What Language Did Abraham Speak?

The Afro-Asiatic Dominion

Alice C. Linsley

The best evidence to date suggests that Abraham and his Ha'biru ancestors spoke the languages of the peoples among whom they lived. As rulers of the Afro-Asiatic dominion, Abraham's ancestors spoke Nilo-Saharan languages, some of which are now extinct. Two are of special interest: Sara and Horo, both connected to Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors who worshiped Ra and Horus.

Abraham probably spoke more than one language. He would have known the Kushitic Akkadian of the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley where he grew up, and he would have known the Proto-Arabic spoken in Canaan. He likely read the script of the Thamudic group of Arabia and he certainly knew the Canaanite script by which his sons were designated as divinely appointed rulers by the Canaanite Y:  Yaqtan, Yitzak, Yishmael.

The evidence of linguistics, history, archaeology, anthropology and the Bible points to a vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion as the context for Abraham’s ancestors. Genesis 11:1 says that the peoples of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion spoke “one language” and linguistic studies suggest that the language was Proto-Saharan. This explains the linguistic similarity between names and titles found in Genesis and in the Turkish, Pashtun and Mongolian languages. Examples include Jochi (Biblical Joktan/Yaqtan), Malik (Biblical melek) and Khan (Biblical Kain or Kayan). Khan means king or ruler and Kain is the first earthly ruler in the Bible. Today Khan is a common surname in Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Mongolia. Some Pashtun tribes adopted Malik as the title for ruler instead of Khan. Malik is equivalent to the Hebrew Melek, meaning king.

The Akkadian of Sargon's empire has close connections to the languages of the Horn of Africa, especially the Kushite group. This supports the view that Sargon the Great was biblical Nimrod, the son of Kush, according to Genesis 10:8.

There are name correspondences between the Proto-Saharan and languages of Saharan Africa today. Consider the example of the Hausa origin story involving Bayajida. He is said to have come to Nigeria from the east, and after slaying a serpent with an iron sword married a local princess and established 7 city states. He was a stranger to the area because his name “Ba ya ji da” means “he who didn't understand the language before, he was a stranger here.” The Arabic form of his name is 'Ub ay diyya. Al-'Ubaydiyya was an Arab village before it was depopulated on March 3, 1948. It was located in Galilee about 6 miles south of Tiberias, close to the Jordan River. The Canaanites referred to al-'Ubaydiyya as Bayt Shamash which means "House of God." Shamash was another name for the Creator Re, whose emblem was the Sun. He was worshiped by different names across the vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

Much is known today about the rulers of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion. They are called the "mighty men of old" because they were aggressive kingdom builders who regarded themselves as divinely appointed to disperse and subdue the earth. They spread out of Africa along major water systems and mountain chains (the high places) of Southern Europe and the Hindu Kush. They likely controlled commerce through the Pamir Junction. They were ethnically Kushite.

This supplies clues as to the language spoken by Abraham and his Ha'biru (Hebrew) ancestors. It was a Kushitic language that resembled Old Arabic (Dedanite) and it is older than Hebrew, Aramean and Akkadian. It tended to use 2-consonant roots. Hebrew, on the other hand, tends to use 3-consonant roots. Arabic is closer to the Kushitic or Proto-Saharan languages of Abraham’s people, as evidenced by the higher numerical frequency of 2-consonant roots.

Hebrew is largely triconsonantal and, as with the older Arabic, has no vowels. This is why a word may appear with various spellings: hur, hor, har. The root is HR and because it is biconsonantal we know that this root is older than the Hebrew language.

The Danish linguist Holger Pedersen (1867-1953) explained in The Discovery of Language that “Hebrew, Aramaic and Akkadian languages had all undergone significant linguistic degeneration. Only Old Arabic, due to its relative isolation in the Arabian peninsula, remained closer to the old stratum of the ‘Semitic’ form of the language.”

The Hebrew triconsonantal root system consists of only about two hundred roots. When a certain vowel pattern is placed over these roots, a wide range of meanings can be assumed. Over the centuries translators have guessed at some of these vowels, but rarely has this affected the accuracy of the Biblical account.

