The article presents and discusses the proper name of the owner of a recently unfolded and mounted Book of the Dead papyrus from the late 18th or 19th dynasty (Princeton University Library, Pharaonic Roll 5). It is proposed that the name in question is a Northwest Semitic theophoric sentence name in Egyptian transcription, hadònì-ròaè-yàh “My lord is the shepherd of Yah”. Whereas the name Yahweh has been known from Egyptian toponym lists of the New Kingdom, the present name would be the first documented occurence of the god Yahweh in his function as a shepherd of Yah, the short form of the tetragrammaton. The article also points to a new etymology of the divine name and the cultural significance of the evidence.
It has become a commonly accepted view both in Egyptology and Biblical Studies that the name of the later god Yahweh—the tetragrammaton YHWH. The most recent treatment of the morphology of the name is J. Tropper, Der Gottesname *Yahwa, in: VT 51 (2001), 81-106 (a nominal lexeme of the qatl-pattern of which there was an extended form with the case ending -a, written by means of the vowel letter h). It makes an early appearance in Egyptian topographical lists of the New Kingdom, where it is closely associated with a provenance that is characteristic to statements about Yahweh’s origin in the Old Testament (Cf. J.C. de Moor, The Rise of Yahwism. The Roots of Israelite Monotheism, Leuven 1970, 111f.; H. Donner, Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in Grundzügen 1, Göttingen 1984, 101; D.B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, Princeton 1992, 272f.; M. Görg, Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Alten Israel und Ägypten. Von den Anfängen bis zum Exil (Erträge der Forschung 290), Darmstadt 1997, 157f.; K. van der Toorn, Yahweh, DDD, 911f).
Etymology: They include the entry t’ ‘ s’ ‘ ≤w yhw’ ‘ „the Shasuland, (more precisely:) Yhw’ ‘ “, whereby yh1l yhw’ ‘ would be a mountainous region linked to the worship of a god named Yahweh after the place of worship. This has to be taken into account for any etymology proposed for the name Yahweh. Tropper (see n. 1) advocated a derivation from a root w/yhw, but considered the common Semitic rootw/yhw „to be weak“ to be inappropriate as a god’s name. However, the semantic field it covers would fit the designation of a mountain: „être faible, mou, fragile, usé; être crevé (outre, sac), se déchirer, s’écrouler“ (D. Cohen, Dictionnaire des racines sémitiques ou attestées dans des langues sémitiques, II, fasc. 6, W-WLHP, Paris 1996, 510)—a mountain of loose and crumbly rock (cf. also arab. hawhiyat [Cohen aaO]„ravin“). If we are dealing with a y-prefixed noun (cf. the Transjordanian river names of Yarmuq and Yabboq), the Arab. root hwy „fall, drop“, II „to expose to the wind“ would seem suitable, cf. Arab. hùwa, huhwîya „abyss, chasm“ and hawàh „air, wind“, respectively. The name would designate a rugged mountain with ravines or steep cliffs, or a windy peak. The document in question is a papyrus of the Egyptian Book of the Dead from the former collection of Robert Garrett in the holdings of Princeton University Library, unrolled and mounted here in 1999 and catalogued as „Pharaonic roll 5”. The papyrus, of which the upper third is entirely lost, can be dated to the late 18th or the 19th dynasty (ca. 1330-1230 BC).
The Notation of the Name:
Has y-h to be seen as a Theophorous Element?
The evidence of Ugaritic shows that contemporary Canaanite had already undergone this contraction, where the independent form of the noun preserves the /y/ (consonantal notation ray = ràaíyu) but where the suffixed form exhibits the loss of /y/ (rah = ràaû-hu < * ràaiyuhu) (Tropper 196). This contraction process already occurs in the older dialect of Amurrite (Streck 184f). Onomastically, the shift from first person („my lord“) to third („his shepherd“) is difficult to imagine. Even if the rendering of the i-vowel is understood not as the possessive pronoun of the first person singular but as the connective -i- (˙ireq compaginis), 12 the fact remains that theological statements in West Semitic personal names are formulated neutrally („the lord is a shepherd“) or as spoken in the first person („my lord is a shepherd“), but do not normally allude to the name bearer in the third person.
Onomastic Interpretation:
It is proposed here that the Egyptian transcription renders a Canaanite theophoric personal name hAdònì-ròaè-yàh “My lord is the shepherd of Yah” that is extraordinary because it contains yh , an element considered here to be the independent short form of the divine name Yahweh (HALOT 394/HALAT 376). This short form is attested epigraphically outside the Old Testament, and within the latter corpus as an autonomous form of the divine name, and after appellatives („the standard/throne of Yah“ [Ex 17,16], „the flame of Yah“ [Song 8,6], „the tribes of Yah“ [Ps 122,4], „the deeds of Yah“ [Ps 77, 12; 118, 17]; „the broad place of Yah” [Ps 118,5]; cf. also Khirbet Beit Lei graffito 6,2: „habitation of Yah”). The first of these elements can most probably be identified with Northwest Semitic hadùn (after others [e.g., Tropper] hadàn) > hadòn (if the middle Canaanite umlaut can be postulated here already; HALOT 12/HALAT 12) „lord, master“ with either the possessive suffix pronoun of the 1st ps. sg. or the connective -i- (˙ireq compaginis) (for onomastic evidence cf. Benz 260f., Fowler 53.334, Gelb 215, Grøndahl 89f., Hess 22, Huffmon 159, Kornfeld 38, Maraqten 116f., Schneider 48f., Stark 65). The second element is likely to render Canaanite ràaí (< * ràaiyu) „shepherd“ (> hebr. ròaae, HALOT 1260f./HALAT 1175f.) or else riaè „friend“ (> hebr. rè a a, Beyer 43, HALOT 1264/HALAT 1169f.). In the present case, Yah appears to be the nomen rectum of the expression ròaè yàh (with the nomen regens in the status constructus) „the shepherd of Yah“. Yah would thus be the use of the later divine name as a toponym which, in its long form, is attested in Egyptian toponym lists (see §1).
The Significance of the Name and the Person of the Name Bearer:
If we are right in assuming that the later divine name Yahweh had its origins in a toponym and that accordingly we can postulate ròaè yàh „the shepherd of Yah“ as the subject of the present name, this compound would be a close parallel to the Old Testament epithet „the shepherd of Israel“ mentioned above.
