Albounout "Frankincense" and Alsounalph "Oxtongue": Phoenician-Punic Botanical Terms with Prothetic Vowels from an Egyptian Papyrus and a Byzantine Codex

Date

2001

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico

Abstract

The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, usually dated to the third century c.E. on paleographic grounds, contains a Semitic loanword that appears to have been overlooked by Semitists. In V/6, the word appears in Demotic alphabetic characters as xxx; in XXIX/17, 24, it appears in an alphabetic cipher substituting for an Old Coptic ^ (albounout)'• The meaning of the word in Egyptian in reasonably clear. The occurrence in Demotic characters (V/6) is written with the same pellet determinative as bl "myrrh" in the previous line (V/5)2. The substance to which it refers is put on a brazier (XXIX/17), presumably functioning as an incense burner. (from Introduction).

Description

Scholarly article

Keywords

albounout, Old Coptic, alsounalph, Phoenician-Punic, prothetic vowels, Egyptian papyrus, Byzantine codex

Citation

Steiner, Richard. “Albounout ‘Frankincense’ and Alsounalph ‘Oxtongue’: Phoenician–Punic Botanical Terms with Prothetic Vowels from an Egyptian Papyrus and a Byzantine Codex,” _Orientalia_, vol. 70, no. 1 (2001): 97-103.