Feb.6] SOCIETY'OF BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY. [1894.
A SEMITIC LOAN-WORD IN EGYPTIAN.By VV. Max Muller.Mr. Griffith has found a new Egyptianword~w«hnpandcom
paredit with the root Wfl(Proc.Soc. Bibl. Arch.,93, 310). The
comparison is very successful, onlyI should give a modified ex
planation.
Theoriginal meaningof the root i— fti*."to turn (oneself)"is,
in the northern Semitic languages,specialized to " to turn oneself
aivayfromsomething"and in Hebrew is furthermore narrowedto
"toturn awayfrom a standard, a law," i.e., [1] from Godand
morality(in general), [2] from truth (in particular)." Thus ppn
means "tobecome or be corrupt, perverted"(Jer. xxiii,11, etc.),
Hiphil: "to corrupt, perverta person formerlygood"(Dan.xi, 32),
"to pollute a thing formerlyclean" (Jer. iii, 1, etc.). Whileexamin
ing the Biblicalpassages with the Concordance, I observe that
the second meaningof the root is more recent. The adjective
"perverted" has, especially in all earlier passages, the general
meaning"impious,wicked,"whichthe LXX aptly renders aae/Si}?,
irapAvofiot,and Fuerst(Concordance)oughtto have seenthatthe
latersense" hypocrite, simulator" (given sub e) does not fit ; com
pareeven Psalmxxxv,16, Prov. xi, 9. But some passages in the
bookof Job with its peculiar style(6thcentury)showthis aramaizing
limitationof sense (xv,34;xxxiv,30; possiblyalsoxxxvi, 13);the
LXX here renders twice vnoKfiiTiji, and post-Christian Hebrew
knows onlythe sense"inwardly corrupted, false, hypocrite"for
Fpn. Applied to things thiswould be "false" in opposition to
"genuine."
Thismustbe the sense of the word hnp where it occurs on the
Egyptianweights. The lighterstandards(\ or \ of the full weight)
are legitimate, as the official inscriptionshows,but nevertheless their
inferiority to the old-fashioned, sacred, full weight is expressed.
Mostlikely, at the time whenthe new standardswerefirst intro
duced,theymetwithopposition fromthe government or the public
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