Feb.6] PROCEEDINGS. [1894.andso obtained the designation "thefalseweight." Thisdesigna
tionseemsto have beenmaintainedevenafter thatopposition had
ceased.
Therootppntis preserved in the Coptic cyXoCJ"turpis, ob-
scoenus" (Peyron, 291). Now Coptic pronunciation frequently
changesrt and X before somelip-soundsbut not, as far as I know,
beforeC[. Therefore,I prefer to see here a confusion of the roots
^^(^_aL5-)"to change" (malosensu,as in Syriac) andhnf (i^JujjS)
" to pervert " caused by their similarmeaning and similarsound(at
least in the western dialectsnot distinguishing between// and h).
Sucha confusion is assumed in the Syriac dictionariessub _giK.r.
All these reasonsleadto the conclusion that cyXoCJas well as
hnp is a loan-word from the Aramaic or an aramaizing dialect.
Boththe passages for the commercial expressionhnpdatefromthe
6th century, whenthe Aramaic influenceprevailedthroughoutSyria,
andespeciallythe position of Aramaic as the language of commerce
had been alreadyestablishedfor several centuries. cyXoCJ once
mayhave been identical with hnp, but betraysthe more vulgar
pronunciation. As for its vowels the verb hlaphandnot the adjec
tiveunderlies the form. Observewith hnp the sign »-=.which,
likeDemotic£ (preserved in the old Coptic of Akhmim), expresses
a special soundfluctuantbetweens" and softer h, and is intended to
representthe Palestinian h (n) which Copticusuallychangesto cy.
I hope Semitistscan acceptmy explanation of the word hnp,
althoughthereis a gap in the argument, sincethe application of ?)2n
to things is still to be discovered in later Hebrew. However, we
knowbut little of the Semitic jargonspokenin the commercial cities
especiallyin those of Lower Egypt. Thescrapspreservedin Coptic
giveevidencethat in later timesit contained elementstakenfrom
variousSemitic dialectsand that the Egyptiansmade a kind of
" pigeon-Semitic " of it, not much superiorto the Chinese " pigeon-
English." Thesemutilationsseemto havepreventedmostEgyptolo
gistsfromseeingthe enormous numberof Semitic wordsin Coptic.
An exhaustive examination of the Coptic dictionary by Semitists
wouldyieldveryinterestingresults.
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