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)
are a bs who is ignorant of his father and does not know your mother". R. O. Faulkner, 13 following the commentaries by K. Sethe, translated this bs as "foundling (Findling)". Another (or the same?) bs occurs with no determinative in the untranslatable PT 422c: tw bs "you are a bs". Apparently the same word has been found by J.-C. Goyon 14 in a late ritual, where Eg. bs is paralleled by srj "lad", hw^' (originally h e 3) "child", nm° "orphan". Based on these occurences (supported by further textual and iconographical evidence), Meeks 1 ' presumed OEg. bs to designate "un enfant en bas âge (par référence au jeune Horus ou au soleil naissant) dont la gestation n'est pas achevée, un avorton, un prématuré". III. A new etymology of Bes The tempting suggestion by Meeks allows to set OEg. bs "1. foetus, 2. (and/or) child bom by premature birth (?)" in a promising Afro-Asiatic context, cp. Afro-Asiatic *b-s "child" [GT]: Ethio-Semitic (borrowed from NOm.): Gafat busä "enfant" [Lsl. 1956, 191] ||| LECu.: cf. Saho & Afar bus "matrice" [Cri.] HI NOm. *bus-o "son" [GT]: Gofa bus-o (m) "son", bús-a (f) "daughter" [Rn.] I Haruro bus-o "figlia" [CR 1937, 642] = "son" [Lsl.], Badditu (Koyra) bus-ë "ragazza" [Crl. 1929, 60] = "son" [Lsl.] | Kafa b-s-ö (m), bus-ë (f) "Kind, Sohn, Tochter, Knabe, Mädchen" [Rn. 1888, 275] = bus-ö (m) "figlio, ragazzo", bus-ë "figlia, ragazza" [Crl. 1951, 416], Mocha bus-o "child, son" [Lsl. 1959, 23], Shinasha (Bworo) bus-ö "son" [Lsl.] | Mao: Bambeshi pís-é [p- not clear] "child" [Sbr.-Wdk. 1993, 14] ||| WCh.: perhaps Siri besi [-'s-] "son, boy" [Skn. 1977,41]. The underlying verbal root (Afro-Asiatic *b-s "1. to beget, 2. make") has been preserved only in a few Cushitic languages: NAgaw: Qemant bas "engendrer, devenir père" [CR 1912, 181] || HECu.: Sidamo bis- (?) "to prepare" [Hds. 1989, 354] I Dullay: Harso pas- [p < *b] "tun" [AMS 1980, 178]. For the sake of completeness, it should be kept in mind that another (less prob13 R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts 1, Oxford 1969. p. 190. 14 J-C. Goyon, Textes mythologiques. II. „Les Révélations du Mystère des Quatre Boules", BIFAO 75 (1975), p. 424. 15 Meeks, op. cit. (note 11), pp. 424, 426.