Where accuracy has been compromised it is because the translators have not cross-checked the Hebrew against the older cognates in Arabic and Aramaic. The story of Noah’s Ark is an example.

Ararat and Armenia are not the correct renderings of the old Arabic words found in the Noah story. The Arabic word ararat means vehemence and speaks of God’s judgment, but in Genesis 8:4 it is said that the ark came to rest on “the mountains of Ararat.” Translators assumed that Ararat was a place name and they identified it with the mountains in Armenia because Armenia resembles the old Arabic har-meni. Har-Meni refers to the mountain of Meni or Menes, another name for Mount Meru, a mountain sacred to the peoples of Kenya and Tanzania. This is where Noah’s ark landed, not in the Ararat mountains of Armenia.

There are various textual clues that enable us to determine the general nature of the language spoken by Abraham. These involve words that reference shrines, temples, and place names associated with numbers and water systems.

Houses of God

In the ancient Egyptian and Ugaritic languages the word "piru" meant house, shrine or temple. The O'piru were Sun temples. The Sun was the emblem of the Creator and the temple or shrine servants were called ha'piru, 'apiru or ha'biru (Hebrew).

The Ha'biru devotees of Horus represent a very ancient line of ruler-priests. They can be traced back to at least 5500 B.C. to Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors who were cattle herders. One of their shrines was a Nekhen on the Nile. The temple there is dedicated to Horus.

Another Horite shrine was Heliopolis. The Harris papyrus speaks of 'apriu of Re at Heliopolis, the shrine of the Sun. Joseph married into this royal priest line when he married Asenath, the daughter of the priest of On. On is Heliopolis.

The Horite priests of Heliopolis were known for their meticulous devotion to the Creator and his son, and for their sobriety and purity of life. Plutarch wrote that the “priests of the Sun at Heliopolis never carry wine into their temples, for they regard it as indecent for those who are devoted to the service of any god to indulge in the drinking of wine whilst they are under the immediate inspection of their Lord and King. The priests of the other deities are not so scrupulous in this respect, for they use it, though sparingly.”

Among Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors, Hathor, the mother of Horus, conceived when she was "overshadowed" by the Sun, the emblem of Re. This is the origin of Messianic expectation. This very ancient narrative is the proto-Gospel, the fore-telling of the story of the Virgin Mary who conceived by divine overshadowing, as the Angel Gabriel explained.

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God."

One of the most important houses of God is Bethel in Genesis. Beth-el means "house of God." This shrine appears to have been at the sacred center of a north-south and east-west crossing. This becomes evident when we consider the location of the two trees. Judges 4:4-6 says that the Palm of Deborah was between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim (a north-south axis). Genesis 12 that tells us that the Oak of the Moreh was between Bethel and Ai (an east-west axis). The two narratives must be taken together to understand the prestige of ancient Bethel. The point of intersection of the north-south axis and the east-west axis was regarded as the sacred center. In the ancient world, sacred centers were often marked by trees. Genesis 2:9 says that the Tree of Life was in the sacred center of the garden.

In Hebrew, Bethlehem (Beyt Lechem) means “house of bread,” though it likely meant “house of meat,” which is the meaning in Arabic. The South Semitic root LḤM refers to cattle. Bethlehem was a very ancient site of animal sacrifice. It had its own division of priests. It is specifically associated with the Horite priests (devotees of Ra-Horus and Hathor) in I Chronicles 4:4 which names Hor as the "father of Bethlehem." Rahab of Jericho was the wife of Salmon, the son of Hor. Salmon is called the "father of Bethlehem" in 1 Chronicles 2:51-54. Rahab was the grandmother of Boaz who married Ruth.

Jerusalem was neither built nor named by Hebrews. In Abraham’s time it was a Jebusite city and was once called Yebu/Jebu. Remnants of a town called Salem date back to the early Bronze Age, and the first mention of this place is in Genesis 14:18, where Abraham meets with Melchizedek, the ruler-priest of Salem. Jerusalem is related to the word Hebrew shalom, meaning peace. The Arabic counterpart is Ūršalīm, which means “City of Peace.” Ur was the ancient Kushite word for city. Dr. Clyde Winters reports that Kushites used the affixes bura,-dan, -kara, -tal and -ur to designate places. Winters refers to the Afro-Asiatic Dominion as "the Nubian Kametian Sumerian and Dravidian (NKSD) civilization."


