Vol. I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

-^rarely
1 '
and fl
Ixiv Introduction.
word for
"
"jackal written *
"^ J "^ or "
J "^ sab or sb,
and the Hebrew word for the animal is zetbh INT. But we also
find a form beginning with the , thus fl
variants of this form begin also with ,
fl
,
^ J '^ and, as several
the form that begins with
" is not a very sure ground for the statement that = t. The
z sound must have been very rare in Egypt, for most of the words
under ^ in the Coptic Dictionaries are of Greek origin ; ^umT
for ccortT (see Parthey's Vocabularium) seems to have been the
result of careless pronunciation. When the Egyptians merged the
sound of " in that of fl is not known, but the merging must
have happened long before the Christian Era began, for the Copts
represent both signs by c. And the Egyptian transcriptions of
Canaanite geographical names prove that both and fl repre-
=D and ttj. sent D and ttf. In their transliterations of the signs and
the German Egyptologists distinguish by s and fl by /, but in
this Dictionary I have followed the example of Birch and Brugsch
and Maspero, and regarded them as having practically one and the
same sound. Nevertheless, remembering the large number of
words that begin with the signs and P , and with the view of
simplifying the task of the searcher who may use this Dictionary,
I have printed all the words beginning with in one section,
and all those beginning with fl in the section following.
A By transliterating A by q, a letter with a diacritical point (k)
n _ has been got rid of and, though the transliterating of S by g
does not seem quite satisfactory, I have followed the example
o and |=t. of the older Egyptologists in this particular. 1 The signs c, and
s=a = th. \ are both transliterated by t, and by using th for s=s the Greek
9 and a letter with a line under it .(/) are eliminated. In the
case of c^s I have retained the transliteration / and have not
adopted d by which it is now sometimes transliterated. Maspero
has shown that in Semitic geographical names in the XVIIIth
dynasty = often represents the Hebrew "T, e.g.,
Heb. BTTj?, and (1(1 ""J\ ^, ]T\1,
that T is represented in Egyptian by |,
in fl
c ;r
but other names show
t, e.g.,
| (j jjj \v
Heb. ptoOT. At a later period c=3 is transliterated by to, e.g.,
1 In one Coptic word, KA.cy, "reed," the K represents Z5, for the hiero-
*ft 1 V
glyphic form is Q \\oa3 vX see ; Erman, Aegyptisches Glossar, p. 139,
_o!Si. N i i i
and Maspero, Introduction, p. 39.