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THE FIRST DOCUMENTED OCCURENCE OF THE GOD

YAHWEH?
(BOOK OF THE DEAD PRINCETON “ROLL 5”)

THOMAS SCHNEIDER

Abstract

The article presents and discusses the proper name of the owner of a recently
unfolded and mounted Book of the Dead papyrus from the late 18th or 19th
dynasty (Princeton University Library, Pharaonic Roll 5). It is proposed that the
name in question is a Northwest Semitic theophoric sentence name in Egyptian
transcription, hadònì-ròaè-yàh “My lord is the shepherd of Yah”. Whereas the
name Yahweh has been known from Egyptian toponym lists of the New Kingdom,
the present name would be the first documented occurence of the god Yahweh
in his function as a shepherd of Yah, the short form of the tetragrammaton. The
article also points to a new etymology of the divine name and the cultural
significance of the evidence.

Introduction

It has become a commonly accepted view both in Egyptology and

Biblical Studies that the name of the later god Yahweh—the tetra-
grammaton YHWH1—makes an early appearance in Egyptian top-
ographical lists of the New Kingdom, where it is closely associated
with a provenance that is characteristic to statements about Yahweh’s
origin in the Old Testament.2 The toponym list of Amenophis III

1 The most recent treatment of the morphology of the name is J. Tropper, Der

Gottesname *Yahwa, in: VT 51 (2001), 81-106 (a nominal lexeme of the qatl-pattern

of which there was an extended form with the case ending -a, written by means
of the vowel letter h).—I am most grateful to Wilfred G.E. Watson for his com-
ments and for revising the style of the article.
2 Cf. J.C. de Moor, The Rise of Yahwism. The Roots of Israelite Monotheism,

Leuven 1970, 111f.; H. Donner, Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn
in Grundzügen 1, Göttingen 1984, 101; D.B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel
in Ancient Times, Princeton 1992, 272f.; M. Görg, Die Beziehungen zwischen
dem Alten Israel und Ägypten. Von den Anfängen bis zum Exil (Erträge der
Forschung 290), Darmstadt 1997, 157f.; K. van der Toorn, Yahweh, DDD, 911f.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 JANER 7.2

Also available online – www.brill.nl
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114 thomas schneider

from Soleb and a later compilation of Ramesses II from Amara-

West catalogue six place names as belonging to the land of the
Shasu-nomads, to be located in Southern Transjordan close to the
region of Edom. They include the entry t'' s''≤w yhw'' „the Shasu-
land, (more precisely:) Yhw''“, whereby yh1l yhw'' would be a
mountainous region linked to the worship of a god named Yahweh
after the place of worship.3 This is in agreement with passages from
the Old Testament where Yahweh is said to have risen up from
Seir (Edom).4 Whereas in all probability, these toponyms denote
not the god Yahweh proper but a place associated with his cult,
the present contribution wishes to present what appears to be the
first historical evidence of the god.
The document in question is a papyrus of the Egyptian Book of the
Dead from the former collection of Robert Garrett in the holdings
of Princeton University Library, unrolled and mounted here in 1999
and catalogued as „Pharaonic roll 5”. Its publication has been recently
commissioned to Barbara Lüscher, to whom I owe the knowledge
of the document and express my sincere gratitude for giving me the
extraordinary opportunity to comment on the name of its owner.5
The papyrus, of which the upper third is entirely lost, can be dated
to the late 18th or the 19th dynasty (ca. 1330-1230 BC) but does
not provide any details about the titles or family of its owner.

This hypothesis was first expressed by B. Grdseloff, Edôm d’après les sources égyp-
tiennes, Revue de l’histoire Juive en Egypte 1(1947), 69ff.
3 This has to be taken into account for any etymology proposed for the name

Yahweh. Tropper (see n. 1) advocated a derivation from a root *w/yhw, but con-
sidered the common Semitic root *w/yhw „to be weak“ to be inappropriate as a
god’s name. However, the semantic field it covers would fit the designation of a
mountain: „être faible, mou, fragile, usé; être crevé (outre, sac), se déchirer,
s’écrouler“ (D. Cohen, Dictionnaire des racines sémitiques ou attestées dans des
langues sémitiques, II, fasc. 6, W-WLHP, Paris 1996, 510)—a mountain of loose
and crumbly rock (cf. also arab. hawhiyat [Cohen aaO]„ravin“). If we are deal-
ing with a y-prefixed noun (cf. the Transjordanian river names of Yarmuq and
Yabboq), the Arab. root hwy „fall, drop“, II „to expose to the wind“ would seem
suitable, cf. Arab. hùwa, huhwîya „abyss, chasm“ and hawàh „air, wind“, respec-
tively. The name would designate a rugged mountain with ravines or steep cliffs,
or a windy peak. I would like to thank Gregor Schoeler who has kindly checked
if there are other Arabic possibilities.
4 Cf. Judg 5,4, Ps 68,8, Deut 33,2, Hab 3,3; M. Görg, Jahwe—ein Toponym?

