MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
The Cult of Serapis (Philosophy)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Unfortunately Homer is not talking about the Egypt of the Pharaohs

So what do you think Homer is talking about?
Also, can you quote Strabo's interpretation of Homer? I can't find it
.

To which Strabo quote of mine are you referring to?
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

"An island lies, where loud the billows roar,
Pharos they call it, on the Egyptian shore
."

These are not the verses of Homer but the words of Alexander purportedly spoken in a dream he had where an old grey bearded man he believed to be Homer spoke them. They appear nowhere in the Iliad or Odyssey.

For someone who says I don't read Homer too literally, you have taken an inordinate amount of time to use his literal translation to concoct your own interpretation.

My interpretation is the correct one. The precise sailing directions quoted by Homer preclude the present Pharos as the one mentioned in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Hattie wrote:

So Pharoah should be Pharo, a beacon of light to his people.
Mitzraim is apparently MaiTzarim, meaning 'narrow straits'. Which is metaphorically accurate from a Hebrew point of view, getting out of a tight place into freedom
.

The Biblical Hebrew is msrym which is vocalised Mizraim. It is the dual (not plural) form of msr -- province or land
Its literal meaning in Hebrew is two or twin lands
It is exactly the same as the Ancient Egyptian Tāwī (tawy) -- two lands
It is not vocalised as MaiTzarim
It does not mean narrow straits
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Dr. Elke Wyst wrote:
This thread has caught my eye but I must protest about the use of Wikipedia as a source.

Wikipedia is being used here only to find a postulate. A postulate Wireloop intends to test. He might have used Taro Cards to invent an hypothesis. It would have been no less valid.

No source -- of itself -- ever counts as a 'source' in an evidentiary sense. It's all just claims and counter-claims until one examines the evidence directly.

No academic textbook has any more inherent validity than the common Wikipedia posting. Neither has more validity than a random analysis taken from a deck of Taro Cards. Actually...that's unfair. The Taro Cards get it right more often.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mitzraim is apparently MaiTzarim, meaning 'narrow straits'. Which is metaphorically accurate from a Hebrew point of view, getting out of a tight place into freedom.

A country normally gets its name from other people. And since, as far as other people are concerned, Egypt lies across just about the most famous "narrow straits" in the entire world (ie the Sinai Peninsula) it seems perverse to give it any other meaning.

The Biblical Hebrew is msrym which is vocalised Mizraim. It is the dual (not plural) form of msr -- province or land
Its literal meaning in Hebrew is two or twin lands
It is exactly the same as the Ancient Egyptian Tāwī (tawy) -- two lands
It is not vocalised as MaiTzarim
It does not mean narrow straits

The Applied Epistemologist in me is all of a quiver. The two sets of people in the entire history of the world who have the greatest tendency to resist the idea that anything about their precious country could be influenced by "other people" are a) Ancient Egyptians and b) Modern Egyptologists.
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

A country normally gets its name from other people. And since, as far as other people are concerned, Egypt lies across just about the most famous "narrow straits" in the entire world (ie the Sinai Peninsula) it seems perverse to give it any other meaning.

What is perverse is to call something a name which is not attested by 'The Other People' i.e. The Biblical Hebrews.

Mitsraim (msrym) is the dual (The Two) of Matsor (msyr)

Matsor means: strong place, bulwarks, defence, fenced, fortress, hold, and tower.

And is used according to the Hebrew Lexicon (that is not the Ancient Egyptian Lexicon of the Egyptologist's Lexicon) in the sense of place.
Nowhere in the language of 'the other people' does it mean narrow or any body of water.

The Applied Epistemologist in me is all of a quiver. The two sets of people in the entire history of the world who have the greatest tendency to resist the idea that anything about their precious country could be influenced by "other people" are a) Ancient Egyptians and b) Modern Egyptologists.

So resistant in fact that today Arabs, Jews and the Egyptian people themselves still call Egypt Misram and have done for millennia in memory of a time when it was known simply as 'the two lands'.
Send private message
Wireloop


In: Detroit
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Komorikid wrote:
Mitsraim (msrym) is the dual (The Two) of Matsor (msyr)
Matsor means: strong place, bulwarks, defence, fenced, fortress, hold, and tower.....Nowhere in the language of 'the other people' does it mean narrow or any body of water
.

