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Horus and time

A dialog on comparative philology
from the ANE list
November 1997

At 04:13 PM 11/8/1997 -0500, Geoff Graham wrote:

Hello, Mr. Hubey,

You asked:

Does the Egyptian God Horus have anything to do with time passing, the sun rising, etc etc.

Yes, he certainly did. He was a solar and sky god. He had many forms among which were Harakhthes (Hrw-3x.t.y) "Horus of the Horizons" and Harmakhis (Hrw-m-3x.t) "Horus Residing in the Horizon". Both of these are manifestations of him as the sun-god passing from one world to the next on a daily basis. Very often he was also syncretized with Re as Re-Harakhthes. He was cyclical as a sun god, and also cyclical as the incarnation of kingship, since each king who died became Osiris, and each new king to succede became Horus as Harendotes (Hrw-nD-jt=f) "Horus Avenger of His Father".

I quietly observed the position Mr Hubey recently took in sci.lang (assuming it is the same Mr.Hubey) against the tendency of philologists who adhere to the Indo-European [IE] theory and the comparative method to explain away as coincidence any and all evidence that would tend to refute their theory and method. I was, thus, wondering if Mr. Hubey's question can be taken as an indication he suspects that the relationship between time and the sun 's movement that prehistoric Egyptian wordsmiths personified in the name of their solar deity [Hrw] should not logically be considered the ancestor of the same relationship that inheres in the ancient Greek words for (1) "season" [hora] and (2) the limit of a circle [horos] that yielded [horizon], in light of the fact that these Greek words were also clearly derived from a prehistoric consonantal root [HR].

But in either case, when the aforementioned relationships are taken together with ancient Greek reports and other evidence that a great deal of the Greek lexicon was imported from Egypt by Egyptians, Phoenicians fluent in Egyptian, and/or by the ancient Greeks themselves, (e.g., Bernal, Black Athena), there does seem to be more than adequate grounds for believing that prehistoric Greek wordsmiths probably did derive the aforementioned words by demythologizing and secularizing [Hrw] in the process of extracting a prototypal form of Greek natural philosophy from an older Egyptian mytho-poetic one. Accordingly, the process that transformed [Hrw] into [hora] is viewable as the same one that transformed, for example, the name [Okeanos] of the Greek god of the celestial waters into English "ocean" while allowing "Okeanos" to go on its merry way as such in Greek mythology. Of course, the preceding analysis differs with the prevailing opinion of Indo-Europeanists who have attributed Greek [hora] to a hypothetical PIE root [YER] and Greek [horos] to no root. However, in the absence of empirical proof that these Greek words were derived in one way rather than the other, that way must be inferred by using the principles of deductive reasoning to unite the available evidence.

One of the most powerful, time tested, and generally accepted of those principles is the Parsimony Principle, otherwise known as Occam's Razor, which holds essentially that when two or more theories can explain an effect, the theory that does so using the fewest hypothetical terms should be accepted unless it can be conclusively disproved. I was, thus, wondering what should prevent an objective observer from logically hypothesizing that the aforementioned Greek words are, in all likelihood, derivatives of a known Egyptian root [Hrw], rather than of two hypothetical Proto-Indo-European roots, given especially:

(1) The evidence that Egyptians and/or Egyptian-speaking Phoenicians were prehistorically in contact with the aboriginal peoples of what we now call Greece (Ibid.);

(2) The evidence that ancient Egyptians and Greeks both used strictly consonantal scripts, the latter being derived from the Sinaitic script used by the Phoenicians;

(3) The related evidence that much of the Greek lexicon was derived from an Egyptian one (Ibid.);

(4) The evidence presented above that inherent in Egyptian [Hrw] were the meanings of Greek [hora], [horas] and [horizon]; and (5) The Greeks' own reports that their earliest natural philosophers and mathematicians studied in Egypt.