In: id., Beiträge zur Zeitgeschichte der Anfänge Israels. Dokumente—Materialien—

Notizen (ÄAT 2), Wiesbaden 1989, 180-187; L.E. Axelsson, The Lord Rose Up
from Seir. Studies in the History and Tradition of the Negev and Southern Judah
(Coniectanea Biblica Old Testament Series 25), Stockholm 1987, 65.
5 B. Lüscher, Der Totenbuchpapyrus Princeton „Pharonic Roll 5“. Mit einem

Beitrag von T. Schneider, Basel 2008.

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the first documented occurence of the god yahweh? 115

§2 The Notation of the Name

Of pivotal significance is the owner’s personal name, which dis-

plays the following notations:6

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Figs 1-6. Notations of the preserved names. Princeton Papyrus Roll 5. Courtesy
of Manuscripts Division. Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
Princeton University Library.

(1) j:-t-w-n-j2-r-a''-y-h (masculine determinative)

(2) j:-t-w-n-j2-r-a''-y-h (masculine determinative)
(3) j:-t-w-n-j2-r-a:-y-h (masculine determinative)
(4) j:-t-w-n-j2-r-a:-y-h (masculine determinative)
(5) j:-t-w-r-a''-y-h (masculine determinative)
(6) [ j]¢:Ü -w-n-j2-r-a:-y (feminine determinative)

Variants (1) und (2) do not differ but in the vertical and horizon-
tal, respectively, arrangement of <y> and <h> at the end of the
name. (1), (2) and (5) use the simple pillar E a'' for the notation
E
of aayin, instead of the standard group È a: of New Kingdom syl-
labic writing in (3), (4) and (6). Variant (5) lacks the group ¥μ. In
(6), which clearly appears to be a faulty variant, both <t> and <h>

6 The transliteration used here for Egyptian syllabic writing is the one devel-

oped in T. Schneider, Asiatische Personennamen in ägyptischen Quellen des Neuen

Reiches (OBO 114), Freiburg Schweiz—Göttingen 1992, 9ff.
JANER 7,2_f2_113-120 2/27/08 5:47 PM Page 116

116 thomas schneider

are missing and moreover, the personal determinative depicts a

woman instead of the male determinative used in all other instances.
The syllabic groups and consonants used in the notation are
unambiguous as to their phonological values. i¡ <j:> is the regular
writing used in Egyptian syllabic orthography for initial /ha/
(Schneider 363; Hoch, 506). w Ê can be both <w-t> or a (standard)
orthographic arrangement for ˛ <t-w> which is a standard group
of the syllabic writing system used for both Semitic /tu/ and /du/
(Schneider 394; Hoch 406) due to the loss of the voiced dental
in Egyptian as early as the Middle Kingdom.7 ¥μ <n-j2> regularly
represents /ni/ (Schneider 379; Hoch 508). rÒ <r> frequently
renders /ra/ or /la/ (cf. Eg. rÒ rh „mouth“ *rah > Copt. lo;
Schneider 380f.; Hoch 509). Alternatively, the juxtaposition of the
latter two groups could be understood as n Ò
[ p , which would be
an incomplete rendering of the composite grapheme ¬ Ò
n [ p = /l/
E
(cf. Hoch 435). È,E <a :>, <a ''> is the common rendering of either
/aa/ or aayin in final position (Schneider 370; Hoch 507). y <y>
represents mostly /ya/ (Schneider 368; Hoch 506). Written purely
consonantally, h <h> is the simple consonant /h/ (Schneider 383;
cf. Hoch 503).

§3 Has y-h to be seen as a Theophorous Element?

