How Many Egyptian Words Made It into Biblical Hebrew?

And does their presence illuminate the book of Exodus—or is it simply a sign that ancient Egypt was a powerful nation?

Got a question for Philologos? Ask him yourself at philologos@mosaicmagazine.com.

A while ago I wrote a column about the word sha’atnez, signifying the weave of wool and linen forbidden by the Bible, in which I observed that it derives from ancient Egyptian and “testifies to a period in which the early Israelite nation, or a part of it, was in intimate contact with Egyptian life.” I even went so far as to imply that an Israelite sojourn in Egypt, and therefore the exodus from it that we are celebrating this week, is attested to by words like sha’atnez. Did I go too far?

That’s a question implicitly asked by the Mosaic reader Frederick P. Wiener, who recently wrote:

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Got a question for Philologos? Ask him yourself at philologos@mosaicmagazine.com.

That’s a question implicitly asked by the Mosaic reader Frederick P. Wiener, who recently wrote:

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