s***@yahoo.co.uk
2009-03-22 16:28:52 UTC
I'm interested in Arabic and Ancient Egyptian words for "stallion".
ARABIC
I'm looking for an Arabic word meaning "stallion". I can find several
words for "horse": حصان _HiSaan_, خيل _xayl_, _faras_. But when I
search online Arabic dictionaries for "stallion" I generally get these
two translations:
فحل الخيل _faHl al-xayl_ = "male of the horse"
حصان غير مخصي _HiSaan Gayr maxSii_ = "horse except gelding"
These look like descriptions of a stallion, rather than words people
would use in everyday speech. Is there any word in Arabic which on its
own means "stallion"?
Suppose one Arab wanted to say to another, "Guess what I bought today?
A stallion!" The listener doesn't realise that the speaker is talking
about horses until he uses this word. Thus the word needs to convey
that the thing bought is both a horse and a male. What would be
natural usage?
Two Semitic roots for "horse" are _suus-_ and _?br-_ (Hebrew _suus_
and _'abbiir_, both occurring in Judges 5:22). Am I right that these
roots have not survived into Arabic?
EGYPTIAN
I'm interested in finding a word in New Kingdom Egyptian meaning
"stallion", as distinct from merely "horse". I gather that Egypt
didn't know horses until the Second Intermediate Period, when they
were introduced with names loaned from Semitic.
I've found two words. The first seems to be a loan from Semitic _sus_
or _susim_. But what forms are attested in Egyptian texts? Online
Egyptian glossaries I've found generally list <ssmt>, which they
vocalise _sesmet_. This sounds feminine: does it mean a female horse
specifically?
Is the words ever attested in Egyptian as <ssm> without a feminine
ending? Googling, I found only one claim of this (as masc dual <ssm-
wy>), which was just somebody posting in a forum:
http://forums.atlantisrising.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000883.html
I found an academic paper reading: "the ancient Egyptian word for
horse, susim, indicates that the animal arrived from Semitic-speaking
parts". Source: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/history_in_africa/v032/32.1alpern.html
(footnote 52).
To my mind the text above implies that the word has been attested in
Egyptian as <swsym> or the like. Does any such attestation occur, or
the quotation above a distortion?
Does the word ever occur with an indication of the vowel in the first
syllable, eg. as <sws>?
The other word I've seen generally seems to be written <ibr> in
English. I haven't been able to find it in hieroglyphs. Is this <jbr>,
ie. reed-leaf foot mouth?
Does either word, or any other, mean "stallion" or "male horse"
specifically?
ARABIC
I'm looking for an Arabic word meaning "stallion". I can find several
words for "horse": حصان _HiSaan_, خيل _xayl_, _faras_. But when I
search online Arabic dictionaries for "stallion" I generally get these
two translations:
فحل الخيل _faHl al-xayl_ = "male of the horse"
حصان غير مخصي _HiSaan Gayr maxSii_ = "horse except gelding"
These look like descriptions of a stallion, rather than words people
would use in everyday speech. Is there any word in Arabic which on its
own means "stallion"?
Suppose one Arab wanted to say to another, "Guess what I bought today?
A stallion!" The listener doesn't realise that the speaker is talking
about horses until he uses this word. Thus the word needs to convey
that the thing bought is both a horse and a male. What would be
natural usage?
Two Semitic roots for "horse" are _suus-_ and _?br-_ (Hebrew _suus_
and _'abbiir_, both occurring in Judges 5:22). Am I right that these
roots have not survived into Arabic?
EGYPTIAN
I'm interested in finding a word in New Kingdom Egyptian meaning
"stallion", as distinct from merely "horse". I gather that Egypt
didn't know horses until the Second Intermediate Period, when they
were introduced with names loaned from Semitic.
I've found two words. The first seems to be a loan from Semitic _sus_
or _susim_. But what forms are attested in Egyptian texts? Online
Egyptian glossaries I've found generally list <ssmt>, which they
vocalise _sesmet_. This sounds feminine: does it mean a female horse
specifically?
Is the words ever attested in Egyptian as <ssm> without a feminine
ending? Googling, I found only one claim of this (as masc dual <ssm-
wy>), which was just somebody posting in a forum:
http://forums.atlantisrising.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000883.html
I found an academic paper reading: "the ancient Egyptian word for
horse, susim, indicates that the animal arrived from Semitic-speaking
parts". Source: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/history_in_africa/v032/32.1alpern.html
(footnote 52).
To my mind the text above implies that the word has been attested in
Egyptian as <swsym> or the like. Does any such attestation occur, or
the quotation above a distortion?
Does the word ever occur with an indication of the vowel in the first
syllable, eg. as <sws>?
The other word I've seen generally seems to be written <ibr> in
English. I haven't been able to find it in hieroglyphs. Is this <jbr>,
ie. reed-leaf foot mouth?
Does either word, or any other, mean "stallion" or "male horse"
specifically?