Ancient Egyptian - Arabic contacts in lexicon: clue to Arabic Urheimat?

The present paper aims at demonstrating possibilities of the comparative and historical method in linguistics in reconstructing ethno-cultural prehistory of ancient peoples. Methodologically, it is based upon the analysis of 46 Ancient Egyptian-Arabic lexical parallels most of which are unattested in other Semitic and Afrasian languages, collected by the Hungarian specialist in Egyptian and Aftrasian languages G. Takacs and his predecessors. The author was the first to notice that some of 46 lexical parallels for semantic or phonetic reasons can hardly be considered to be randomly surviving cognates; neither can they be descarded as lookalikes. He suggests that they are direct lexical borrowings. This suggestion implies undiscovered contacts between Egypt and proto-Arabic speakers. According to the author's glottochronological dating, proto-Arabic separated from Central Semitic in early 3rdmill. BCE. These contacts started as early as the Old Kingdom and lasted through Middle to New Kingdoms. He concludes that the striking feature in this discovery is not only presumed Egyptian loans in Arabic but a small minority of very likely Arabisms in Egyptian language of all these periods. He argues that the most “robust” cases may testify to the Urheimat of proto-Arabic speakers located within reach of Egypt. The author is also inclined to identify the people of Midianites mentioned in both Hebrew and Arabic sources as Proto-Arabic speakers. However, as his competence is limited to comparative Afrasian linguistics and Semitic etymology, he leaves this arguable question to discuss archaeologists and historians.

matching root consonants attested in Ancient Egyptian and Arabic only; a smaller part of these Arabic words have cognates in other Semitic languages.
At first glance, there is nothing to be surprised of considering a pure statistic angle: while the Egyptian dictionaries are huge, a mammoth Arabic lexicon collected by the great medieval Arabic philologists and regularized by the European Arabic scholars is well known to comparative linguists as the one providing more semblable terms and true cognates with both closely and distantly related idioms than any other Semitic or Afrasian language. In the broad-scale lexical comparison, especially that involving distantly related languages with no contact record, cases of pair matching do occur throwing the etymologist into a dilemma: discard them as lookalikes or reserve them as randomly survived proto-language lexemes (proto-language reconstructions based on such cases are not convincing) counting on new comparative data to make them one day workable. The problem of similar cases is much clearer with the languages whose past contacts are well known or at least reasonably assumed, borrowing being a third and often most trustworthy interpretation.
The most thrilling and at the same time challenging scenario is when you come across similar cases in the languages whose contacts are not recorded but not impossible in principle. They are fraught with interesting and quite unexpected discoveries. Sometimes, a limited number of convincing examples of borrowing may highlight a so far unestablished (pre-)historic contact 1 or an unrevealed migration 2 .
The present paper aims at presenting evidence for a few (in fact, 46) mostly isolated Eg.-Arab. lexical matches addressing that very scenario. Some of them, in my opinion, have no other explanation than borrowing from Egyptian into Arabic, a few others, on the contrary, from Arabic into Egyptian. There are still more similar cases which I would have never suspected of borrowing if not for the few unequivocal examples opening up the possibility of the formers' interpretation as borrowing, too, though the odds of common origin with random survival or looking alike unrelated lexemes, of course, remain -for such cases only.
Almost all Eg.-Arab. matches in question are quoted after the Hungarian linguist Gábor Takács, one of today's top specialists in ancient Egyptian and Afrasian comparative linguistics, who quotes them in the three published volumes of his Etymological Dictionary of Egyptian [4; 5; 6] and a study in comparative Afrasian phonology [7], all containing rich comparative material. Amid multiple trustworthy Egyptian-Semitic parallels (with an inevitable 1 See Militarev [2] on the Akkadian-Egyptian matches in lexicon. 2 See Militarev [3] on a reconstruction of a Tuareg migration to the Canary archipelago triggered by one highly peculiar word matching accountable for only by a Tuareg (proto-Ahaggar) borrowing into Canarian.
share of weak or erroneous ones) proposed by Takács himself 3 ans his honored predecessors such as F. von Calice, A. Ember, K. Sethe, W. F. Albright, K. Brockelmann, W. Vycichl, J. Vergote, C. T. Hodge and others, the isolated Arabic parallels to the Egyptian words do not strike as something extraordinary. A few dozens of them seem lost among thousands of cognates in other Semitic languages established by Takács and other authors and hundreds of "Canaanisms" in Egyptian (collected and analyzed by J. E. Hoch [9]) 4 . I am unaware of any scholarly effort, including by Takács, to sort out the said parallels distinguishing between the inherited Afrasian lexemes randomly survived in Egyptian and Arabic and possible loanwords 5 .
