Why We Spoke In Many Languages At Time of Ivrim Slavery in Egypt Part I on Slavery: DEVELOPMENT OF SEMITES AND SLAVERY

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

What enables us to speak and gives us the power of languages? 

 

The human larynx is much lower, relative to cervical vertebrae, than that of our ancestors and other primates. The descent of the larynx, the theory held, was what elongated our vocal tract and enabled modern humans to begin making the contrasting vowel sounds that were the early building blocks of language.

When mankind went from hunters to gatherers and became farmers, they were living in tribes, which are family groups all related.  Tribes eventually grew larger into clans and clans into villages and towns, of course.  We intermarry with people close by, sharing our genes with each other.

There are a few reasons why monkeys do not talk like humans. One reason is that monkeys have a different type of larynx, or voice box, than humans. The larynx in monkeys is located higher in the throat, which makes it difficult for them to produce the same range of sounds that humans can. Additionally, the neural pathways and language centers in the brain of monkeys are not as developed as they are in humans. Humans have evolved over time to have a unique ability to learn and use complex languages, while monkeys have not.  We have developed a specialized intelligence.  

This helps to develop a language, since we are sharing the same genes, and that creates the size and development of the human larynx.  That's why people of England have a different twang from people in the USA, both speaking English.  It sounds different. Most likely the larynx has changed. 

    Not knowing the language, Moses meets the daughters of Jethro in Midian, the local priest and their flock of sheep and falls in love with Zipporah, who later gave him 2 sons, Gershom and Eliezer.  They managed to communicate.   

        Moses, born and raised in Egypt, had fled to Midian after killing an overseer of slaves because of his cruelty.  Midian, unknown to him, had some lovely women.  Midianites were a Bedouin tribe related to Abraham (Gen.25:2) who traveled in Caravans with incense from Gilead to Egypt and later to other countries; and closely connected to the Israelites.  As usual, in later history the Midianites become enemies of Israel by fighting against them with the Moabites (Num.21:29).  From 2nd Temple times, the Land of Midian was thought to be located in NW Arabia.  Knowledge gets confused.                              

What's good to know is that every man is born with a  tag as to what tribe he came from called his Y haplogroup.  J1 is very common for Jews that are the descendants of Aaron, brother of Moses, and there were a lot of them.  Muslims are also found to with J1 as their haplogroup, with the usual slightly different tag ending on their title, showing that they are a little different from Aaron's descendants, but from the same original source.  I love, just love it when science is so specific in its findings and connects with our oral and written history found in the Torah.  It just strengthens the Torah 100%.                                   

Knowing this, and now knowing that a Semite is a person who speaks Hebrew, Arabic or a related other languages, shows how they differentiate from others in a land they may have entered.  It's like having a certain different color of skin; something to identify by.  That's why some people of Spanish blood can roll their rrrrrs, and semites have sounds in the bottom of their throats, a Khhh sound and why it's hard for me to reproduce in my throat.  You larynx has to make changes.  

The same thing happened when senior-aged Jacob and his family of 70,  who were referred to as the Hebrews, or Ivrim,  went into Egypt, needing to find relief from the drought they were suffering from in Canaan, hoping they had received the blessed rain.  Unknown to them, Jacob's beloved son, Joseph had made it there when his brothers sold him to a passing caravan, and he had risen to the top, becoming the #2 man under the pharaoh.  The pyramids were already built by this time.                                                     

With Joseph's help, Jacob, his father,  led the group of 70 from Canaan to Goshen, the northern area of Egypt to live in with their sheep at about that time.  Abram was born during the 2nd millennium in about 1948 BCE, and genealogy takes us then to Jacob.      

Did the Ivrim speak the same language as the Egyptians?  Arabic is a Semitic language.  Another source said, "The Semitic Hebrew of Ancient Israel and the Semitic Afro-Asiatic but not Semitic Late Egyptian language were distantly related, but not enough for direct communication.

Ancient Egyptians spoke Egyptian. Obviously, the Ivrim had to learn and to speak Egyptian as well.  Egypt's official language is Modern Standard Arabic, which is used in most written documents and schools.

In the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Middle East, people of different languages sometimes used Akkadian as a Lingua Franca.

Akkad, in the Babylonian period, was the northern region of the valley between the Euphrates and the Tigris, which contained Babylon, Sipopar, and other important cities.  The Ancient city of Babylonia mentioned in Gen 10:10 was the residence of Sargon the Great.  The earliest Semitic language that has been suggested as a common source is Akkadian, an extinct dialect that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and Egypt [i].

