Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)
GÁBOR TAKÁCS: The Origin of the Name Bes (bs)
The Origin of the Name Bes (bs) W ith the present paper I pay homage to my teacher, Edith Varga, the prominent Hungarian Egyptologist thanking for her kind encouragement to my linguistic research. I. Introduction The name of Bes, the protective dwarf god with a frightening face, occurs towards the end of the New Kingdom, 2 i.e., after the Volkssprache with its radically different lexicon had gained civil rights as a written language. Typically, the etymology of Bes has so far remained obscure, similarly to many other names in the Ancient Egyptian pantheon. 1 An explanation is risky also because of the unknown Old Egyptian sibilant (*-s or *-z) and the wide range of semantical possibilities in accordance with the diverse as1 Abbreviations of languages cited in th text: CCh.: Central Chadic; Eg.: Egyptian; HECu.: Highland East Cushitic; LECu.: Lowland East Cushitic; MEg.: Middle Egyptian; NAgaw: North Agaw; NOm.: North Omotic; OEg.: Old Egyptian; PT: Pyramid Texts; Sem.: Semitic; WCh.: West Chadic. Authors and handbooks referred to by abbreviation: AMS: H. Ambom.-G. Minker-H.-J. Sasse, Das Dullay. Matériáién zu einer ostkuschitischen Sprachgruppe, Berlin 1980; BED: Anonymous, Bura-English Dictionary, Master copy in the library of the Seminar für Afrikanische Sprachen und Kulturen der Universität Hamburg (inv. no.: 15 748 / JT 1526), Place unknown 1953; Brk.: C. Brockelmann, Lexicon syriacum 2 , Halle 1928; CR: C. Conti Rossini, La langue des Kemant en Abyssinie, Wien 1912; C. Conti Rossini, Contributi per la conoscenza della lingua Haruro (Isole del Lago Margherita), Rendiconti della Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e fdologiche. Ser. VI, vol. XII, fasc. 7-10 (1937), pp. 621-679; Cri.: E. Cerulli, Note su alcune popolazioni sidâmâ dell'Abissinia méridionale II: i Sidama dell'Omo, Rivista degli Studi Orientali 12 (1929), pp. 1-69, E. Cerulli, Studi etiopici. IV. La lingua caffina, Roma 1951 ; GB: W. Gesenius, (bearbeitet von F. Buhl.), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testment. Unveränderter Neudruck der 1915 erschienenen 17. Auflage. Berlin-Göttingen-Heidelberg 1962; GT: G. Takács, The Ancient Egyptian Pantheon and Comparative-Historical Afro-Asian Linguistics, Rocznik Orientalistyczny 52/2 (1999), pp. 5-20; Hds.: G. Hudson, Highland East Cushitic Dictionary. Hamburg 1989; Lsl.: W. Leslau, Etude descriptive et comparative du gafat (éthiopien méridional), Paris 1956; Rn.: I. Reinisch, Die Kafa-Sprache in Nordost-Afrika. II. Kafa-Deutsches Wörterbuch, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse 116 (1888), pp. 251-386; Sbr.: R. Siebert -K. Siebert-K. Wedekind, Survey on Languages of the Asosa-Begi-Komosha Area. Survey of Little-Known Languages of Ethiopia (S.L.L.E.) Reports 11 (1993), pp. 1-22; Skn.: N. Skinner, North Bauchi Chadic Languages, Common Roots, Afroasiatic Linguistics 4/1 (1977), pp. 1-49; Wdk.: Wedekind. : Wb I 476, p. 8. ' cf. Takács, op. cit. (note 1).