You have not, in my mind, thought through this carefully or creatively, Komorikid. Indeed 'aim' of 'mtsraim' represents a 'dual', but 'mtsor' is not necessarily the exclusive primitive root of mtsraim. You see 'mtsor' is closely related to 'mtsar', 'mtsah', 'mtsref', 'mtsulah', 'mtsvah', etc... All of these words, 'mtsor' included', somehow invoke the concept of DISTRESS, judgment, refinement, 'anguish'', etc..

'Deep water' within ancient literature and mythology (Poseidon, Tiamat, etc...) is many times the cause of distress. Even the word for 'commandment' is mtsvah, insinuating that the breaking of mtsvah is sure to be a distress and 'lake of fire' judgement. The Levitical sin offering involved the process of 'draining' (mtsah) the blood of its victim.

We can witness the concept of distress-depth-despair-trial in the following passages:.

Pslams:
I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live. The cords of death entangled me, the anguish (mtsar) of the grave came upon me; I was overcome by trouble and sorrow. Then I called on the name of the Lord: "O Lord, save me!"....Let those who fear the Lord say: "His love endures forever." In my anguish (mtsar) I cried to the Lord, and he answered by setting me free. The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?

Exodus:
The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his army he has hurled into the sea. The best of Pharaoh's officers are drowned in the Red Sea. The deep waters (mtsulah) have covered them; they sank to the depths (mtsulah) like a stone.

Proverbs:
Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife. A wise servant will rule over a disgraceful son, and will share the inheritance as one of the brothers. The refining pot (mtsref) for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tries the heart....Death and Destruction are never satisfied, and neither are the eyes of man. The refining pot (mtsref) for silver and the furnace for gold, but man is tested by the praise he receives. Though you grind a fool in a mortar, grinding him like grain with a pestle, you will not remove his folly from him.

I just don't see MTSRAIM as simply meaning 'dual land' like all of the orthos tell us. There is more to it that we need to investigate, and even now the Hebrew MTSRAIM (dual distress) is beginning (in concept) to sound more like the Greek EGYPTOS (under waves).
Send private message
Wireloop


In: Detroit
View user's profile
Reply with quote

To which Strabo quote of mine are you referring to?

Earlier you said this.

Unfortunately Homer is not talking about the Egypt of the Pharaohs. He is describing a totally different place. The Pharos he is speaking of is not the island where Alexandria now stands because this island is ON the coast of Egypt and not 100 miles away from it (a whole day's sailing distance for a ship with a strong wind behind). Strabo has questioned this passage and concluded the same.

I am not calling your bluff, I just want to check out where, and in what manner, Strabo questioned the passage?
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Your assumptions are incorrect the words you quoted are not from the root msr as you can see from below. They all are from a root word beginning with s (ts) w. The m and the various suffixes are affixed to the common sw root as determinants. None of the word listed have even the vaguest relationship to the root word msr

Command = mshw -- (mitzvah). Root word -- swh (tsavah) = command commandment

Anguish = mswq (matsowq). Root word - swq (tsook) = depress , oppression

Depths = mswlh (metsowlah). Root word - swlh (tsuwlah) = depths, ocean depths

Refining pot = msr'p (mitsreph). Root word - sr'p (tsaraph). -- smelting, refining
Send private message
Wireloop


In: Detroit
View user's profile
Reply with quote

You said the root is matsor.
Matsor is also from an 'tsw' root.
tsuwr = confine (strong's 6696)

you can't have your cake.....
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The Strabo reference can be found in Chapter 1, Book 2:30
He is reproaching the Syrians and Egyptians who claim that Homer was ignorant of their respective lands.
The Syrians because Homer clearly calls Syria an island and the Egyptian over the Homer's description of Pharos and other anomalies regarding that country.

