinating
systems of human speech.
Nahuatl
|
Egyptian
|
|||
canoe
|
ACAL [aca-]
|
AQAI
|
boat (page
139b from Budge's work cited above)
|
|
reed
|
ACATL[acat-]
|
AQ
AKHAH-T |
reed (139b)
reed (8a) |
|
a well
|
AMELLI [ame-i]
|
AMAM
|
place with water in
them, wells (121b)
|
|
house
|
CALLI [ca-i]
|
KA
|
house (783a)
|
|
serpent
...
|
COATL [coat-]
....
...
|
KHUT
...
...
|
snake (30b)
....
...
|
Linguistic
correspondence between nahuatl and ancient Egyptian appears to represent
a smoking gun; that is, a trace of evidence that these two peoples did enjoy
some kind of contact between themselves ages ago. The fact that we have no real
evidence of said contact, or that we have been unable to find any such
evidence, should not serve as the basis for denying the possibility of that
contact. To attribute all of these similarities in sound, symbol and meaning to
mere happenstance seems to be a very unscientific way of resolving an annoying
issue. To admit the possibility of physical contact between these cultures has
implications for our own interpretation of history and the aspect of
technological development of our societies. Such fears are unfounded, given the
already obvious fact that our technical know-how could probably not reproduce
and build something as majestic as the Great Pyramid.
[End of quote]
It is probably as a
result of the evolutionary view of things - according to which human beings
sprang up from lower animal forms, all in their various places - that
anthropologists and historians are unable to make the obvious connections
between cultures of similar types, that shared language characteristics,
pyramid building technology, and hieroglyphics, to name just a few common
features.
The wise King
Solomon’s (Senenmut’s?) view of human origins was quite different from this,
and far more enlightened, I believe:
“For God created man to be immortal,
and made him to be an image
of his own eternity.”
Wisdom of Solomon 2:23
