A “Younger Cushitic Speakers of Lower Nubia” Scenario for the Origination of Ancient Egyptian Auxiliary Verbs: A Consolidation of and Response to Feedback, with Further Speculations

This blogpost is part of an ongoing research project reanalyzing Ancient Egyptian for auxiliary verbs. It further expands on ideas presented at the Sixth Annual Missouri Egyptological Symposium (21 September 2024), and includes response to feedback on a previous blogpost.

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As has been recently outlined, a reanalysis of Ancient Egyptian for auxiliary verbs (Mihalyfy 2024a; 2024c) could correspond to not only a creolid scenario (Mihalyfy 2024d), but also a prehistoric-into-historic scenario wherein Egyptian absorbed a large number of adult Cushitic speakers in Lower Egypt during early state formation and thus helped efface geographic distribution evidence for a Berber-Semitic-Cushitic node of Afroasiatic (Mihalyfy 2024e).

 Here are some further explanation and further thoughts, especially based on feedback to the most recent version of this thinking, and ultimately producing what might be termed a “younger Cushitic speakers of Lower Nubia” scenario as an alternative to the “adult Cushitic speakers of Lower Egypt” scenario that was previously offered:

1 - On Fundamental Presuppositions for the Speculations:

 It is worth remembering that these speculations fundamentally presuppose other, separate argumentation – namely, that a prominent portion of the Ancient Egyptian suffix conjugation has been misanalyzed within the Egyptological mainstream since Champollion, and that the forms consist of misparsed auxiliary verbs (Mihalyfy 2024a and 2024c, following the minority tradition of the structural analysis of Lexa 1923, but positing several different etymologies and adducing several new lines of evidence).

Although the evidence for this reanalysis seems fairly strong – acceptance and elaboration seem poised to be its fate, rather than fundamental refutation and disappearance – these Afroasiatic speculations would disappear, to the degree that a convincing defense of the traditional suffix conjugation analysis could be made.

With that separate argumentation as a given, these speculations also presuppose the further observation that a reanalysis for auxiliary verbs gives Ancient Egyptian a typologically strange word order that demands explanation (i.e., the unusual word order of lexical verb then auxiliary verb, in a typically VSO language) (Mihalyfy 2024e).

This observation about typologically strange word order under the auxiliary verb reanalysis does not seem disputable on typological grounds due to the thoroughness and dependability of the typology scholarship (e.g. Dryer 1992: 100-101, 128; 2009: 205-206).

And, no other possible explanation for this strange word order beyond Cushitic influence has yet been hazarded (an honest question: how else could the typologically strange word order be explained?).

 

2 - On the Egyptian-East Cushitic suffix conjugation:

Regarding the radically underdiscussed Egyptian-East Cushitic suffix conjugation proposal that surfaced in the more-minor line of argumentation about branching in Afroasiatic (Banti 2001, revising the thinking of Banti 1987; see also Yoshino 2014), there is also an open question: is there *any* other serious and compelling proposal for close identification of the Egyptian sDm=f conjugation with concrete paradigms elsewhere in Afroasiatic?

Although it is possible that that bedrock Egyptian conjugation is a unique transmogrification or holdover, scholars should also be aware that Egyptology displays a tendency to unduly hype Egyptian as an old, strange, and difficult language, probably in a disciplinary hangover where scholarly analysis is haunted by the popular hieroglyphic imaginary that draws some people into the field in the first place (Mihalyfy 2024c; cf. Cooney 2021: 33-34 on counterproductive “particularism” elsewhere in Egyptology).

In terms of the plausibility of the Egyptian-East Cushitic suffix conjugation proposal connecting verb forms across these languages, the following evidence seems most important:

Larger-scale paradigmatic identifications:

~ 1^st person singular forms that seem to demand positing a separate origin from the stative (Banti 2001: 18).

~ Striking paradigmatic similarity to the paradigm for noun possession (Banti 2001: 18-20)

Finer-grained identification of personal endings:

~ Resemblance in the 1^st person (both singular and plural, something even more striking if the Egyptian 1^st plural is reconstructed as /nu/) (Banti 2001: 19-20, updated for Mihalyfy 2023 and 2024b)

~ A subtle issue of lack of gender differentiation associated with the 3^rd person (with overt nouns in Egyptian, and with 3^rd singular forms in places like Somali) (Banti 2001: 8-9, 14-16, 20-21).