A more thorough analysis of the Egyptian-Arabic parallels shows several doubtless cases of borrowing (both ways at that) and a still greater number of plausible cases which should have never be regarded as such if not for the very possibility of contact Egyptian-Arabic lexica confirmed by the hardly deniable instances. The latter ones point clearly to ethnic and cultural contacts of one and the same proto-and early Arabic speaking population directly ancestral, at least linguistically (and, presumably, biologically and culturally) to the speakers of Arabic known to us from the classical Arabic texts and lexicographic sources. Even more unexpected is the time span of these contacts: from the Old through Middle to New Kingdoms. In other words, acceptance of the above interpretation of the suggested comparisons amounts to two assertions: first, that the Urheimat of proto-Arabic speakers was within reach of Egypt; and, second, that the proto-Arabs were in close enough contact with Egypt throughout the course of its history. At this point, it is worth noting that according to my glottochronological calculations based on Sergei Starostin's method in glottochronology [11; 12], proto-Arabic branched off what in my genealogical classification of Semitic is labeled Central Semitic in early 3 rd millennium BCE. when its speakers presumably moved a few hundred km southward from the southern Levant which I regard as the most probable original homeland of proto-Central Semitic speakers.
The first assertion is not contrary to the biblical location of "the sons of Ishmael", the ancestor of Arabs, whose "descendants settled…near the border of Egypt" (Gen. 25:18) 6 . According to Arab genealogical accounts, the first two of Ishmael's twelve sons mentioned in Gen. 25:13 likely lived with their tribes in northwest Arabia [14, p. 344]. Another biblical mention is of "a caravan of 3 See my review [8] of Etymological Dictionary of Egyptian. Vol. III. 4 On the author's attempt at their interpretation in connection with a Biblical narrative see [10]. 5 That Takács himself did not admit direct borrowings between Egyptian and Arabic follows from his comparison made in [5, p. 269]: "NEg. brg "be rich" should be equated with Sem. *brg: Arab. bariǧa 'avoir des provisions abondantes'… isolated in Sem." provided with NB: "Borrowing apparently excluded, unless we assume the existence of an unattested NWSem. cognate".
Ishmaelites" (also called Midianites) "…on their way…down to Egypt" (Gen. 37: 25, 28) in the story of Joseph sold by his brothers. Still another reference which may be relevant to our subject is to narration of Moses who "fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian" (Ex. 2:15).
According to the Hebrew Bible, Midian, the ancestor of the Midianites, was a son of Abraham from Keturah (Qəṭūrā). There are several hypotheses about the location and ethno-linguistic affiliation of the Midianites. According to W. G. Dever, biblical Midian was in the "northwest Arabian Peninsula, on the east shore of the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea" [15, p. 34]. There have been suggestions that 'Midian' was neither a toponym nor a tribe name, but referred to a confederation of tribes united by a common worship [16, p. 56; 17, p. 32] and that Midianites were a non-Semitic confederate group, one of Sea Peoples originally from the Aegean region [18].
According to another suggestion, in terminal Late Bronze and Early Iron Age the Midianites made offerings to Hathor, a major Egyptian goddess, in an Egyptian mining temple at Timna, which they transformed into a desert tentshrine 7 where a large number of Midianite votive vessels were discovered [20]. Anyway, while the cultural influence of Egypt seems quite plausible, the question of the origin of the Midianites still remains open.
I see a feasible opportunity of identifying the Midianites as Proto-Arabic speakers. However, as my competence is limited to comparative Afrasian linguistics and Semitic etymology, I leave this arguable question to archaeologists and historians and pass to the data which I've tried to arrange according to a degree of probability of borrowing -higher than chance coincidence or common origin -first from Eg. into Arab., then from Arab. into Eg., next when the direction is not clear. These cases are followed by those whose similarity can be interpreted either way as borrowing, lookalikes or common origin. Last come obscure or less probable cases still worth mentioning to make the picture complete.
The data:
• This is a most weird case, the "odd" Arab. -g labeled by Takács a complement, though there is no such "complement" or, rather, root extension either in Sem. or other AA branches 11 . Anyway, the Arab. zoonym is very likely an Eg. loanword with an enigmatic -g, perhaps of some expressive character, attached to the triconsonantal root.  12 notwithstanding, the highly distinctive meaning of both verbs makes it possible to read the Eg. 10 The metathesis might be due to nearly complete incompatibility of ʕ and d in Eg. roots in R 1 and R 2 position. 11 See: [25]. 12 Besides Eg. n (that can correspond to AA *n or *l), ḏ can render palatalized *g (> ǯ) or can continue three AA "emphatic" sibilant affricates (*c̣ , *č̣ , *c̣ ).
nḏ with the help of Arab. nṣṣ, i.e. as *nṣṣ. The highly specific meaning of both verbs anachronous for Proto-AA level plus lack of Semitic cognates of the Arabic verb suggest the Eg. loan in Arabic.