Imho, an Egyptian etymology for the aforementioned Greek words certainly seems logically far sounder than a far less parsimonious one wherein Greek [hora] and [horos] were derived from two different, hypothetical PIE roots, consonantally identical to each other and Egyptian [Hrw] only by "coincidence". In fact, if the possibility that [hora] and [horos] were derived from Egyptian [Hrw] can be accepted, even tentatively, there are then even firmer grounds for hypothesizing that a great deal more of the Greek lexicon was derived when ancient Greek wordsmiths de-personified and secularized the names of other Egyptian deities. For example, [mathematics] can be resolved into the transliterated names (1) [Mat] of the Egyptian goddess of measures, plus (2) [Thema] of the god who lent his name to the Egyptian word "themes" for "writings", some types of which the Greeks called "themas." In such a case, the aorist Greek stem [math-] would have originally meant "measures"; [mathematikos] would have originally meant "writings on measures"; and, the Greek verb to learn [manthanein], which is usually considered the source of [mathematikos], would have originally been either (1) a nasalized derivative of mat(h) or (2) a verb formed from [mn} under the influence of [mat(h)]. I would be more than willing to abandon any or all of the above positions if I can be shown the error of my ways. I should, however, note that the presence of probable cognates of these Greek words in other branches of the Indo-European tree is not grounds for such an abandonment, since theories as to when, how, and where those cognates came into those branches rest on the Greek etymologies and are even more hypothetical than those etymologies. In contrast, if the Egyptian origins of portions of the Greek lexicon can be established, cognates of Greek words in other Indo-European lexicons would have to be considered derivatives of the Mycenaen Greek which was, of course, recorded in a Cretan script of hieroglyphics, many of which, it has already been pointed out, strikingly resemble Egyptian hieroglyphs. In such a case, a great deal of the LEXICONS of now so-called Indo-European languages would have to be renamed Egypto-Indo-European and, eventually, Semito-Egypto-Indo-European. But, in the prevailing paradigm, I guess that would be even more unthinkable than the possibility that just Greek was derived from Egyptian??

Regards,
Stephen R. Berlant

On Mon, 10 Nov 1997 berlant@ptd.net wrote:

I quietly observed the position Mr Hubey recently took in sci.lang (assuming it is the same Mr.Hubey} against the tendency of philologists who adhere to the Indo-European [IE] theory and the comparative method to explain away as coincidence any and all evidence that would tend to refute their theory and method. I was, thus, wondering if Mr. Hubey's question can be taken as an

Yes, I am the same person. I have known and have discussed this particular attitude of historical linguists with many of them and on many lists over many years. During 1992-93, in fact, I got so upset, that I took a year off and wrote my own book. I sent copies to some people, and put up the rest of it on my web site for free. As a result of the fact that I made it available for free, I could not get a US publisher interested in it. Soon I will put it for sale at 1stBooks and make it available.

indication he suspects that the relationship between time and the sun 's movement that prehistoric Egyptian wordsmiths personified in the name of their solar deity [Hrw] should not logically be considered the ancestor of the same relationship that inheres in the ancient Greek words for (1) "season" [hora] and (2) the limit of a circle [horos] that yielded [horizon], in light of the fact that these Greek words were also clearly derived from a prehistoric consonantal root [HR].

Even more than this. I was wondering if Turkish horoz, Azeri khoruz, Kazakh qoraz, Kyrgyz koroz, Uyghur khoraz, and Uzbek khoroz could be related to Horus. The rooster has been and still is the natural alarm clock that announces the arrival of the sun everyday and it would be natural to connect the two. While looking around I also noticed that Turkic /o"t/ has to do with th passing or passing of time, as in Sumerian /ut/. In Anatolian it has come to mean the crowing of the rooster, instead of "passing" as in other Turkic languages.

The simple question to ask is how these words got so far as beyond the Altay mountains.

If the probability of occurrence of something due to chance or accident is too small, then it probably did not happen due to accident or chance and there is some reason for it. This is the most basic concept behind all of science. But historical linguists, especially the IE chauvinists, have over the years developed a kind of logic/science which is especially suited only for themselves and for no other science in the universe. They apparently have some kind of a superior methodology they are born with and which they do not and cannot explain to the rest of us mere mortals in the universe. They are against almost every kind of an idea that would make their beloved Aryan peoples related to anyone else or have them borrow anything from anyone in the universe except God himself. There is a proto-world movement and it is being most strenuously opposed by the same IE chauvinists that led the Great Aryan Charge of this century.

If some of what they have done could be looked at objectively it would be scandalous..It's very unfortunate that historians have come to rely more and more on such methods that lack and defy all common sense, scientific methods, probabilistic reasoning and even a classification method that is used in biology and other fields. They stand alone in historical linguistics against all of science, common sense and reason.

They have taught the most improbable things to their students as God-given truths.

Regards,
Mark