Talk:rḫyt

Can anything be said about the etymology? Perhaps inherited from Afro-Asiatic? There's a notable similarity with Arabic رَعِيّة (raʕiyya), originally “herd”, but also “subjects of a ruler”. 2.203.201.61 21:52, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

The Hamito-Samitic Etymological Dictionary suggests the Egyptian word is from a Proto-Afro-Asiatic *reḫ- ‘man’, akin to West Chadic *ryaH- ‘male’, whence Bokkos re, but gives a separate, unrelated etymology for the root that yielded Arabic رَعِيّة (raʕiyya). Of course, that dictionary is (as its authors admit in the introduction) extremely tentative/preliminary, so this doesn’t mean much. As far as sound correspondences go, the traditional school of Egyptian reconstruction doesn’t consider Egyptian ḫ to be a valid comparison with Semitic ʿ, but the neuere Komparatistik school allows it. So there is the possibility of a connection, depending on how much you agree with the arguments of the neuere Komparatistik. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 03:15, 16 June 2019 (UTC)