North and South in ancient Egypt: an unsolved case
The English word "bee" designates a particular species of insect belonging to the hymenoptera family with the scientific name "apis mellifera," more commonly known as a bee (derived from Old English "beo," which comes from Old High German "bini, bia," related to Old Norse "by," Welsh "bydaf," Lithuanian "bitis"). The original root that gave rise to the various aforementioned terminologies is entirely uncertain (see Webster's Dictionary III ed. Chicago Ill. 1986 Vol. I).
The insect in question in ancient Egyptian (Middle Kingdom) is translated as "bỉt" (see Faulkner: Middle Egyptian Dict., Oxford 1999), where the hieroglyph X1 presumably simply indicates the feminine gender of the noun under examination. This should lead us to believe that the similarity between English in all its various configurations and the root of the Egyptian word, devoid of the indication of the feminine gender, is exceedingly evident without having to resort, as often happens in similar circumstances, to forced interpretations. However, as is known, the iconography of the bee in ancient Egyptian also designates, besides the insect, the region of Lower Egypt, and more generally indicates the north. The sovereigns bore the emblem of the standing bee in their cartouches to indicate their sovereignty over the northern part of the country.
Many scholars believe that the identification of Lower Egypt and more generally the north with the image of the honey bee was due to the significant presence of beekeeping in the delta regions. However, as far as I know, this does not seem scientifically proven yet, and therefore the matter remains controversial.
Budge (see E.A.W. Budge: An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dict., New York 1978 Vol. I), reporting the royal crown together with the bee as a symbol of the king of Lower Egypt in opposition to Upper Egypt (transl. båt), highlights the Greek word Bιτης as a derivation from the Egyptian term. The Greek noun in this case is a Hellenized terminology indicating not the insect but simply Lower Egypt. Given the considerations previously outlined regarding the similarity between the Germanic idioms and those of northern Europe and the ancient Egyptian word in question, I asked myself: how is it possible that the name of a noun of clear Egyptian origin could have landed in the misty lands of the north without being filtered—contrary to many other etyma—by the Greek and Latin Mediterranean areas, which serve as a bridge?
There seem to be absolutely no connections in this case with either Greek or Latin that could in any way make Mediterranean descent plausible. It would also be extremely improbable and speculative, albeit not impossible, to link the Egyptian noun indicating the insect and by extension the north with the Chinese term designating the geographic site in question (e.g., the city of Beijing in Mandarin is called Beijing—etymon "bei" = north and "jing" city capital of…—in opposition to Nanjing = Nanking city capital of the south). At the time of these investigations, having no justification that could sufficiently support me scientifically, I was led to conclude that it must be a case of identity due to chance. However, recently, following the systematic search for Camito-Semitic etyma that have migrated to the Japhetic area, the issue at hand has somewhat resurfaced, as will be discussed further.
The word "south" derives from the Frenchism "sud," which comes from the English "south" (derived from Old English "sūthan/sūth," in turn descended from Old High German "sund/sundan," Old Norse "suthr," whose root can be traced back to Old Frisian "sūth"—see Webster's, op. cit., III vol.). In this case as well, the original root finds no concrete correspondence with other, older Japhetic idioms. It is enough to recall the various configurations existing in Greek and Latin designating the south, all very different from the words in question. Another hypothesis could be to consider the phonetic similarity between the noun "sun" (Lat. sol-solis) and the concept of the meridian, starting from the assumption that the Germanic roots of the aforementioned words would derive from the term indicating the celestial body (sun-sunden-sund, etc.). This is especially pertinent considering that these are Nordic populations where the sun would represent warmth and therefore the south, the meridian. Frankly, however, pursuing this path seems to me to be a genuine stretch. As will emerge in the continuation of this article, the noun "suthen-suth-south," indicating the south, is certainly much closer to the Egyptian root "rsu/rsut" than to the Latin "sol," a term that, in my opinion, is too far removed from the etymon in question. In Latin, as mentioned before, the south is always indicated with other terms entirely unrelated to the word designating the celestial body. Therefore, as indicated earlier, in ancient Egyptian, the south is commonly indicated as "rsw," where G43 is a phonetic complement, and O49 takes, in my opinion, the value of a determinative in the sense of land/village (lit. níwt) located to the south (see Faulkner, op. cit.). M23 (tr. sw) is the symbol of the reed, a plant widely distributed in Upper Egypt and northern Kush, thus characterizing those regions and ultimately the meridian, the south in general. It is also worth mentioning that, as was the case with the bee symbolizing the northern part of the country, the reed is reported as a symbol of the king's power over Upper Egypt. It is recalled that in the royal protocol, the prenomen bearing sovereignty over Upper and Lower Egypt, commonly referred to as the fourth name, was one of the main titles of the sovereign. The south is also expressed with other forms more or less similar to the previous one, most often in the configuration (see A.H. Gardiner: Egyptian Grammar, Oxford 1994) transl. rśwt, which should roughly be read as "resut" or "rsut," bearing in mind that the "e" is a conventional ligature necessary for reading. In this hypothesis, G43, the chick, is solely and exclusively a phonetic complement of the word. What, in my opinion, is of extreme interest is the fact that D21, the human mouth placed at the base of the reed M23 alias M24, as noted by Sethe (see K. Sethe: Die altägyptischen Pyramidentexte, Leipzig 1908 § 132), indicates the mouth that sprouts the reed. Therefore, D21 is nothing more than an additional element, supporting the keyword reed representing, as mentioned, the meridian of the country, the south. Therefore, based on this perspective, the concept of the south would be narrowed down to the form "swt" (approx. pron. "sut").
