Note. Since the publication of this article, a dear correspondent informed me that the 13th century Scala Magna by Ibn Kabar has entries for elephant, ivory, and trunk. They are as follows:
The forms given for the elephant may be a copyist error. Note that the words for ivory comes in the plural.
Though this corrects my statement in the article that the Middle Age Coptic dictionaries (Salalim) do not include a word for elephant, it does not alter the gist of the article. My purpose of writing the article was to find native words for elephant and ivory. As with the rooster (see my article about the rooster here), I do not think the Egyptians did not have a native word for the elephant. And my purpose was to find that word.
What is elephant in Coptic language? It seems to be an easy question, but it transpires not to be so, judging from the confusion we have inmodern Coptic dictionaries. To begin with, older dictionaries (that is the salalim of the Middle Ages) are not helpful and do not include a word for elephant. Walter Crum in his monumental Coptic Dictionary does not also mention a word in Coptic for elephant.[1] With the absence of a word for elephant we are also at a loss for a word for ivory. A word for elephant’s trunk though exists (benji), a Bohairic word as one finds it in Crum’s dictionary.
It seems annoying that Coptic lexicology is deficient when it comes to my favourite animal – the elephant. The Bible, in its both Old Testament and New Testament, does not mention the elephant, although it mentions its ivory.[2] Had the Bible had a mention of the elephant the Copts would most probably have had a word for it in their old dictionaries.
Does that mean that the ancient Egyptians and the Copts did not know the elephant, and therefore do not seem to have a word for it? One has to be careful in passing that judgement for many reasons. For one, they had a native word for the elephant’s trunk. If we don’t have a word for elephant this does not mean that we didn’t have a word for it – it may just mean that Coptic manuscripts that contained the word have disappeared. But the strongest evidence against this suggestion is to be found in history, archaeology, art, linguistics, and geographical names.
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We know that exotic animals, like giraffes, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, leopards, lions, and elephants formed part of the normal fauna of Egypt in the Early Predynastic Period (3050 – 2613 BC), and some of these animals appear in Egypt’s early hunting scenes. Gradually, these animals, including the elephant, became extinct. It is, therefore, natural that the Egyptians had a word for ‘animal’. After that, such animals were imported from Nubia and other countries south of Egypt. Up to the nineteenth century elephants roamed many parts of Sudan in its eastern and western parts (Kassala, Qadarif, Kordofan, and Darfur), but today, as their habitat disappeared, elephants are confined to the South of Sudan.
The Theban tomb of Rekhmire (TT 100) from the Eighteenth Dynasty has paintings that show Nubian tribute bearers with a cheetah, giraffe, monkey, baboon, and leopard; and they too carry elephant tusks.[3]
Archaeological excavations have also provided evidence of the presence of elephants in Egypt at an earlier stage. In 2014, tomb at the ancient Egyptian settlement, Hierakonpolis settlement was explored and revealed astonishing results that tells us a lot, including about Egypt’s exotic animals. Hierakonpolis (Hawk City) is the Greek name given to the Pre-dynastic settlement in Upper Egypt called by the Egyptians ‘Nekhen’ (the Arabs of Egypt calls it ‘الكوم الأحمر’, al-Koam al-Ahmar, lit. ‘the Red Mound’. It is located on the west side of the Nile some 70 miles north of Aswan, and used to be the religious and political capital of Upper Egypt at the end of prehistoric Egypt (c. 3200–3100 BC) and may be during the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3100–2686 BC) too. It is one of the richest Predynastic burials that archaeologists have ever seen, and has revealed many interesting objects and bones of exotic animals, such as baboons, hippos, leopards, ostrich, elephants.[4]
The knowledge of elephants in Egypt did not end then. Elephants continued to be known in Egypt until late. Evidence for the presence of elephants in Egypt comes from the Ptolemaic Period from the fortified city of Berenike (Berenice), the ancient Egyptian seaport on the Red Sea, which was built by Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BC) in 275 BC. In it, archaeologists discovered a piece of an elephant skull.