Consideration has to be given to the possility that the sequence

<y-h> does not represent the divine name but is part of a proper
name to be segmented differently. One sequence that imposes itself
in this respect is *hadùni-ràaiyu-hu „(My) lord is his shepherd“ (for
the nominal elements involved cf. below §4). However, this hypoth-
esis involves orthographic, phonological, and onomastic difficulties.
As far as the notation is concerned, it would be surprising to find
h <h> as a defective writing of /hu/ instead of one of the stan-
dard groups hw or h} when all other vowels are actually indicated.8
Within the system of Egyptian group writing, /u/ is the vowel qual-
ity rendered most consistently and most reliably. Assuming a fem-

7 Cf. most recently T. Schneider, Etymologische Methode, die Historizität der

Phoneme und das ägyptologische Transkriptionsalphabet, in: LingAeg 11(2003),

187-199: p. 196. <d> for d instead of <†> is a misleading Egyptological convention.
8 Nor would the /u/-vowel after /y/ (*ràaiyu-hu) be indicated ( J. Tropper,

Ugaritische Grammatik, 196; whereas K. Beyer, Althebräische Grammatik, Göttingen

1969, 40 reconstructs the connecting vowel as *a: á-hù).
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the first documented occurence of the god yahweh? 117

inine pronoun (*-aha) would be even more difficult to explain in

semantic terms. Phonologically, the question arises as to whether
the original intervocalic /y/ would still be present—in Hebrew it
had disappeared due to contraction/elision (* ròaèhu).9 The evi-
dence of Ugaritic shows that contemporary Canaanite had already
undergone this contraction, where the independent form of the
noun preserves the /y/ (consonantal notation ray = ràaíyu) but where
the suffixed form exhibits the loss of /y/ (rah = ràaû-hu < * ràaiyu-
hu).10 This contraction process already occurs in the older dialect
of Amurrite.11 Onomastically, the shift from first person („my lord“)
to third („his shepherd“) is difficult to imagine. Even if the ren-
dering of the i-vowel is understood not as the possessive pronoun
of the first person singular but as the connective -i- (˙ireq compagi-
nis),12 the fact remains that theological statements in West Semitic
personal names are formulated neutrally („the lord is a shepherd“)
or as spoken in the first person („my lord is a shepherd“), but do
not normally allude to the name bearer in the third person.

§4 Onomastic Interpretation

It is proposed here that the Egyptian transcription renders a Canaanite

theophoric personal name hAdònì-ròaè-yàh “My lord is the shepherd
of Yah” that is extraordinary because it contains yh <y-h>, an
element considered here to be the independent short form of the
divine name Yahweh (HALOT 394/HALAT 376). This short form
is attested epigraphically outside the Old Testament, and within
the latter corpus as an autonomous form of the divine name, and
after appellatives („the standard/throne of Yah“ [Ex 17,16], „the
flame of Yah“ [Song 8,6], „the tribes of Yah“ [Ps 122,4], „the deeds
of Yah“ [Ps 77, 12; 118, 17]; „the broad place of Yah” [Ps 118,5];
cf. also Khirbet Beit Lei graffito 6,2: „habitation of Yah”).13
The sequence preceding this element can be seen as splitting into the
two elements j:-t-w-n-j2 and r-a''. Segmenting the sequence differently

9 Attested not for this noun but others from the same paradigm (e.g., sàdae <

sàday; with suffix sàdèhu).

10 Tropper 196 (33.322.2).
11 Streck 184f.
12 Zadok 45f. 53ff.
13 D.J.A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew IV, Sheffield 1998, 114.
JANER 7,2_f2_113-120 2/27/08 5:47 PM Page 118

