Today, the final phase of the ancient Egyptian language is spoken by only a few in Egypt, and strictly within the community of the Coptic Orthodox Church. In fact, much of the vocabulary we now associate with ancient Egypt actually came to us from non-Egyptian languages, such as cartouche from French, pyramid from Greek, and mastaba from Arabic.

What you might not know is that English-speakers use a number of words in everyday speech that originated in ancient Egypt thousands of years ago, having traveled through time as ‘loan words’ via other language before reaching ours. This week the Nile Scribes explore the origins of five ancient Egyptian words that can still be found in use today in modern English.

1. Adobe

You might be most familiar with this word on account of the popular software programs like Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Illustrator, but our American readers will likely associate ‘adobe’ with the earth-walled structures found in the American southwest, Mexico, and parts of South America. However, the word can be traced from Spanish back to the Middle Egyptian word dbt meaning “brick.”

The Egyptian word dbt became db3 and was carried over into the Coptic language as ⲦⲰⲂ meaning “mud brick.” From Coptic the word entered the Arabic language as aṭ-ṭūb – still used in Arabic-speaking countries for sun-dried bricks. There are a number of Arabic loan words in the Spanish language, ‘adobe’ being one of them, as a result of the Berber (or Moorish) conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century AD. The Arabic word aṭ-ṭūb travelled to Spain and, ultimately, crossed the ocean to the New World with the Spanish explorers as ‘adobe’. Today it is still used to describe sun-dried brick or plaster constructions made of earth.

2. Barge

A barge is a flat-bottomed freight or transport vessel that was a common sight on the Nile in ancient Egypt. Egyptian texts record the building of such barges in order to transport materials for massive building projects around the country. In some New Kingdom sources, a certain kind of freight vessel used on the Mediterranean and Red Seas was called a br.

The term br continues to appear frequently in Ptolemaic and Roman times and is mentioned in Herodotus’ Histories as βᾶρις (pronounced baris). Herodotus described the baris as a boat commonly used on the Nile, although scholars have suggested that these types of ships were sea-going as well. Over time, baris was adopted into Latin as baris or barca and from there it made its way to us as ‘barge’ through the Old French barge or barga.

3. Ebony

In many Egyptian texts, ebony appears as one of the many exotic products that were imported to Egypt from abroad. Ebony is a beautiful African wood that is dark black in colour, or else displaying rich, dark-brown hues. There are mentions of ebony as early as the Early Dynastic Period and the Egyptians likely acquired this fine wood from lands to the south of Egypt, including Punt. The ancient Egyptians called this dark brown wood hbny, and the word’s etymology can be traced down to our own usage today.

Our word for ‘ebony’ is derived from Middle English hebeny, which in turn comes from Latin hebeninus meaning “of the ebony tree.” The Latin term likely goes back to the ancient Greek ἐβένινος (ebeninos) which is translated as “made of ebony”, which comes from the Egyptian hbny. Scholars have posited that the Egyptian word itself might have been a loan word from another African language further south of Egypt.

4. Gum

Among the lengthy list of goods brought back from the land of Punt (modern-day Eritrea and Ethiopia) by Hatshepsut’s famous expedition was something the Egyptians called qmyt. This was a fragrant gum-resin that was harvested from myrrh trees. The Egyptians used frankincense and myrrh extensively during temple and funerary rituals to purify the air or the mummified body of the deceased, as well as to soothe the gods.

The Egyptian word qmyt passed into the Coptic language as ⲔⲞⲘⲒ and from there it was adopted into Greek usage as Κομμι, or kommi, for the gum-resin produced by some trees. Our own language inherited the word ‘gum’ via the Latin gummi which had been adopted from the Greek word.

5. Ivory

Ivory, from both elephant and hippopotami, is a fine-grained, white material that was used by the Egyptians for delicate sculptures as early as the fourth millennium BC. The African elephant, which could still be found living in Egypt in prehistoric times, became extinct in Egypt by the Early Dynastic Period. Afterward, ivory was acquired through trade with cultures south of Egypt. For an example of the wealth of goods brought back into Egypt from Nubia, modern-day Sudan, we can turn to the autobiography of Harkhuf inscribed in his tomb at Aswan. Harkhuf was an official who lived during the Sixth Dynasty and served under several kings, including Pepy II, leading several expeditions into Nubia. Harkhuf records that:

“It was with 300 donkeys laden with incense, ebony, oil, aromatics, panther skins, ivory carvings, boomerangs, and all good products that I returned.” (2)

In terms of etymology, ‘ivory’ seems to have come into the English language from Old French yvoire, which in turn goes back to the Italian word avorio. These words have their origins in the Latin eboreus (made of ivory), which itself was derived from the Coptic ⲈⲂⲞⲚ. Written as 3bw (pronounced abu) in ancient Egyptian, the word shows a close connection to the Egyptian word for elephant:

Honourable Mention: Egypt

It should come as no surprise that our word for Egypt also came from the ancient Egyptians themselves! We inherited the name for Egypt in the English-speaking world from the Latin Aegyptus, which in turn came from the Greek: Αἴγυπτος (Aegyptos). When Greek was commonly spoken in parts of ancient Egypt, they adopted the Egyptian name for Memphis (the traditional capital of ancient Egypt) ḥwt-k3-ptḥ, which means “the Temple of the Soul of Ptah,” as the name for all of Egypt.

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