Regarding that last point, note the need for precise analytic vocabulary. Currently, the best concise phrasing seems to be “lack of gender differentiation associated with the 3^rd person.” For, as is well known, the Egyptian verb does display gender differentiation with the 3^rd singular enclitic pronouns, but not in the 3^rd plural enclitic pronoun and (crucially for this position) not with overt nouns (Banti 2001: 15-16). In comparison, places like the Somali 3^rd singular use the same verb form regardless of gender (Banti 2001: 8-9) . Thus, one has to have phrasing that acknowledges both this delicate similarity and these nuances while not being too clumsily absolute in favor of one set of forms. For example, phrasing like “lack of gender differentiation in the 3^rd person” would elide Egyptian’s gender differentiation with 3^rd singular enclitic pronouns, while phrasing like  “lack of gender differentiation in the 3^rd singular” would not capture the verb’s behavior with all overt nouns in Egyptian.

It is fully admitted that the evidence is not decisive. In particular, the 2^nd person forms are a mess, although they could be explained by analogy (Banti 2001: 20). The East Cushitic evidence is also strongly associated with a reconstruction of a multi-stage developmental trajectory to explain paradigm variance among those languages (Banti 2001: 20-21). This reconstruction seems thoughtful and is well worth close consideration, but scholars should be aware of its decision to “analogically explain away” a known 3^rd singular vowel ending in favor of a vowel-less ending that more closely matches the Egyptian verb form used with overt nouns (Banti 2001: 8-9, 14). This decision seems debatable to some degree, and competing reconstructions could be more convincing (p.c., Benjamin Suchard; note too how Banti 2001: 14 cites another such reconstruction). Such detail-intensive discussions would of course have to primarily take place among specialists in Cushitic, and any plausible alternate reconstructions could force reconsideration of whether it still makes sense to connect the Egyptian and East Cushitic forms.

 

3 - On Afroasiatic word order:

Regarding the consensus on the more-original VSO word order reconstructed for Afroasiatic on the basis of places like Semitic and Egyptian (Diakonoff 1988: 111; Frajzyngier and Shay 2012: 13; Huehnergard 2019: 68-69; Loprieno 1995: 6-7, 91), a reconstruction of a different SOV word order perhaps could be made on the basis of evidence like oblique pronouns in Akkadian and perhaps even constituent order in whatever produced the prefix conjugation (p.c. Benjamin Suchard).

Everything Afroasiatic is so uncertain the further that study gets from individual branches, this could very well be possible and is worth keeping in mind.

If the phenomena motivating such an alternate reconstruction are not able to be explained in another way, such an alternate reconstruction of Afroasiatic word order would modify the speculation about a Berber-Semitic-Cushitic node where Cushitic developed innovative word order, with many unclear implications. At a minimum, however, such a position would probably reduce the need to posit a historically contiguous area of Berber-Semitic-Cushitic that was disrupted by Egyptian’s likely arrival from the west.

To the extent that this line of thinking involves hypotheses about the origins of the prefix conjugation, it reaffirms this question that had been asked (Mihalyfy 2024e):

“If the prefix conjugation is innovative, what were the bits and pieces that formed it, and where else do they surface in Afroasiatic? Such thinking (e.g. Wilson 2020: 51, 53, 58-59) deserves careful collation and discussion, including for people who work in other languages that do not seem to contain the prefix conjugation.”

 

4 - On Possible Cushitic Presence in Lower Nubia:

As was collegially pointed out (p.c., @baligant.bsky.social; p.c., Hava Bas-Idis), some recent scholarship has raised the possibility of a Cushitic presence in Lower Nubia (e.g. Cooper 2017; 2020; Dimmendaal 2023).

This possible presence of Cushitic presence in Lower Nubia thus raises a new question: could *these* Cushitic speakers have somehow been the source of Ancient Egyptian auxiliary verbs?

It’s an interesting question that should keep in mind two points.