In conclusion, Hebrew is the more ancient language but Arabic has preserved much more of its linguistic roots, however, both of them share a common origin.  They are both Semitic languages.  

    Coming from Canaan;  Moving into Goshen of Egypt with blessing of pharaoh because of Joseph's position.  They were Semites, speakers of Hebrew language- It is thought of in other resources like the Egyptians themselves that they were the Hyksos people who ruled Egypt from 1720 BCE to 1580 BCE and during this period, the Children of Israel entered the country and were favorably treated;  the period of bondage is believed to have begun after the expulsion of the Hyksos.  Hyksos is an Egyptian word meaning "rulers of the foreign lands";  Each people wrote their own history; and this seems to mesh with each other. Jewish and non-Jews history is always off in terms of dates.  We have Moses  from 1391 BCE to 1271 BCE, a much later date.  Jewish dates go with the history Moses wrote about.   

They loved Goshen, and stayed longer than they had planned, thriving and growing and having many children to the point where the next pharaoh was worried that they would soon dominate the land.  The worry was so great that they all were made slaves of Egypt.

           Slaves at Necropolis :  Necropolis, in archaeology, is an extensive and elaborate burial place of an ancient city. The locations of necropolises in ancient Egypt were varied; many were situated across the Nile River opposite the towns, as was western Thebes. The necropolis was typically outside the city proper in the Mediterranean world and often consisted of several cemeteries used over several centuries.  Cemetery diggers and workers, maybe even on preparing burial sites for new royal family members.  

Slavery was the way of life in those days used for manual laborers.  There were no appliances or artificial power sources except people and animals.  People could do things that animals couldn't so they were useful if under control.  People had been working so hard to improve their lot in life, and it had been a slow process, especially in building towns for human protection from wild animals  and in agriculture to feed them all.  

Notice how the 2 storage cities are located in Goshen, home of Ivrim.  

Slaves had no days off, nor any time off.  They were slaves 24 hours each day. The Israelites had entered Goshen and from then till Moses came along at age 80 to free them had been 500 years.  Perhaps out of that time they were free men for 100 years or so;  I hope so.  They were used to build the storage cities of , Pithom and Ramses.” These storage cities are not simply coterminous with Pithom and Rameses, since these two cities had a variety of buildings that included stone temples for who?  

 Joseph, who became a viceroy appointed by the pharaoh,  had saved the day by telling his pharaoh how to feed the people during a draught and how much to store and that it had to serve 7 years.  What's exciting is how this man, taken to prison and doomed to slavery, was listened to by Potiphar, the chief of Pharaoh's household when Joseph heard him ask an explanation about the dream he had.  The explanation reached the Pharaoh.  To top off the story, Potiphar's sexy wife wanted to have relations with Joseph who refused, and she then falsely accused him of rape to get even.  Who said the Bible is boring?  It told of people acting like those of today.                                         

     Fighting the Amaleks, constant enemies of the Jewish people as they had attacked the Exodus people from Egypt.  

Did slavery benefit the Ivrim?  No, not at all.  It kept them at a standstill in developing their minds for at least 400 years!  for 400 years their minds were in the survival mode only.  Oh, they no doubt thought of all the things wrong with slavery and how they wouldn't treat people like animals.  It helped to develop Moses's form of the 613 Laws who came along much later.  They were still under the care of another, Moses, as it was, who led them to freedom.  Until then, they found they had to follow his directions or die in the wilderness.  Moses knew how to survive, not them.  He had made it to Egypt at the age of 80, and now was leading them back to their ancestral homeland of Canaan, land of stories they had been told. It will take him 40 years to harden these people into a force that could stand on their own;  40 years of changing and adding what they had lost during the 400 years of slavery.      

Resource:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/human-ancestors-may-have-evolved-physical-ability-speak-more-25-million-years-ago-180973759/#:~:text=The%20human%20larynx%20is%20much,early%20building%20blocks%20of%20language.

Book:  The new Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://landioustravel.com/egypt/necropolises-ancient-egypt/

https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/history-ideas/2020/04/what-were-the-israelites-building-in-egypt/#:~:text=And%20they%20built%20for%20Pharaoh,buildings%20that%20included%20stone%20temples.

https://www.getquranic.com/which-is-older-arabic-or-hebrew/#:~:text=In%20conclusion%2C%20Hebrew%20is%20the,them%20share%20a%20common%20ancestor.