118 thomas schneider

does not seem to provide a solution.14 The first of these elements

can most probably be identified with Northwest Semitic hadùn (after
others [e.g., Tropper] hadàn) > hadòn (if the middle Canaanite
umlaut can be postulated here already; HALOT 12/HALAT 12)
„lord, master“ with either the possessive suffix pronoun of the 1st
ps. sg. or the connective -i- (˙ireq compaginis) (for onomastic evidence
cf. Benz 260f., Fowler 53.334, Gelb 215, Grøndahl 89f., Hess 22,
Huffmon 159, Kornfeld 38, Maraqten 116f., Schneider 48f., Stark
65). The second element is likely to render Canaanite ràaí (< * ràaiyu)
„shepherd“ (> hebr. ròaae, HALOT 1260f./HALAT 1175f.) or else
riaè „friend“ (> hebr. rèaa, Beyer 43, HALOT 1264/HALAT 1169f.).
Regarding Northwest Semitic personal names with an element ra „shep-
herd; friend“ (whose precise assignment to either of the lexemes is
partly doubtful, cf. HALOT 1265/HALAT 1180), I would like to
refer to the evidence given in Huffmon 260f., Benz 409f., Fowler 144,
Gröndahl 178, Lipin’ski 123ff., Noth 153f., Schneider 34f. [N 51] and
237f. [N 506], Streck 352, Zadok 48; also Eblaite, HALOT 1258/
E
HALAT 1174). The notation pÒÈ (which seems rather to display a
vowel /a/ > /o/ in the first syllable) could favor ràaí > ròaae „shep-
herd“, while the umlaut à-i > ò-e of the participle is attested for the
mid-14th century by the Canaanite glosses in the Amarna letters.15
The difficulty encountered here is the fact that we are faced with
three nominal elements whereas West Semitic personal names (as
opposed to East Semitic names) do not usually consist of more than
two elements (in the present case, either „(My) lord is Yah“, or
„(My) lord is a shepherd“, or „(My) shepherd is Yah“).16 Assuming
a paratactical position of two predicates („My lord and my master
[hadùnì ràaî] is Yah“) would not be corroborated by the onomastic
evidence.17 The solution proposed here is to see r-a''-y-h as a genitive

14 t-w-n-:r-a' could be seen as a writing of tôlàa „worm“, which is attested as

'
a Hebrew personal name and which appears with the added Egyptian article in
the transcription of a Northwest Semitic personal name in dynasty 20 (Hoch 358
[529.]). However, this leads nowhere in the present case.
15 D. Sivan, Grammatical Analysis and Glossary of the Northwest Semitic

Vocables in Akkadian Texts of the 15th-13th C.B.C. from Canaan and Syria
(AOAT 214), Kevelaer/Neukirchen-Vluyn 1984, 29-34, 159-161. For an Egyptian
name providing evidence of this umlaut in the late 13th century s. T. Schneider,
Siptah und Beja. Neubeurteilung einer historischen Konstellation, in: ZÄS 130(2003),
133-146: pp. 140f.
16 An exception is Aram. Ba-na-at-e-ma-sá-ma-sá „La madre Samas(a) crèo“

(Fowler 225).
17 Cf. still hadòn(î) „(my) lord“ as a polite form of address or reference, followed

by the addressee’s personal name: „my lord Moses“ (Nu 11,28), „my lord Eliya“
JANER 7,2_f2_113-120 2/27/08 5:47 PM Page 119

the first documented occurence of the god yahweh? 119

compound that would constitute as a whole the theophoric element

and subject of a nominal sentence name.18 This can be compared
to the onomastic use of similar theophoric compounds, e.g. mlqrt <
mlk-qrt „Melqart; King of the city“ in Phoenician-Punic names (Benz
347f.; particularly the nominal sentence names gd-, kbd-, az-, azr-mlqrt
„Melqart is fortune/honour/strength/help (or: hero)“) or bthl „god’s
house“ in Aramaic names (Noth 127f.). ròaae is attested as an ancient
divine epithet in the Old Testament within the formula „Shepherd
(and stone) of Israel“ (Gen 49, 24b; vgl. Gen 48,15, Ps 23,1 80,2
Koh 12,11).19 In the present case, Yah appears to be the nomen rec-
tum of the expression ròaè yàh (with the nomen regens in the status con-
structus) „the shepherd of Yah“. Yah would thus be the use of the
later divine name as a toponym which, in its long form, is attested
in Egyptian toponym lists (see §1).

§5 The Significance of the Name and the Person of the Name Bearer

If we are right in assuming that the later divine name Yahweh had
its origins in a toponym and that accordingly we can postulate ròaè
yàh „the shepherd of Yah“ as the subject of the present name, this
compound would be a close parallel to the Old Testament epithet
„the shepherd of Israel“ mentioned above. The particular signifi-
cance of the personal name hadònì ròaè yàh “My lord is the shep-
herd of Yah“ would be the fact that, for the first time in history,
the god Yahweh would make his appearance as a „shepherd“ of a
region „Yah“ („Yahweh“ of the toponym lists) which is still retained
as a short form of the god’s name in the 1st millennium BC. With
regard to religious history, it is particularly noteworthy that this
first postulated worshipper of Yahweh was, by the token of his
Book of the Dead, apparently an acculturated foreigner and member

