"Amen" - Ancient Egyptian Roots?

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Has anyone considered what the word "amen" actually means?

"Etymology: < Latin (or French) &#257;m&#275;n, < Greek &#7936;&#956;&#942;&#957;, < Hebrew &#257;-m&#275;n, ‘certainty, truth,’ < vb. &#257;man to strengthen, confirm; used adverbially ‘certainly, verily, surely’ as an expression of affirmation, consent, or ratification of what has been said by another ( Deut. xxvii. 26, 1 Kings i. 36); adopted in Greek by the LXX., whence in the N.T., and in early Christian use, in Greek and Latin, as a solemn expression of belief, affirmation, consent, concurrence, or ratification, of any formal utterance made by a representative; thus with prayers, imprecations, confessions of faith. Apparently not so used in Old English, but transl. by Sóðlice!, Swá hit ys or sý! Added however as a concluding formula to Luke and John in the Ags. Gospels"

Do you even know? Do you just say it at the end of a prayer because it is tradition?

I don't pray. But I do look up things like etymology, grammaticalization, prefabs, etc. So when I see something like this;

Without going into a ton of detail, the article linked the word amen to the Egyptian sun god, Amen-Ra (Amon-Ra).

I usually ignore it. That some scholars (or one) compare &#1488;&#1457;&#1500;&#1465;&#1492;&#1461;&#1497; &#1488;&#1464;&#1502;&#1461;&#1503; to an Egyptian deity based on phonetic similarity is like saying there, their, and they're all are the same.

Is it possible that when we say "amen" we are actually acknowledging an ancient Egyptian sun god?

No

The Hebrews were supposedly slaves to the Egyptians for somewhere between 200-400 years. Prof. Assmann explains that the Hebrews would adopt/borrow religious ideas from the Egyptians naturally, given the length of time that they were enslaved.

Apart from the whole enslavement issue, &#1488;&#1464;&#1502;&#1461;&#1503;/&#7936;&#956;&#942;&#957;/amen were introduced into Egyptian dialects via Aramaic. The 3 consonant basis shows that the Greek is a transliteration, and the idea that Egyptians introduced a word into Semitic languages just because they had time to do so is not an argument. A better argument would be to look at the way the word was used in texts for centuries without reflecting the Egyptian influence.

 

[Buraaq]

Has anyone considered what the word "amen" actually means? Do you even know? Do you just say it at the end of a prayer because it is tradition? I was asked this recently and I came to realize that I did it out of tradition. So I started digging around...

I was reading an article by Professor Jan Assmann (Germany), that stated the early Egyptian civilization had a substantial impact on what would become Judaism (and eventually Christianity). Without going into a ton of detail, the article linked the word amen to the Egyptian sun god, Amen-Ra (Amon-Ra).

Is it possible that when we say "amen" we are actually acknowledging an ancient Egyptian sun god? The Hebrews were supposedly slaves to the Egyptians for somewhere between 200-400 years. Prof. Assmann explains that the Hebrews would adopt/borrow religious ideas from the Egyptians naturally, given the length of time that they were enslaved. This would carry over into what would become Christianity. He goes on to cite the similarities between ancient Egyptian religious icons/symbols, and those of both Judaism and Christianity.

Not sure if I believe it or not, but it was an interesting read!

I believe Amen is a Greek translation for Eumen and Ameen. Even the word Egypt itself is Greek. Some from the new age community have been placing this theory out for consideration for some time now. Amoun RA is greek, Amenhotep is also Greek, both are words used by greeks to describe egyptian (kemetic ) symbols, people and their god pantheon. Reference Budge, book of the dead. The greeks translated egyptian words as well as hebrew and aramaic translations by the Greeks are some of the foundations for the english bible

 

[1137]

Phonetic similarity? You do know we have no idea what the Egyptian language sounded like, yes?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Phonetic similarity? You do know we have no idea what the Egyptian language sounded like, yes?

brit means covenant ... ein means "there is [for me] no"

Britain clearly is that land where there is for me no covenant. :yes:

 

[Penumbra]

**Staff Post**

This thread had a large delete/cleanup, resulting in multiple pages deleted. ​

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Phonetic similarity? You do know we have no idea what the Egyptian language sounded like, yes?

I know that "we have no idea" is completely inaccurate. We aren't sure how it sounded anymore than we are a number of other dead languages, but (as Antonio Loprieno put it in Ancient Egyptian: A linguistic Introduction) "the study of Egyptian phonology has achieved significant progress since its inception in the late nineteenth century both in the assessment of sound values and in the reconstruction of prosodic rules". Phonology practically created historical and comparative linguistics when Bopp, Grimm, Brugmann, and others used sound changes to distinguish groups of Indo-European languages. Egyptian is the same, only instead of IE comparative phonology we have afroasiatic.

 

[1137]

I'm exhausted so instead of processing this I'll just ask: are you claiming we know how ancient Egyptian language sounded? Not arguing, just not what I'd learned.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I'm exhausted so instead of processing this I'll just ask: are you claiming we know how ancient Egyptian language sounded? Not arguing, just not what I'd learned.

I'm claiming we know a good deal about how it sounded, not that we know exactly how it sounded. Most languages did not and do not have a writing system (nowadays, linguistics develop an alphabet for such languages). Which means that for such languages we cannot know how they sounded centuries ago as we have no evidence of what the language was centuries ago. This is not true of ancient Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, etc. Everything from texts or inscriptions where animal sounds are written out to the use of an adapted Greek alphabet for Coptic (an Egyptian language) informs us of how the language sounded. But it's not like our knowledge is such that we can distinguish Northern vs. Southern English accents, or Boston and New Jersey accents, etc.

