Many of these new insights owe much to the work of Dr. James P. Allen, long time curator of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and since 2007, Professor of Egyptology at Brown University. Amongst his many books, by publishing a grammar (with lexicon) of Pyramid-text era Egyptian 1), Dr. Allen has made it possible to compare the Egyptian of the time of Stonehenge with the sub-stratum of Pre-Proto-Germanic – most likely the language of the Funnel Beaker Culture: which ancient DNA now tells us is of a piece with the Megalithic cultures of the Atlantic littoral, the British Isles, and Central Europe. And all of these are linked by archeology to the Megalithic cultures we can still make out in the Canary’s (the ‘Isles of Good Fortune’)…
…and at the Eastern end of the Green Sahara in particular in the Ethiopian highlands: and all of these actually predating the Egyptian pyramids.
Importantly, too, by revisiting the phonology of Ancient Egyptian 2), Dr. Allen has established a sound-list (a phoneme list) for Pyramid-text era Egyptian that, surprisingly, is exactly the same as one important possible sound-list for Proto-Germanic – where phonemic palatalization and aspiration – and an absence of voicing – allow for the operation of Grimm’s Law in one, not two, steps…if one assumes contact with a language where palatalization and voicing – but not aspiration – were phonemic.
Phonology evolves mostly through imitation of people who are admired (and it outlasts individual languages, and language replacement) – so the sound of the priest/shamanesses of the Megaliths would have been hugely important to the sound of the wider Megalithic Culture. And if the sounds of Proto-Germanic, which would have been the sounds of the sub-strate – which is very likely the Megalithic Funnel Beaker Culture – are the same as those of ancient Egyptian, then we have to suspect ancient Egyptian as a ritual language of the Green Sahara, and contact along the Atlantic littoral.
And we may, actually, hear some of that sound in Irish today…
…Also, for the very oldest written Egyptian, Dr. Allen reconstructs the problematic ‘vulture’ sound (pictured above with its standard transliteration) as an ‘l’ or ‘r’ – possibly palatized. Only later did it evolve into the ‘a’ with which we are familiar: the celebrated Pyramid Text trio of ‘ka‘, ‘ba‘, ‘akh‘… 3) Fascinatingly, reading ‘3‘ as ‘l’ throws up numerous possible cognates. The above-listed ‘ka‘, ‘ba‘ and ‘akh‘ in the Pyramid Texts become (if we keep the ‘a’ vowel) ‘karl‘, ‘baal‘ and ‘lakh‘ – which have cultural continuity with, and could actually be cognate with the following reflexes: ‘Karl/churl/[OIr]céle‘ ‘Bel (light)/Ba’al (master)’ and the God of Wisdom: ‘Lugh’.
Better yet, ‘m-d3‘ (the land of here/now) becomes ‘middle’ – and we perceive an old Egyptian version of Mi∂gard !
- A Grammar of the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, vol.1: Unis
- Ancient Egyptian Phonology
- the operation of the Pyramid Texts, in ritual practice, is to help the ‘ba’ of the deceased find her/his ‘ka‘ and thus become an ‘akh‘ and head sky-wards…