ancient kings

ever see the scorpion king? i hope not. it was very, very bad.

but its premise concerned a real ancient king. of course, the movie in question is about "the last of the akkadians", which is about as stupid a notion as was "last of the mohicans". (ever been to one of the exceedingly successful mohegan casinos?) the akkadians - a term which covers babylonian as well as assyrian - survived until very, very late. remember how jerusalem was captured and its inhabitants taken to babylon in 586 BCE? yeah. those were the babylonians, and that's some 2500 years after the "last akkadian" of the movie. and anyway, the real-life scorpion king was the very first egyptian pharaoh, not some ethnic minority oppressed by the egyptians. if anyone was doing the oppressing, it was the first man to unify the diverse populations and communities of the ancient nile and its delta into one kingdom with one script.

but i digress. cinematic irritations aside, i decided to write a bit about our famous king - the real-life one. we know very little about the period in question, because it was a Very Long Time Ago.

the first kings of unified egypt, comprising the southern or upper egypt and northern/delta or lower egypt, are so obscured we know little about them. you can read a summary in the wikipedia article, which mentions two important names: narmer and menes/aha. they may have been the same person, or not. we don't know. but we do know he/they lived just about 3000 BCE.

that's a fucking long time ago.

now Narmer's name is written with the hieroglyph for a catfish. these do get large - some catfish run 600 pounds, even in these overfished days. (the photo shows the egyptian catfish, or Clarias lazera.) but narmer wasn't really named "catfish", despite what the common egyptology phreak thinks. in fact, his name was suitably warlike for his role - it was actually the sound-symbol "catfish" n3r, standing in for the participle *nâ3imu "The Fighter", plus the symbol of the king's name, "long knife, dagger" (m'r). so catfish are fierce, but that weren't his name. like every other first-dynasty king, his name was a single word.

which brings us to our specimen at hand, either The Fighter's successor or another name he bore: the alleged "scorpion king". (the photo shows the "death stalker", Leiurus quinquestriatus, common to egypt and israel and lethal as fuck: it's rated LD50, which means a single "unit" of venom kills half the test animals it's used on. the gory details - including potential medical uses to treat cancer - are here.)

but as i were saying, afore i were so rudely self-interrupted, our king aha, also called hor-aha & menes, was named with the glyph "scorpion" srq. his name was not, however, "scorpion", an animal associated with evil, ill-fortune and the red land (in egypt, it was red versus black, not blue, but the animus applies). instead, it was used as a key for his name, "The Strangler": *sâriqu.

you now prolly either are asleep or have this question: "but emileeeee, whence these names?"

the answer lies in onomastic patterns of the middle east, particularly those of the boreafrasian family. boreafrasian is the branch of the afrasian language family that includes ancient egyptian and coptic, the lybico-berber languages, and the semitic languages.

in the cultural milieu of the boreafrasian world, names were usually divine references. you can have a field day just reviewing the dictionary entries listed by semitic root. elijah is hebrew 'êlî-yâhû "yahoo [ie. YHWH] is my god". jesus is hebrew yhôshû3, "Eeh [ie. YHWH] is salvation." matthew is mattay-yâh "jah's [ie. YHWH's] gift". john is jô7ânân "joe [ie. YHWH] has been gracious". abraham is hebrew 'ab-râhâm "the father is exalted" (terms for kin refer to divine figures, not literal relations). job is 'iyyôb “where is the father?” (appropriate innit?). abigail is 'ebî-gayil "my father [is] joy."

and in egypt, it was the same deal. even some of the gods had names like this: hathor (pronounced 'hot-whore', not "ha-thor") is actually a late pronunciation of the egyptian name "house of 7âruw" - 7âruw being the 'young sun' horus.

so now we recursively return to the topic of the catfish and the scorpion. scholars believe that their names are actually names for the god 7âruw, or horus. you can even see a similar formation in the alternate name for The Strangler, which appears in late form as hor-aha "7âruw [something-something]". in egyptian mythology, horus punished the god of the red lands, whom we call seth, for murdering his father and seth's brother, osiris. he wrestles and strangles seth, but is unable to kill him. he does take vengeance for the castration of his father's corpse by striking off his opponent's genitals, but the eye for an eye comes, sensu strictu, from seth - horus' eye is blinded. that's why the sun is shiny and the moon dark - they are 7âruw's eyes.

so now we have come full circle. the names of the person or persons in question were theonyms: "[Horus] is The Strangler" and "[Horus] is the Striker".

bibliography:

* goedeke hans, "language & script in ancient egypt", in afsaruddin asma & a. h. mathias zahniser, eds. 1997: humanism, culture & language in the near east: studies in honour of georg krotkoff.

*loprieno antonio 1995: ancient egyptian: a linguistic introduction.