Vol. I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

Introduction.
In the transliterations of the Egyptian words in this Die- Difficulties of
tionary, I have followed the order of the letters of the Egyptian
words, but I cannot think that these transliterations always
represent the true pronunciation
aaam '
Q"|S^. t^^I> a plant, it is impossible
Ivii
of the words. Thus in the word
to think that the
Egyptians took the trouble to pronounce two long vowels having
exactly the same sound and to give ^K\ its value, always supposing
it had a phonetic value in this word. The analogies in Coptic
suggest that we should read the word simply am, nevertheless
the scribe wrote "
tav- Again in the word Nenui[t] or
' Nui[t] rv
' -^0_yOu^
n wwv*
-f- en f^ > + n + nu O, i.e., four n sounds that
;
the primeval watery mass, we have
any Egyptian ever took the trouble to pronounce
all of them
in this word is inconceivable. It is possible that the scribe
wished the reader to understand that one n had to be pronounced
like the Spanish n or the Amharic ^, and wrote n four times
to make certain that he did so. In many
transliterations of
Egyptian words I have added the letter e, not because I think Addition of
it represents the vowel which the Egyptians used in these
places, but merely to make the words pronounceable and therefore
easy to remember. Thus the word 5 ^&, or 8 5 &, is
A A f^ \ A A I ri
transliterated hes by me, but the Coptic equivalent /c shows
that the vowel sound between the two consonants was not an e,
but something like an o. On the other hand in 8 5 H "to
;
A A I
that in this
submerge," the Coptic equivalent , or
i pa n
jfl' "sweet," "pleasant," the
the letter e '
Coptic equivalent itoirTJUL suggests the first vowel sound in the Evidence of
word was u or o and the second that of some kind of e or a.
Without vowels of some kind how can the name of the god
be pronounced ? In transliterating ~ I have written en or ne,
and there is good authority for doing so, namely the most ancient
Coptic papyrus Codex of the Book of Deuteronomy and the Acts
of the Apostles. 1 Thus in &H naei HTeKAiutT&ijL&A.X (Deut. 13, 10)
the line over the Hs and the JJL proves that the reader had to
1 Brit. Mus. MS. Oriental No. 7594. It was written not later than the
middle of the fourth century of our Era. See my Coptic Biblical Texts in the
Dialect of Upper Egypt. London, 1912. 8vo.