# Are there sounds in Ancient Egyptian that are not in Arabic and/or Farsi? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 25, 2005, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529 "2005-01-25T03:09:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![WeRSauron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f19dbf/32.png) [@WeRSauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WeRSauron)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/1 "2005-01-25T03:09:03Z")
In _The Holy Books of Thelema_, by Aleister Crowley (natch) and edited by the late Frater Superior of the US OTO, Hymenaeus Alpha 777, there is a break-down of the hieroglyphics of the so-called Stele of Revealing that is so central to Thelema. Each word is depicted along with its approximate phonetic pronunciation and translation. Example: (an owl), phonetically _m_, translated “by.” Or: (mouth), phonetically _r_, translated “to.” Now, I would like to render each word into characters that I can actually scan and pronounce (approximately). It seems that Arabic characters, with a few characters borrowed from Farsi (“ch,” for example), might work to transliterate it, especially as the phonetic pronunciation differentiates between “h,” a throaty “h” (transcribed with “h” with a dot underneath it) and “kh” (transcribed with a “h” with a u-shaped symbol underneath it) - just like Arabic. So, are there any sounds that exist in Ancient Egyptian that do not exist in Arabic or Farsi? WRS ---
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/2 "2005-01-25T04:10:34Z")
Do we even know the consonant and vowel sounds used in ancient Egyptian? Coptic appears to be its closest relative, and sounds tend to shift over time. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/3 "2005-01-25T04:14:29Z")
> [@mks57](#): > > Do we even know the consonant and vowel sounds used in ancient Egyptian? I thought that’s where the Rosetta Stone came in, and we were able to decipher the consonants and vowels of each pictogram. I distinctly remember seeing that “Bob” guy (the balding Eqyptologist) on the Discovery Channel talking about different words. Besides, we know some of the names of their gods and their afterlife practices, like the “ka” and “ra”. Tripler S’okay. My karma ran over my dogma. ---
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/4 "2005-01-25T04:25:05Z")
> [@Tripler](#): > > I thought that’s where the Rosetta Stone came in, and we were able to decipher the consonants and vowels of each pictogram. I distinctly remember seeing that “Bob” guy (the balding Eqyptologist) on the Discovery Channel talking about different words. From what I’ve read, much, or all of that is scholarly convention. See [The Pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian](http://www.friesian.com/egypt.htm). ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/5 "2005-01-25T04:25:46Z")
AFAIK, all modern translations of ancient Egyptian pronunciation is pretty much based off of Coptic. Whether modern Coptic pronunciation of sounds is the same as ancient Egyptian, we’ll obviously never know. It could have undergone something like the English vowel shift or any other linguistic changes, but I don’t know how we’d find that out. I mean, if someone found English writing 2000 years from now, they’d have no idea that British English, American English, Australian English all sound differently. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/6 "2005-01-25T04:38:03Z")
Crowley, as I presume you know, is not exactly the most reliable guide to _anything_ except, perhaps, the workings of his strange and amazing mind. That said, much of what we think we know about Ancient Egyptian is, as noted above, read back into the ancient language from late hieratic and demotic texts and from Coptic, with the potential for sound shifts and such. And for a modern example of this in a mere two centuries, consider Pope’s rhyming couplet: And Great Anna, whom three realms obey, Doth sometimes counsel take – and sometimes tea. Akhnaten (or was it Akhenaten, or Ikhnaten?) was originally named Amenhotep IV – or was it Amenophis IV? He married Nefertiti – or was it Nofretete? His mother was Ti, or Tiy, or Tiye; her father may have been Iya or Yahya. Some centuries later came Pharaoh Shishak, or perhaps Sheshonk – or was that Shishonq? And no two histories dealing with the Second Dynasty give anything resembling the same names; the closest they come is usually having the same consonants in roughly the same order. We can read Ancient Egyptian fluently – but we are by no means positive of the precise sound values attached to the hieroglyphs whose meanings we know. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/7 "2005-01-25T07:44:08Z")
The three kinds of Egyptian h you listed all occur in Arabic. However, there was a fourth Egyptian h phoneme, thought to have been the palatal fricative sound heard in the Korean name Hyundai, or the German palatal “ch”, which I just wrote about, coincidentally, in the thread about German pronunciation. So yeah, that is not an Arabic or a Persian sound. It’s the only counterexample I can think of to answer your OP. The sounds of g, p, and tch also aren’t in Arabic, but they are in Persian. ---
**Author:** ![WeRSauron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f19dbf/32.png) [@WeRSauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WeRSauron)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2005, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/8 "2005-01-26T04:35:18Z")
Thanks, y’all! _The Holy Books of Thelema_ treats the text of the Stele in two sections. One section has a translation done in 1904 (I believe) by the Boulaq Museum. Crowley based his paraphrase of the Stele’s text on that translation. But the book includes another section with a more modern and accurate rendition, called the Gardiner-Dunn translation. WRS ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2005, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/9 "2005-01-26T05:22:17Z")