Elephants were part of the ancient trade between Egypt and the Horn of Africa, and were used as war mounts. DNA study has confirmed that the elephant whose skull bone was excavated at Bernike was most probably imported from Eritrea.[6]
Linguistically, both the elephant and the elephant tusk constituted signs in Egyptian hieroglyphic. The elephant is called in Egyptian ‘ꜣbw’ while the tusk is called ‘ibḥ’.[7] Some say that the word sounding ‘abu’ indicates both the elephant and its tusk.[8]
The Nile island of Elephantine (in Greek, Ἐλεφαντίνη), in Aswan in Upper Egypt, which the Arabs call ‘جزيرة الفنتين’ (Gazirat al-Fantin) is actually called in Ancient Egyptian ‘ꜣbw’.
E. Amélineau in his La géographie de l’Égypte à l’époque copte mentions Elephantine and says that in all the discovered Greek papyri from Egypt the town appears in its Greek name, but he also gives its ancient Egyptian name as ‘Abou”.[9] Amélineau, however, does not give a Coptic name for it.
Wikipedia says the Coptic name for Elephantine is ‘(Ⲉ)ⲓⲏⲃ’ but it does not give a reference.[10] It is possible that the Egyptian name ‘ꜣbw’ is Aramean as the Encyclopaedia Iranica says that the Greek name of Elephantine is the Greek version of the ancient Egyptian ‘Ibw’, which means as it says, “the country of the elephants”, in Aramaic ‘Yb’.[11] Encyclopedia.com says about the etymology of Elephantine: “Elephantine (Aram. יֵב, yb; Eg. ‘ ibw, ‘ bw; Gr. ieb), “the city of ivories).[12] I am not sure of the Aramaean connection, but it is possibly related to the presence of the Jewish mercenaries who formed a garrison at Elephantine from the 26th Dynasty onwards. Their presence increased during the next dynasty, the 27th Dynasty, which was Persian and spoke Aramaic.
Was the word for elephant in ancient Egyptian actually a loanword from Aramaic or was it the other way round? Anyway, we know that the ancient Egyptians called the elephant ‘ꜣbw’ and its tusk ‘ibh’. There is evidence for that. But, what about the Wikipedia claim that the equivalent Coptic word for it is ‘(Ⲉ)ⲓⲏⲃ’? We have seen that Wikipedia does not give a reference, but Jaroslav Černý in his Coptic Etymological Dictionary gives the Coptic name for Elephantine:[13]
Elephantine then in Coptic is iib. Černý says that it is attested for only once in Coptic literature. It does seem similar to a large extent to the Egyptian for elephant ‘ꜣbw’. We can, therefore, take it that it is also the word for elephant, which agrees with Gardiner.
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As the modern Copts try to revive their Coptic language, they naturally would like to find words for common animals, and the elephant is one of those animals they try to find a Coptic word for, but it seems a difficult task and often confusing rather than settling the matter. The largest modern Coptic dictionary is that of Mu’awad Da’od Abdel Nour (2014), but he gives no word for the elephant. However, Abdel Nour gives the Bohairic word for trunk (benji) and a Greek word for ivory (elevantinoc) in its Coptic rendering.
ἐλεφάντινος is indeed related to ivory in Ancient Greek but as an adjective (meaning ‘of ivory’) and not a noun. The noun ‘ivory’ in Ancient Greek is actually ‘ἐλεφάντινον’, and in its Coptic rendering should be, ‘elevantinon’. The table below contains also the equivalent word in Modern Greek (and also the words for elephant and trunk in both).
| Word | Ancient Greek | Modern Greek |
| Elephant | ἐλέφας | ελέφαντας |
| Ivory | ἐλεφάντινον | ελεφαντόδοντο[14] |
| Trunk | ἐλέφας | κορμός ελέφαντα |
Did Abdel Nour include elevantinoc in his dictionary as a matter of new borrowing, or did he find that this word is already borrowed in Coptic manuscripts by ancient Copts? We have no idea, as often modern Copts who produce new words do not give attestation to them in Coptic manuscripts. Anyway, it seems that he had taken that word from Ekladious Labib who is known to have tried to introduce new words into Coptic, some of them through new borrowing from Greek. Adeeb Makar in his The Abbreviated Coptic-English Dictionary (2001) uses the same word as a noun. Father Arsani in his Naqlun Dictionary uses it too, but rightly as an adjective. Father Andrias al-Maqari uses the right Greek form for the noun.[15]
So far, I have focused on the word for ivory, but what about the Coptic word for elephant in modern dictionaries? Here, we are confronted with another confusion. Father Maximous Kabs uses the Ancient Greek word for ivory (ἐλεφάντινον) as a word for elephant (elevantinon) in Coptic, while Nabil Mikhail uses again the Ancient Greek word ‘ἐλέφας’ for the animal in Coptic (elevac)! But what is more curious is the word ‘iab’ which is used for elephant by Father Andrias al-Maqari, Magdi Ayad, and Father Arsani of Naqaun. This word has been introduced without explanation as to its origin or attestation from Coptic manuscripts given.