Strabo makes vague assumptions that Homer didn't actually have knowledge of the geography of the Egyptian coast and that someone else must have told the poet of the island that in Homer's day was further away from the coast and because of the silting up of the Nile delta was much closer in Strabo's era. Strabo recognised that the silt could not possible have extended the distance of 'a whole day's sailing with a shrill wind behind' (at leat 100 nautical mile in a vessel of Homer's era) so he assumes that Homer merely exaggerated the distance for dramatic effect. He also introduces special pleadings about the water taken on board by Menelaus and speculates that the water was from the Egyptian coast, despite the fact that the Egyptian coast in that area has no fresh water. It's all part of the tidal delta of the Nile.

Pharos had no fresh water springs and no safe harbour until Alexander the Great built the harbour and instigated a massive engineering project to excavate cisterns into the bedrock to provide the island with fresh water, which the Romans subsequently expanded.

At the time of the Trojan War none of the places in Homer's narrative existed in the Eastern Med by the names we now call them. Egypt was called Kemi; Syria was Aram; Cyprus was Alashia; Lesbos was Issa; Crete was Kaphtor; Rhodes was Ophiusa, and Hellas was Pelasgia.

How could Homer know retrospectively about the intimate details of places that didn't exist in the area they are presumed to be, unless they did exist just not where we think they do.
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Well actually it seems I can.

All of these words, 'mtsor' included', somehow invoke the concept of DISTRESS, judgment, refinement, 'anguish'', etc..

Well it seems they don't.

Strong's No:6696
swr (tsuwr) -- a primitive root -- Verb
mswr (matsor) -- Masculine or Proper Noun
Mastor is the direct noun of the primitive root and its primary use in Hebrew was:

1.to bind, besiege, confine, cramp
--- a. to confine, secure
--- b. to shut in, beseige
--- c. to shut up, enclose

2. to show hostility to, be an adversary, treat as foe
3. to form, fashion, delineate

It DOES NOT conjure up meanings such as Distress, Judgment, Refinement or Anguish.
Its meaning in msrym Misraym (Egypt) is as:
the confiners of; the besiegers of; the adversaries of -- The Hebrews
Send private message
Wireloop


In: Detroit
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Its meaning in msrym Misraym (Egypt) is as:
the confiners of; the besiegers of; the adversaries of -- The Hebrews

I probably did not make myself clear, but that is precisely my point!

Egypt (within the corporate Hebrew psyche) is the cause of Distress.
I did not say that all of these words mean 'distress', but invoke the concept of distress. There is a difference.
I do not think that Egypt, to the Hebrew simply meant 'dual land'. When you read the prophets and psalmists, in context, much of what they say about Egypt is intimating the perennial adversary, the primitive cause of distress. Philo and the NT pick up on this and relate Egypt to the platonic 'satan', the appetite.

The word Egypt (mtsraim), out of the box, is a distressing word, and apparently was created to invoke the concept of an adversary or even enslavement.
It is a word which invokes the concept of distress.

Strong's No:6696
swr (tsuwr) -- a primitive root -- Verb
mswr (matsor) -- Masculine or Proper Noun
Mastor is the direct noun of the primitive root and its primary use in Hebrew was:

1.to bind, besiege, confine, cramp
--- a. to confine, secure
--- b. to shut in, beseige
--- c. to shut up, enclose

2. to show hostility to, be an adversary, treat as foe
3. to form, fashion, delineate

Right, but this does not mean that 'mastor' is exclusively the 'source' of 'mtsraim'. Nor is 'mastor' a primitive root as you have stated. It very well could be 'related' to the 'source' of mtsraim, and that is OK.
The point is, is that the word (and most other 'mtsr' words) invoke the concept of distress.

How would you feel if you were confined, shut in, beseiged, shown hostility to?
You'd feel somewhat distressed, eh?
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Komorikid wrote:

1.to bind, besiege, confine, cramp
--- a. to confine, secure
--- b. to shut in, beseige
--- c. to shut up, enclose

And thus we find the missing link between gallows and mast. For example, Ulyssess asked his crew to mast him to the gallows.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Youse guys must bear in mind that Egyptian is not a language as we would understand it. Probably nobody ever actually spoke it, leastways not in ordinary conversation. More a collocation of scribal conventions. A bit like the growth of English Common Law.
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3  Next

Jump to:  
Page 2 of 3

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group