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Sandro posted an update in the group
4 years agoComparative Negro – Egyptian Linguistics 4 years ago · Greetings, I have published a text refuting the theory about Kmt supposedly having nothing to do with the black colour. Your feedback would be strongly appreciated.
8 Comments-
You did not demonstrate the linguistic comparative method, this is a linguistic group. -
My critique of the paper is that you made basic errors.
You stated:
“One of the native names for Ancient Egypt was Kmt. This is the one that survived into Coptic as kem and xemi.”
and then you stated:
The etymology of this word is generally understood as meaning « (the) Black (One) »This is an error, for you did NOT supply the Coptic meaning to prove that this means “The Black One”. In Coptic Sahidic, Bohairic, and Fayyumic the Coptic dictionaries have “Black land” NOT the Black “one” for this particular Coptic homonym is an adjective-noun (toponym) simple see Coptic Crums Dictionary. I’m not understanding your methodology.
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Thank you for your reply. My point about ‘(The) Black (One)’ is that ‘land’ is part of the encyclopedic knowledge associated with km.t, but that it was not expressed phonetically with a distinct noun, as this is the case for ‘black’. My methodology on this issue relies on internal and diachronic Egypto-Coptic evidence.
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In Crums Coptic Dictionary, again, it does NOT mean the”Black one” as you are falsely suggesting. Again, the CRums Coptic dictionary has “Black land” because in Coptic context this is a TOPONYM. Your Black one definition makes no logical sense and I will not accept it. We can easily go to the Coptic dialects in Crums Coptic dictionary to see that you are inaccurate. This particular Coptic toponym does NOT mean “Black one”. That makes no sense when the Coptic CONTEXT and the Coptic dictionary mentions “Black land”. This means your etymology I won’t accept.
In Coptic context, kemi as a (TOPONYM) is referring to the soil and can mean “Black land”
In Coptic dialects, kemi as a (TOPONYM) is referring to the soil and it means “Black land”How are you going to make an etymology of a word but YET ignore the actual meaning of the word that can be observed easily in the Coptic dictionaries and text.
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You stated:
“KMT: BLACK SOIL OR BLACK PEOPLE?
The etymology of Kmt as meaning « black » is acknowledged by the great majority of Egyptologists who define it either as a reference to the black color of the Nile silt or to that of the skin color of the ancient Egyptians. This latter meaning is mainly acknowledged by Egyptologists and other researchers of Black African descent.”Again, your METHODOLOGY I cannot accept. What I mean is that in the Coptic Dialects you would simply have HOMONYMS of km, spelled the same with different adjectival meanings related to Black, you did NOT show this at all. The Crum’s Coptic dictionary clearly tells you this fact. I have screenshotted Crum’s Coptic dictionary which actually explains that the Coptic adjective -keme can be observed as homonymic expressions to mean “Black person (masculine and feminine) also plural as “Blacks”. You did not source or mention this in your paper. The actual term of “Black person” or “Blacks” is already in the Coptic dialects, it seems people are having a hard time reading the Crum’s Coptic dictionary because it is abbreviated. You never mention this FACT on your website. So below, you will find S, B, F which are abbreviations for Sahidic, Bohairic, and Fayyumic. Example:
S=Sahidic – kam – Black person
B=Bohairic- xemi – Black person
F= Fayyumic-kem- Black personYou completely missed this, also this same dictionary explains the plural forms to mean “Blacks”.
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Other errors I have noticed:
1- FAULTY Methodology 2- he did NOT use the historical-comparative method he only made opinionated commentary 3- he did NOT even include the Coptic Sahidic “kamaui:” = Blacks, Coptic Fayyumic “keme” = Black person, Coptic Bohairic ” xemaui”= Blacks. He totally avoided that 4- He did NOT include Coptic text, for instance, the Coptic Song of Solomon where Solomons wife described her skin as Black ‘kame:’. 5- He did NOT translate primary Egyptian inscriptions in the OLD Kingdom Pyramid text where the term first appeared 6- He did not include Demotic -kme- meaning Dark-colored person. I can go on. Thus, that is NOT accepted here.
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Thank you for your feedback.
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You are welcome
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