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So far, we have seen that the Ancient Egyptians used ‘ꜣbw’ for the elephant and ‘ibḥ’ for ivory. We have a word for the elephant’s trunk (binji) from the Bohairic dialect which is not contested. We have also seen that ‘iib’ is used by the Copts to mean Elephantine, and it was most probably also used for the elephant. All other suggested words for elephant or ivory seem to have been taken from Ancient Greek, but with much confusion. The word ‘iab’ given by some Copts for the elephant does sound Coptic but no explanation or attestation to it has been given.
Can the KELLIA Coptic Dictionary Online[16] help us here? The beauty of this online dictionary is that it gives the word and its attestation, in addition it tells us which Coptic dialect it comes from.
Apart from trunk, for which a native Coptic word is used, we can see that the KELLIA Dictionary uses Greek words for both elephant and ivory. This is ok, because they came in Coptic manuscripts, and have, like many other Greek words, been integrated in Coptic and naturalised.
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But, as we go about the business of building up our lexical stock, we must follow a clear strategy and pathway. Word formation in Coptic must follow a route true to its nature: that means it must rely on its roots in the first instance. And by talking about the roots of the Coptic language I mean the lexical roots (stems) of Coptic and its historical linguistic roots, that is, Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, and Demotic. If we cannot find a word in our linguistic historical roots, we must invent one using Coptic lexical roots. Only if we can’t do that, or when a modern word in other languages is so dominant, must we then resort to borrowing from other languages. And in this process, in my opinion, Greek and English ought to come first.
So, what should be the Coptic words for the elephant, its ivory, and its trunk be bearing in mind the above understanding?
Here is what I suggest:
[1] Walter Crum, A Coptic Dictionary (Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1939).
[2] Some scholars, however, think that the word elephant exists, being compounded with the Hebrew word for ivory, as mentioned in 1 Kings 10:22, and traditionally been taken to mean ivory alone. They claim it should be read ‘elephant ivory’. The reader could consult Claude Mariottini, Elephants in the Bible (August 18, 2014).
[3] Rosalind and Jack Janssen, Egyptian Household Animals (Shire Egyptology, Aylesbury, 1989), pp. 55-56.
[4] Andrew Curry in National Geographic: Artifact Trove at Egyptian Tomb Illuminates Life Before Pharaohs
Archaeologist uncovers human sacrifices and evidence of strife (June 1, 2014). See also: Traci Watson in National Geographic: In Ancient Egypt, Life Wasn’t Easy for Elite Pets (May 25, 2015).
[5] Photograph by Renee Friedman, Courtesy of Hierakonpolis Expedition. See second reference in n.2.
[6] Owen Jarus in LiveScience: This 2,300-Year-Old Egyptian Fortress Had an Unusual Task: Guarding a Port That Sent Elephants to War (January 3, 2019).
[7] Alan Gardiner, List of Hieroglyphic Signs in Egyptian Grammar (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1927).
[8] Egyptian Household Animals, p. 55.
[9] E. Amélineau, La géographie de l’Égypte à l’époque copte (Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1893), pp. 161-162.
[10] Wikipedia: Elephantine.
[11] Encyclopaedia Iranica: Elephantine.
[12] Encyclopedia.com: Elephantine.
[13] J. Černý in his Coptic Etymological Dictionary (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 345.
[14] This word basically means the elephant’s tooth.
[15] Nabil Sabri Ishaak, Coptic Neologism (2018), p. 38.
[16] Coptic Dictionary Online, ed. by the Koptische/Coptic Electronic Language and Literature International Alliance (KELLIA), https://coptic-dictionary.org/