(9) Eg. (old) ḥfn '100,000' -Arab. ḥafala 'reichlich vorhanden sein, reichlich fliessen', ḥafl-'crowd, multitude', ḥafīl-'zahlreich' [4, p. 152] • The old Eg. term for one hundred thousand may read ḥfl; this reading seems to be confirmed by the Arab. match to be logically considered a well-adapted (several derivatives, a denominal verb) loan from Eg. *ḥfl.  13 . The similarity to the Arab. parallel is called "misleading" and "due to pure chance"… because "the Ar. term is traditionally (BK) derived from Arab. wny 'abandonner'" while M. Lubetsky's explanation of Arab. ʔal-mīnāʔ-… "ultimately from Eg. mnj (!)" is called baseless [6, p. 252] • This reasoning inexplainable on part of such a professional as Takács (with all these epithets like "misleading" and "baseless" and appealing to "tradition" deriving 'port, harbor' from 'abandon' -what I call "mythetymology") does not hold water. This is a complicated case, in fact, probably somehow (noun of place with m-prefixed?) 14 related to another Eg.-Sem. term, either inherited from PAA (see [1, #3808] or borrowed, rather from Eg. into Sem. than vice versa: Eg. • Although Takács notes that A. Ember and W. Vycichl are probably wrong in equating these two nouns, the comparison, if A renders r, is impeccable, the Eg. noun likely borrowed into Arab. 13 If 'to die' is actually a euphemism from 'to moor, land', its similarity with Arab. maniyy-atand man an 'mort, trépas' (isolated in the entry for mny in [24]) is best explained as another Eg. borrowing in Arab. 14 Cf. also Eg.    [7, fn. 275] also to arguable W. Chad. forms • In view of possible semantic connection between the two verbs, either a common AA verb *ĉnʕ or *ŝnʕ randomly preserved in both Eg. and Arab. 16 or a contact term -the Eg. verb with its more general meaning rather borrowed into Arabic than vice versa. 15 Acc. to [26, p. 1262], 'derrière, fesse; croupe d'une monture'. 16 Cf. what can be a variant Sem. root: *ŝnʔ (< AA *ĉnʔ) 'to hate'.  [6, p. 288-289] • Full coincidence of words with identical triconsonantal roots and meaning can hardly be haphazard. The meaning 'soldier' (in Eg. and Arab. only) precludes its common AA origin as anachronous while the meaning 'man, person' in Arab. nafar-, nafr-is a common semantic shift from 'soldier'. As for its origin, see in [23, p. 2824-2825]: nafīr 'a people hastening to war' from the verb nafara 'go to war, to fight', munaffir-'one who encounters people with roughness and violence'; and in [24, p. 1309]: nafr-'petite troupe d'hommes' and 'victoire, action de mettre en déroute', nafara 'mettre quelqu'un en fuite, en déroute; fuir et se dispenser (se dit d'une troupe d'hommes); s'enfuir, se sauver (se dit d'une gazelle); ê. peureux au point de s'enfuir au moindre bruit (se dit des bestiaux)' . Unless these two meanings of nafara, one referring to people and military action, the other to animals, are brought together by folk etymology -what seems unlikely -the Arab. verb has a robust Sem. etymology (in [6, p. 288] only cases of the Arab. term for 'person' borrowed into Tgr. and Modern Aram. are mentioned): Ugr. npr 'to fly, start to fly; to escape, leave' [29, p. 635]; Syr. nəpar 'consternatus fugit (equus); abhorruit' [27, p. 441a]; Tgr. näfärä 'fly, run away' [30, p. 389] -all from Common Sem. *npr 'to run, fly away' 19 . The semantic evolution from common Sem. and within Arab. appears quite smooth and coherent: to fly/run away > turn to flight > those who turn to flight, outfight, go to fight/war (and win a victory) > warriors (soldiers). Will it be then far-fetched to assume that Eg. nfr.w having no "inner" etymology was borrowed from the Arab. deverbal noun with the meaning 'those who turn the enemy to flight, win a victory'? Was the form mnf A .t also borrowed from an Arab. participial form in m-or derived from nfr by means of the Eg. denominal noun forming m-'prefix? 17 In which case the Bokkos parallel is questionable (-l is not <*-r). 18 I could not find in any Arab. dictionary a mention of 'chuck luck' which would justify the comparison with 'throwing' and 'throw-stick' in Eg.: all the descriptions address any hazard game. This challenging assumption made (with no other thinkable explanation within sight, though), it may have unexpected implications for the Middle Kingdom military history posing a question to the Egyptologists: are there any hints in the Egyptian sources of some non-Egyptian fighting force in the MK Egyptian army potentially identifiable with the early/proto-Arabic (Midianite?) warriors (cf. the meaning 'elite, assault troops')? (22) Eg. (OK) mḥ.w 'Unterägypten', mḥ.wt > (MK) mḥ.yt 'norther accompanied by much cloud and heavy rain' > (Dem.) mḥ.t.t 'Nordwind' -Arab. maḥw-at-'vent du nord; pluit' [6, p. 476-478] with the comment "may, of course, be due to pure chance as well as due to cognancy" [6, p. 478]; there is also a reference to [31, #1714] [24, 1, p. 64], Arab. ʔanā 'retarder quelqu'un', ʔaniya 'tarder, ê. en retard' is related to ʔan un 'temps' 20 which is quite reasonable. Unless a lookalike (one "hard" radical only), a good candidate for borrowing from Arab.