Places Associated with Numbers and Waterways

The association of numbers with places suggests a very old pattern of identifying settlements near water. Abraham spent considerable time at Hebron which in his day has four water sources. The Jewish historian Josephus wrote that Hebron was already 2300 years old in Abraham’s time (Bel. Jud., IV, ix, 7). It was originally called Kiriat Arba (Genesis 23:2; 35:27; Joshua 14:15; Judges 1:10; Nehemiah 11:25), which means the place of four. Kiriat is the Arabic qiryat, meaning village, settlement or city. Arba is the Arabic word for four. Qiryat arba is Arabic and likely the name which Abraham used when referring to Hebron, where Sarah resided.

According to traditions that appear well after Abraham’s time, Hebron means “Village of the Four” and refers to a legend involving the four giants (anakim) who fell from Paradise. Another tradition says that “Village of Four” refers to four biblical couples said to be buried here: Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah.

The most likely explanation is that Qiryat arba describes the geological and/or hydrological features of the settlement. Qirya arba may be a reference to the four hills of Hebron or to four streams of water flowing from these hills. If the latter is the case, qiryat arba is the Arabic equivalent of the word Punj-ab, a region of Pakistan named for its five rivers. (Punj means five and –ab means water.) The Hebrew for a channel of water is ‘ap-hik. Here we see that hik is affixed to the older word for water ap or ab. (The word is hapi in Egyptian, referring to the Nile.) In the Proto-Saharan languages the P and the B were often interchanged, as in Hapiru/Habiru. So we are able to determine that the older root for water is biconsonantal.

The Hebrew word for river is nahar. It is derived from the older Aramaic nehar and the Arabic nahr, the common Arabic word for "river." The word has the very ancient root HR which refers to Horus. This is the likely origin of the name Nahor, Abraham’s older brother. Na-Hor controlled the river route on the Euphrates between Ur (south) and Haran (north).

In the ancient Afro-Asiatic world major water systems were controlled by peoples who recognized Horus as a deity. They spoke languages that emerged from the Proto-Saharan languages. Knowing the characteristics of the Proto-Saharan enables us to reconstruct the older biconsonantal roots. One characteristic of the Proto-Saharan that helps us to see the connection between water systems and Horus is the interchangeability of the letters L and R. With this in mind, we are able to see that the Hebrew words for river Yub-hal (Jer. 17:8), and `Ub-hal (Dan. 8:2) are derived from the Proto-Saharan ub-har. Ub is the Arabic word for father, so Ub-hal or Ub-hor means “Horus is father.”

Abraham's Horite people would have professed exactly that! They were devotees of Horus and they spread their religious practices from west central Africa to India and as far as Cambodia where they established a Horite shrine at Anghor Wat (ankh-Hor means "May Horus Live!"). The Horites were also called Habiru and Hapiru in Akkadian. The Egyptians called these temple attendants ˁpr.w, the w being the plural suffix. This has been rendered '*wap'er' by the Afro-Asiatic expert Christopher Ehret. The *wap'er had significant political authority alongside the ruler. They presided over the rituals directed toward the High God and acted as intercessors and prophets. The Hapiru were devotees of Horus, whose worship originated in what is today Sudan.

The oldest known center of Horite worship is Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) in Sudan. At the temple of Nekhen, votive instruments were ten times larger than the mace heads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. Horite priests placed invocations to Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose. This is the likely origin of the sun blessings in Hinduism (the Agnihotra morning ritual) and in Judaism (the Birka Hachama, or “Sun Blessing” ritual performed every 28 years).

Related reading: The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; Who Were the Horites?; Who Were the Kushites?; The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; Thamudic Scripts; The Peoples of Canaan; Horite Temples; Clyde Winters' Study of Haplogroup R-M173