First, if there were such Cushitic speakers around in Lower Nubia – and perhaps even a bit farther north than now, in what might begin to resemble a side-by-side original settlement scenario? – Egyptian would have likely been in a more peer-like cultural relationship with peoples to the south at this point in its history (n.b. Bard 2000: 63 with its intriguing observations on Naqada relations with the A-Group culture, that “Egyptian products were probably obtained through trade and exchange,” and that “[t]he model that may best explain the archaeological evidence is one of accelerated contact between the cultures of Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia in later Predynastic times” [italics added]). The corresponding type of language contact would have made originating Cushitic speakers more like children growing up among peaceful or mutually-respectful bilingualism and adding complexity by transferring features from one language to another in what has been called “additive borrowing,” versus adult speakers who suddenly have to ham-handedly cope with the language of this new and distant state that just rolled into town (Trudgill 2010: 17-23, 23-29;  2011: 26-32, 40-43).

Second, even though there would have been more of a peer relationship, it does not seem likely that such originating Cushitic speakers would have had population numbers big enough for their variants to win out against the previously existing perfective construction across all speakers of Egyptian (n.b. Bard 2000: 63 with its intriguing observation, that “[t]he floodplain of the Nile is much narrower in Lower Nubia than in Upper Egypt, and Lower Nubia simply did not have the agricultural potential to support greater concentrations of population…”).

To combine these points about a peer-like cultural relationship and lower population numbers, it would seem that any variants arising from Cushitic speakers in Lower Nubia could not have been very influential for all speakers of Egyptian, at least prior to early state formation and expansion into Lower Egypt.

For, one can imagine a scenario where children innovate these auxiliary verb forms in Egyptian on the basis of Cushitic, and these auxiliary verbs start circulating as minor variants that have their primary foothold in Lower Nubia but seem destined to die out on the basis of relative population numbers and the linguistic center of gravity being in Upper Egypt. When early state formation occurs with its expansion into Lower Egypt, however, this minor variant is somehow also present in those more northern areas with their huge influx of new adult speakers (who are not necessarily Cushitic-speaking?). Such adult speakers find these verbs easier to mentally handle, and so they seize on and prioritize this otherwise minor variant and help establish it over the competitor form.

These types of scenarios can be very speculative, so it worth bearing in mind what type of evidence could adjudicate between scenarios of adult Cushitic speakers in Lower Egypt versus younger Cushitic speakers in Lower Nubia (presuming, of course, that the larger point about Cushitic influence on Ancient Egyptian auxiliary verbs is tenable!).

First, the presence or absence of Cushitic toponyms in Lower Egypt is important to consider and would be extremely interesting for specialists to examine, if they haven’t done so already (an honest question: do such studies exist?). Such Cushitic toponyms in Lower Egypt would support origination via adult Cushitic speakers in Lower Egypt, whereas absence of such toponyms could lean in favor of origination through younger Cushitic speakers in Lower Nubia.

Second, as work on Afroasiatic continues, it is worth paying attention to whether a Berber-Semitic-Cushitic node is substantiated. If not, it makes less sense to posit adult Cushitic speakers in Lower Egypt.

. . .

As had been stated, these issues are important to consider, although they become more speculative as work becomes farther and farther removed from any individual branch of Afroasiatic.

Ideally, even if misguided in whole or in part, this line of thinking can at least serve as a stimulus to reexamine what we think we know, inspiring research and helping to produce more-compelling scenarios.

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David Mihalyfy is an independent scholar with a B.A. in Linguistics (Harvard, ’02) and a Ph.D. in the History of Christianity (UChicago ’17).

In a not uncommon scholarly trajectory, he first became interested in Afroasiatic historical linguistics because he happened to study one language (Coptic, for Christian texts), and soon realized the relative underdevelopment of diachronic knowledge in comparison to Indo-European languages.

He has presented at several Egyptological Symposiums of the American Research Center in Egypt’s Missouri Chapter, as well as remotely at the Egyptological Conference in Copenhagen. Several short articles from a larger project on the survival and transformation of Afroasiatic N-stems in Egyptian were recently published in the Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities.

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WORKS CITED.

Giorgio Banti, “Evidence for a Second Type of Suffix Conjugation in Cushitic,” in H. Jungraithmayr and W.W. Müller (eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Hamito-Semitic Congress (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1987), 123-168.

------, “New Perspectives on the Cushitic Verbal System,” Berkeley Linguistics Society 27 (2001): 1-48.

Kathryn A. Bard, “The Emergence of the Egyptian State (c.3200-2686 BC),” in Ian Shaw (ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 57-82

Kara Cooney, The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2021).