 

[nithyastha]

Aman of Christian is the Distorted Version of Om in Hinduism, Bible Says in the Begining There was a Word , that word is god, It Is the Sound Om Which is the sound of Creation , Chistians have distorted the word As Amen.

Om is The Sound of Creation and it is the first word which Bible Refers to.

Amen is of Indian Roots Not Egyptian Roots

http://www.speakingtree.in/spiritual-blogs/masters/faith-and-rituals/om-amin-amen-all-are-the-same

 

[1137]

I'm claiming we know a good deal about how it sounded, not that we know exactly how it sounded. Most languages did not and do not have a writing system (nowadays, linguistics develop an alphabet for such languages). Which means that for such languages we cannot know how they sounded centuries ago as we have no evidence of what the language was centuries ago. This is not true of ancient Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, etc. Everything from texts or inscriptions where animal sounds are written out to the use of an adapted Greek alphabet for Coptic (an Egyptian language) informs us of how the language sounded. But it's not like our knowledge is such that we can distinguish Northern vs. Southern English accents, or Boston and New Jersey accents, etc.

Any good links where I can read up about it more?

 

[gnostic]

the early pyramids of Khofu are attributed to the Hyksos who were NOT slaves

You're right about the Hyksos, not being slaves. But the Hyksos weren't responsible for the early pyramids.

The early pyramid builders began at the start (early 27th century BCE) of the 3rd dynasty of the Old Kingdom period, while Khufu (2589 - 2566 BC) was of the 4th dynasty (same period).

The Hyksos didn't come into the scene of Egyptian history, some times during the 2nd Intermediate Period (1650 - 1550 BCE), which is after the Middle Kingdom Period (2055&#8211;1650 BCE), and were driven out of Egypt by the start of the New Kingdom Period (1550-1069 BCE). (Note that all dates here, are only estimates.)

The Hyksos were certainly not around in the 3rd millennium BCE, so they can't be the "early" pyramid builders.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The Hyksos were certainly not around in the 3rd millennium BCE, so they can't be the "early" pyramid builders.

He is arguing that they were, that, in fact, there were two Hyksos invasions.

 

[gnostic]

He is arguing that they were, that, in fact, there were two Hyksos invasions.

I've never heard of 2 invasions.

 

[gnostic]

To ConsciousSpecies:

What's your sources that Hyksos build the early pyramids?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

To ConsciousSpecies:

What's your sources that Hyksos build the early pyramids?

Now you've done it.

 

[outhouse]

Now you've done it.

he's banned

 

[1137]

Was he really claiming the Hyksos build the pyramids? Haha, they weren't in power in the old kingdom.

 

[Infinitum]

Is there evidence for Jews having been somewhere else in the alleged time period? It may sound funny, but surely whether or not their is evidence of where the Jews were they surely must have been somewhere?

The answer is, rather surprisingly no, where weren't somewhere else. The reason for this is that Jews as we now think of them slowly developed from local Canaanite population of the time. The earliest known reference to Israel is from around 1200 BC, where the Egyptian Pharaoh had it declared "Israel has been laid waste and his seed is not" after a successful raid to Canaan. We also have an excellent archaeological record from the whole area, giving us a pretty good idea of the local history. Archaeology as well as the Bible give some insight to the Jews first became a people, then developed the religion as we pretty much know it today.

In case you're interested in the subject, I recommend Simon Sebag Montefiore's Jerusalem, the Biography. It's well written and funny and provides a walk-through from ancient prehistory to the early years of the modern state of Israel. I do think Montefiore is taking some artistic liberties in his first chapters, where he refers to a number of Biblical people as factually having existed, but Montefiore also comments on that himself in the preface.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Any good links where I can read up about it more?

I could find surprisingly little which fit the following criteria:
1) Was in English
2) Wasn't a comparative grammar or some similar work so old the copyright expired
3) Didn't require access to a database (e.g., JSTOR)
4) Wasn't a book

There wasn't much, and what I could find relied heavily on linguistic jargon, so I have scanned a page from one of my books on Middle Egyptian as well as the two best links I could find (one is a chapter from another book I have, and is probably the most useful) even though it is more technical than my scans (also, page 16 got cut off at the bottom, but most of the sounds are still described:

from JP Allen's Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs (2nd ed.) pp. 15-17

Here's chapter 3 (on phonology) of one of the standard intro textbooks on the Ancient Egyptian language.

If you scroll down to sect. 2.2 here you'll find a section, rather than a chapter, on Ancient Egyptian phonology. I believe it is a scan from some edited volume (given the simplicity of the material I would guess that the volume isn't devoted to Egyptian linguistics and that this chapter was one of several on specific languages in some part of the volume that covered specific languages).

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The answer is, rather surprisingly no, where weren't somewhere else. The reason for this is that Jews as we now think of them slowly developed from local Canaanite population of the time. The earliest known reference to Israel is from around 1200 BC, where the Egyptian Pharaoh had it declared "Israel has been laid waste and his seed is not" after a successful raid to Canaan. We also have an excellent archaeological record from the whole area, giving us a pretty good idea of the local history. Archaeology as well as the Bible give some insight to the Jews first became a people, then developed the religion as we pretty much know it today.

That is a remarkably superficial (but far too typical) portrait of Israel's ethnogenesis.