Modern Arabic doesn’t use the letter P and I’ve seen it in English renditions of Ancient Egyptian names. Usually there’s an F where we would expect a P, such as _filistini_ for “Palestianian.” ---
**Author:** ![WeRSauron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f19dbf/32.png) [@WeRSauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WeRSauron)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2005, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/10 "2005-01-26T05:51:16Z")
> [@Crandolph](#): > > Modern Arabic doesn’t use the letter P and I’ve seen it in English renditions of Ancient Egyptian names. Usually there’s an F where we would expect a P, such as _filistini_ for “Palestianian.” Arabic, modern or otherwise, does not have a letter for “p.” However, Farsi does have a letter for “p.” They took the “boat” shape of the Arabic “b,” “t,” “th,” etc., and put three dots underneath it. “P”! Same letter is used in Urdu. (Which is why I believe the Urdu script came from Persian, not Arabic.) WRS ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2005, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/11 "2005-01-26T06:08:40Z")
> [@WeRSauron](#): > > Farsi does have a letter for “p.” They took the “boat” shape of the Arabic “b,” “t,” “th,” etc., and put three dots underneath it. “P”! Same letter is used in Urdu. (Which is why I believe the Urdu script came from Persian, not Arabic.) > > WRS Cool, didn’t know that! Have fun with your project, looks like you’re going to some lengths to get it right! ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/12 "2005-01-27T02:34:57Z")
**WeRSauron** , you keep changing so much I can’t keep up with you. (Yeah, like I should talk. Heh.) Are you the same person who went from Islam to Mormonism, then got deeply into Christian theology, then came out as gay… and now you’re on an _ **Aleister Crowley** _ kick, for cryin’ out loud? :eek: All I can say is: Life is quite an amazing journey, isn’t it? I can relate. Just be careful with those very gnarly “Book of the Law” entities. ---
**Author:** ![WeRSauron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f19dbf/32.png) [@WeRSauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WeRSauron)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/13 "2005-01-27T04:14:53Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > **WeRSauron** , you keep changing so much I can’t keep up with you. (Yeah, like I should talk. Heh.) Are you the same person who went from Islam to Mormonism, then got deeply into Christian theology, then came out as gay… and now you’re on an _ **Aleister Crowley** _ kick, for cryin’ out loud? :eek: > > All I can say is: Life is quite an amazing journey, isn’t it? I can relate. > > Just be careful with those very gnarly “Book of the Law” entities. Indeed! I’ve also been on kicks on Judaism, Santeria, Nizari Ismaili Shia Islam, Twelver/Ithna-Ashari Islam, Orthodox Christianity, Catholic Christianity, even Zoroastrianism at one point. What can I say? I love religions! If I had my way, I’d join every religion at least once. But as it is, I’m still looking around for the “right fit,” so to speak. Yet, every religion I encounter influences me. Well, the Aleister Crowley kick is not all that new. I had his _Magick in Theory and Practice_ many years ago (a wonderful hardcover edition that I gave to a friend who never gave it back - I have no idea where he is now; but I got a copy of it recently when I ordered _Liber ABA_, which contains it, from [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com)). Plus, I joined a Golden Dawn order a few years ago (which I have since left) where Crowley was a topic of discussion on their listserv, but always in a denigrating sense. Now I’d like to study him from what he’s written. Aiwass, Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit are interesting characters indeed. Life is always entertaining with me around. 🙂 WRS ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/14 "2005-01-27T13:29:35Z")
My Golden Dawn experience was back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before the internet. It was a group that got together in the back room of a book store. The book store owner was interested in starting a Golden Dawn group, but had the problem of how to find the right people for it in St. Louis of all places. So he started an occult book store and if really interesting people dropped in and they looked right for the G.·.D.·. group, he invited them to join. I took my friend there, and he was so interested, he signed us both up. That was the first time I’d heard about the G.·.D.·. — 26 years later, I haven’t stayed in contact with any of the people. I don’t feel any need or see any point in returning to Ceremonial Magick now; Wicca interests me more. The Goddess. Dion Fortune was the pioneer in this: she started out in the Golden Dawn and then went for the Goddess. I bet contemporary Wiccans get more out of Dion Fortune’s books nowadays than GDers do. And all this time I was thinking of you as just a Christian… Just goes to show how remarkable can be the hidden depths of a human being. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2005, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-sounds-in-ancient-egyptian-that-are-not-in-arabic-and-or-farsi/286529/15 "2005-01-29T00:11:06Z")
> [@mks57](#): > > From what I’ve read, much, or all of that is scholarly convention. > > See [The Pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian](http://www.friesian.com/egypt.htm). I meant to say this a few days ago: “I stand corrected.” 😃 I love that site for just general browsing. I can’t believe I totally forgot about that page. :smack: Tripler Okay, now I sit in my office chair corrected.