(1 Sam 29,8), „my lord Abraham“ (Gen 24,27), „the king, my lord“ (2 Sam 14,15)
(HALOT/HALAT 13; W. Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch
über das Alte Testament, 18th edition, vol. I, Berlin etc. 1987, 14). However, a
Semitic form of social reference between the Egyptian address formula („to the ka
of“) and the personal name („for the ka of the hadòn Ròaae-yàh“) would be singular.
18 There is some debate about which element in a bipartite nominal sentence

name should be considered the predicate and which the subject. In the present
case, the god’s designation seems to be more evident as a subject than the noun
indicating the deity’s function.
19 V. Maag, Der Hirt Israels, Schweiz. Theol. Umschau 28(1958), 2-28, esp. p.

8 = V. Maag, Kultur, Kulturkontakt und Religion. Gesammelte Studien zur all-

gemeinen und alttestamentlichen Religionsgeschichte. Hg. von Hans Heinrich
Schmid und Odil Hannes Steck, Göttingen 1980, 111-144, esp. pp. 120f.
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120 thomas schneider

of the Egyptian elite society who had himself buried the Egyptian
way and had therefore adopted important cultural registers of the
host society in his private life.20

References

Benz = Benz, F.L., Personal Names in the Phoenician and Punic Inscriptions
(Studia Pohl 8), Rom 1972.
Beyer = Beyer, K., Althebräische Grammatik, Göttingen 1969.
Fowler = Fowler, J.D., Theophoric Personal Names in Ancient Hebrew. A
Comparative Study ( JSOT Suppl. Series 49), Sheffield 1988.
Gelb = Gelb, I.J., Computer-Aided Analysis of Amorite, Chicago 1980.
Grøndahl = Grøndahl, F., Die Personennamen der Texte aus Ugarit (Studia
Pohl 1), Rom 1967.
HALAT = Hebräisches und Aramäisches Lexikon zum Alten Testament, 3.
neubearb. Auflage, 5 Bde, Leiden 1967-1995.
HALOT = The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 5 vols.
Translated by M.E.J. Richardson, Leiden 1994-2000.
Hess = Hess, R.S., Amarna Personal Names, Winona Lake 1993.
Hoch = Hoch, J.E., Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and
Third Intermediate Period, Princeton 1995.
Huffmon = Huffmon, H.B., Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts. A Structural
and Lexical Study, Baltimore 1965.
Kornfeld = Kornfeld, W., Onomastica Aramaica aus Ägypten, Wien 1978.
Lipi…ski = Lipi…ski, E., Studies in Aramaic Inscriptions and Onomastics I (OLA 1),
Leuven 1975.
Maraqten = M. Maraqten, Die semitischen Personennamen in den alt- und reich-
saramäischen Inschriften aus Vorderasien ( Texte und Studien zur Orientalistik 5),
Hildesheim 1988.
Noth = Noth, M., Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemein-
semitischen Namengebung, Stuttgart 1928.
Schneider = Schneider, T., Asiatische Personennamen in ägyptischen Quellen des
Neuen Reiches (OBO 114), Freiburg/ Schweiz—Göttingen 1992.
Stark = Stark, J.K. = Personal Names in Palmyrene Inscriptions, Oxford 1971.
Streck = Streck, M.P., Das amurritische Onomastikon der altbabylonischen Zeit.
Band 1: Die Amurriter. Die onomastische Forschung. Orthographie und
Phonologie. Nominalmorphologie (AOAT 271/1), Münster 2000.
Tropper = Tropper, J., Ugaritische Grammatik (AOAT 273), Münster 2000.
Zadok = Zadok, R., The Pre-Hellenistic Israelite Anthroponymy and Prosopography
(OLA 28), Leuven 1988.

20 Bearing a foreign name is a feature occurring, during the New Kingdom,

not only in the first generation of immigrants although the unusual length of the
anthroponym could favor this possibility. On the issue of the acculturation of for-
eigners in the New Kingdom cf. T. Schneider, Akkulturation—Identität—Elitekultur.
Eine Positionsbestimmung zur Frage der Existenz und des Status von Ausländern
in der Elite des Neuen Reiches, in: R. Gundlach (ed.), Der ägyptische Hof des
Neuen Reiches: Seine Gesellschaft und Kultur im Spannungsfeld zwischen Innen-
und Außenpolitik (Königtum. Staat und Gesellschaft früher Hochkulturen, 4),
Wiesbaden 2006, 201-216.