Julien Cooper, “Toponymic Strata in Ancient Nubai Until the Common Era,” Dotawo: A Journal of Nubian Studies 4 (2017): 197-212, available at https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/djns/vol4/iss1/3.

------, “Egyptian Among Neighboring African Languages,” in the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (published 19 December 2020), available at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fb8t2pz.

I.M. Diakonoff, Afrasian Languages (Moscow: Nauka, 1988)

Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, “The Linguistic Prehistory of Nubia,” in the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (published 16 May 2023), available at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/65b1x38j.

Matthew S. Dryer, “The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations,” Language  68.1 (1992): 81-138.

------, “The Branching Direction Theory of Word Order Correlations Revisited,” in Sergio Scalise, Elisabetta Magni, and Antonietta Bisetto (eds.), Universals of Language Today (Berlin: Springer, 2009), 185-207.

Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Erin Shay, “Introduction,” in Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Erin Shay (eds.), The Afroasiatic Languages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1-17.

John Huehnergard, “Proto-Semitic,” in John Huehnergard and Na‘ama -El (eds.), The Semitic Languages, 2^nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2019), 49-79.

François (František) Lexa, “L’origine vraisemblable de la forme verbale de l’égyptien ancien śḏm = f et des formes qui s’y rattachent,” Philologica: Journal of Comparative Philology 2.1 (1923): 25-53.

David Mihalyfy, “A Productive Survival of Afroasiatic N-Stems in Egyptian: Preliminaries for a New Paradigm” (manuscript submitted for peer review as of 1 August 2023).

------, “Twelve Theses Redescribing Ancient Egyptian for Auxiliary Verbs,” Workshop for Egyptian Historical Linguistics (13 April 2024), available at https://egyptianhistoricallinguistics.blogspot.com/2024/04/twelve-theses-redescribing-ancient.html.

------, “Transformed Afroasiatic N-stems Characterize Egyptian through Coptic: Seven Takeaways from the New Paradigm,” Workshop for Egyptian Historical Linguistics (26 June 2024), available at https://egyptianhistoricallinguistics.blogspot.com/2024/06/transformed-afroasiatic-n-stems.html.

------, “‘So, Ancient Egyptian’s Actually a Lot Like English…’: A Case for Analyzing Some ‘Suffix Conjugation’ as Auxiliary Verbs like ‘Can,’ ‘Will,’ and ‘Have’” (21 September 2024 presentation in Columbia, Missouri, at the Sixth Annual Missouri Egyptological Symposium of the American Research in Egypt - Missouri Chapter), available at https://www.academia.edu/124165780/_So_Ancient_Egyptian_s_Actually_a_Lot_Like_English_A_Case_for_Analyzing_Some_Suffix_Conjugation_as_Auxiliary_Verbs_like_Can_Will_and_Have_.

------, “Egyptian Auxiliary Verbs as an Effect of Early State Formation?: Some Incipient Speculations on ‘Anciently Simplifying Egyptian’ and ‘Shallower Egyptian, Shallower Afroasiatic’ Hypotheses,” Workshop for Egyptian Historical Linguistics (13 November 2024), available at https://egyptianhistoricallinguistics.blogspot.com/2024/11/egyptian-auxiliary-verbs-as-effect-of.html.

------, “Possible Linguistic Evidence for Egptian’s Arrival from the West and Subsequent Absorption of Cushitic Speakers: A Tentative Reconstruction within Afroasiatic, Based on a Reanalysis of Ancient Egyptian for Auxiliary Verbs,” Workshop for Historical Linguistics (17 Novemeber 2024), available at https://egyptianhistoricallinguistics.blogspot.com/2024/11/possible-linguistic-evidence-for.html.

Peter Trudgill, Investigations in Sociohistorical Linguistics: Stories of Colonisation and Contact (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

------, Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistics Complexity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

David Wilson, “A Concatenative Analysis of Diachronic Afro-Asiatic Morphology” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2020).

Hiroshi Yoshino, “Some linguistic evidence supporting the participle origin of the sḏm-f verb-form” (revised version of an October 2014 presentation in Tokyo, at the 56^th Annual Conference of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan), available at https://www.academia.edu/14589888/_Poster_Some_linguistic_evidence_supporting_the_participle_origin_of_the_sDm_f_verb_form.