IRREANTUM

Lehite GN

Sea, most likely off the Arabian coast, meaning “many waters” (1 Nephi 17:5)

IRREANTUM is composed of four elements: a prosthetic aleph, the root rwy, the nominalizing element -ān, and the root tmm.

Normally in the west-Semitic languages if a consonant is doubled in pronunciation, it is not doubled in the writing. (Footnote 1). But the spelling of IRREANTUM in the Book of Mormon indicates that the initial /r/ of the root rwy is doubled in pronunciation. The presence of the prosthetic aleph before rwy would also indicate that the /r/ is doubled. (Footnote 2). Thus, back-transcribed into Hebrew, it would be 'rrê-<*'rwey-. (Footnote 3).

The best suggestion for an etymology comes from Egyptian, r3-ʿntyw-m, and r3-n(n)-t3[]wm-dšr, names for the mouth of the Red Sea in both the Louvre and British Museum mss. of a mythological papyrus. In the first we have the dual of ʿnt, “finger, ten thousand,” of which the second is the philological equivalent of the Hebrew rb, rbb, “myriad, ten thousand,” the highest number in Hebrew for which there is a word (RFS, “Egyptianisms”).

Nibley also points that “one of the more common Egyptian names for the Red Sea was Iaru...[which] is not Egyptian...[and whose] meaning is unknown,” and that “antum” from iny-t and ʿnjt both describe large bodies of water (SC, 196). Also note that “many waters” is a typical Egyptian designation, e.g., Fayyum (SC, 195).

As attractive as the Egyptian etymologies are, Semitic sources should not be overlooked. My colleague, Brian Hauglid, drew my attention to the root rwy in South Semitic dialects. In North-west Semitic dialects it means to “saturate oneself, . . . to saturate, . . . to irrigate, . . . to be saturated.” He also made me aware that the “-tum” may consist of the feminine marker “t” and the nominative singular ending “-um.” In the South Semitic dialects, the “n” does not always to assimilate when not followed by a vowel to the following consonant. The fact that Nephi gave us a translation of the name probably means that “Irreantum” was not a word in the language that constituted the language of the plates.

Confer the city name URUa-ri-ia-an-ta in North-west Syria [M.C. Astour, “The Partition of the Confederacy of Mukiš-Nuhašše-Nii by Šuppiluliuma,” Orientalia 38 (1969): 410].

See also the king of Ashdod during Sennacherib’s Third Campaign, Mi-ti-in-ti (Col II, line 54).

Cf. Book of Mormon ANTUM, et al., MORIANTUM, CORIANTUM

Notice that not all Semitic languages regularly assimilate the “n”. E.g., RS 8.145:26 ta-na-an-din, “she shall give.”

Mandaic, I am told, does not always assimilate the “n” to a following dental.

See also Irreantum Variant

New Footnote to be linked, 1: Special diacritical marks are used in Hebrew and Arabic to indicate that a consonant is to be doubled. The doubling of consonants in the Semitic languages is phonemic, and therefore cannot be ignored.

New Footnote to be linked, 2: It could also be that the presence of the initial aleph would precipitate the doubling of the following consonant.

New Footnote to be linked, 3: Other instances of prosthetic aleph in Hebrew include 'arba' and...

Notes

RFS