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We know these names because the Rosetta Stone (and other dual-language inscriptions) allowed researchers to figure out which Greek letter the egyptian hieroglyp
by pcstl 5y ago
We know these names because the Rosetta Stone (and other dual-language inscriptions) allowed researchers to figure out which Greek letter the egyptian hieroglyphics mapped to. There is also the Coptic language, which is a modern descendent of Ancient Egyptian.
However, these pronunciations are full of issues and uncertainties - in part because, as the OP states, even figuring out how exactly Greek was pronounced is sort of a challenge, and because Ancient Egyptian did not denote most vowels, so some uncertainty is unavoidable.
For example, Egyptologists will usually transcribe the name we usually pronounce as Tutankhamen as "twt-ꜥnḫ-jmn". We can tell which phonemes are distinct and have some idea of how they must have been pronounced, but we can never truly know for sure.
So the answer is: The word probably wasn't pronounced as "Ramses", the name "Ramses" is an approximation of a Greek approximation of the actual name of the pharaoh, optimized to be easy to pronounce by English-speakers.
- yumraj 5y agoMakes sense, BTW I appreciate all the sibling replies as well. So basically it seems they used the proper nouns to start and then built up on that. And also used Coptic to fill gaps.. I do get the point about Greek approximation since just as an example in modern India, Alexander is referred to as Sikander. Similar, yet very different.
- yorwba 5y agoThe Al- most likely got lost in Arabic due to being reanalyzed as a determiner instead of as part of the name.
- schoen 5y agoFor the Greeks, it even had an intelligible meaning https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%BB%CE%AD%CE%BE%CF%89#Ancient_Greek https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%BB%CE%AD%CE%BE%C... I think the a- in the al- in Alexander is supposed to be the alpha privative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_privative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_privative like our "ward off" or something.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y agoI don't know if that's right. It could be but it sounds wrong in that I've never heard of "έξω", on its own, without the possible privative, at least not as a verb (there is a modern noun "έξω" meaning "out"). Also, wikipedia says this about alpha privative: >> It is derived from a Proto-Indo-European syllabic nasal n̥-, the zero ablaut grade of the negation ne, i.e. /n/ used as a vowel. But the wiktionary article says this about αλέξω: From Proto-Hellenic aléksō (“to protect”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂lek- (“to defend”) (...) Note the difference between "n̥" and "h₂". I don't even know what those are, but they seem different enough that they may be ... different?
- csunbird 5y agoAlexander is pronounced as “İskender” in modern Turkish as well.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> So basically it seems they used the proper nouns to start and then built up on that. And also used Coptic to fill gaps.. In the case of Ramses specifically, there is also a piece of biblical evidence, the city recorded in Hebrew as something like "Raamses". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi-Ramesses#Biblical_Ramesses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi-Ramesses#Biblical_Ramesses The two biblical cities of Pithom and Raamses are traditionally identified as the Egyptian "per-Atum" and "per-Ramesses", for some convention on spelling the Egyptian names.