IRREANTUM
| Lehite GN | 1. | Sea, most likely off the Arabian coast, meaning “many waters” (1 Nephi 17:5) |
IRREANTUM may be composed of four elements: a prosthetic aleph, the root rwy, the nominalizing affix -an, and the root tmm. Together, these four elements would yield the literal meaning, “abundant watering of completeness.” This meaning is an acceptable match with the translation given in 1 Nephi 17:5, “many waters.” Footnote 1.
The root rwy is common to the West Semitic languages and has the general meaning “thorough watering, to water plentifully.” Footnote 2. That IRREANTUM has a doubled /r/ does not present any problems. None of the West Semitic languages originally indicated in the orthography the doubling of consonants. (Akkadian, the East Semitic language group, did indicate on occasion the doubling of a consonant.) Not until more than a thousand years after the time of Lehi were diacritical marks introduced into written Hebrew and Arabic that indicated the doubling of a consonant. However, the pronunciation of the doubled consonants in Lehi’s day is certain, both on the basis of comparative Semitics and because the doubling Semitic languages is phonemic.
The /i/ that precedes the doubled /r/ is also easily explained as either a prosthetic aleph added to the name to break up a consonant cluster,(Footnote 3) or as the aleph of the South Semitic definite article 'il. When the article is pronounced together with the noun that follows it, the/l/ assimilates to the following consonant, doubling it. Footnote 4. Supporting this interpretation of the first two elements of IRREANTUM is the existence of a pre-Islamic city/village name ʾrwy, (Footnote 5) exactly what might be expected from the combination of a prosthetic aleph or an assimilated definite article and the root rwy. The first part of IRREANTUM would then be ’rrȇ-<*’rrey-<*rwey-.
The element -ān is a common affix (a particle appended to a word) used in all the Semitic languages, including ancient South Semitic. It occurs Aespecially in abstracts, (Footnote 6)meaning abstract nouns, similar to the use of the affix "-ship" in the English word "kingship." An abstraction from "watering" seems to fit the requirement here that IRREANTUM have something to do with "water." Footnote 7.
The final element, tmm, could well be the common West Semitic root meaning “complete, whole; innocent, perfect; etc. Both the noun form and the infinitive form in Hebrew are tōm, which reverts to its earliest form, tūm, when it is not stressed. Together with the first part of IRREANTUM, the name would mean, somewhat literally, “abundant watering of completeness,” or “fully abundant waters.” That Irrean and tum are separate words would also explain why the /n/ does not assimilate to the following /t/, which always happens within a word of Hebrew origin, but not when the /n/ ends one word and the /t/ begins another.
It is possible that the Akkadian city name URUa-ri-ia-an-ta in north-west Syria (Michael .C. Astour, “The Partition of the Confederacy of Mukiš-Nuhašše-Nii by Šuppiluliuma,” Orientalia 38 [1969] 410) could be etymologically related to IRREANTUM. (PYH)
Several Egyptian etymologies have been proposed. Hugh W. Nibley privately suggested as possible sources r3-ʿntyw-m, and r3-n(n)-t3[]wm-dšr, which are variant readings in the Louvre and British Museum manuscripts of a mythological papyrus. The second instance may mean something like “mouth of the Red Sea.” Footnote 8. The first attestation, which ends in a water sign suggesting group writing for –um, “waters,” was interpreted by Siegfried Schott as the “mouth of ʿnty-waters, (Footnote 9) with the dual of ʿnt, “finger, ten thousand” (perhaps to be associated with the dual or plural of ḏb`), which might be taken as the philological equivalent of the Hebrew rb, rbb, “myriad, ten thousand,” the highest number in Hebrew for which there is a word (RFS, “Egyptianisms”). Footnote 10.
Hugh W. Nibley also points out 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.).
Notes
1. The fact that Nephi provides a translation of the transliterated name may indicate that some or all of the name may not have been completely transparent to native Hebrew speakers.
2. The root rwy appears in Hebrew and other North-west Semitic languages. For example, Hebrew has rwh, which has the following meanings in its various verbal forms: Qal, to drink one’s fill, to be refreshed; Piel, to give to drink abundantly, water thoroughly; and Hifʿil, to water thoroughly. (See Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, CD-ROM version [Leiden: Brill], under rwh.) In Ugaritic, the root occurs also in a personal name, bn rwy, but the meaning of the name is uncertain. (See Frauke Gröndahl, Die Personennamen der Texte aus Ugarit, Studia Pohl 1 [Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1967], 312.) In South Semitic languages, the area where the land of Bountiful is located, the root also appears. For example, in inscriptional Qatabanian, the root rwy means "irrigation system" (Stephen D. Ricks, Lexicon of Inscriptional Qatabanian [Roma: Editrice Pontifico Istituto Biblico], 153). In Sabaic, yhrwy[n] means to "provide with irrigation," while rwym is a well, or watering place. (See Joan Copeland Biella, Dictionary of Old South Arabic: Sabean Dialect. Harvard Semitic Studies 25 [Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982], 482.) Finally, in modern Arabic, the root rwy is associated with water for drinking and irrigation. See Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts (Beirut, Lebanon: Librairie du Liban, 1980), 3:1194B1195.
3. Other instances of prosthetic aleph in Hebrew include ʾeṣbaʿ ʾarbaʿ, and ʾezrôaʿ. Spanish also prefixes a prosthetic vowel before the initial /st/ consonant cluster, e.g., Estefan instead of Stefan.
4. As I will later point out, there seem to be reasons to believe that this name given to this place name may have been influenced by South Arabian, where it is located.
5. G. Lankester Harding, An Index and Concordance of Pre-Islamic Arabian Names and Inscriptions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 38. (I have not yet been able to find the location of the town based on the information provided, partly because the BYU library does not have the relevant sources.) In addition, there are family, clan, and/or tribe names in pre-Islamic inscriptions, such as rwyn and rwym, containing the root rwy, which in the Arabic form rawiy means "abundant, well watered" (see Harding, 291). I thank my friend and colleague, Brian Hauglid, for drawing my attention to this entry in Lankester Harding.
6. Sabatino Moscati and others, An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1969), 82, '12.21
7. Some people may argue that the element as rendered here, cannot be a Hebrew form of the affix. Due to the so-called Canaanite shift in Hebrew, where other Semitic languages have an (accented) long /ā/, Hebrew and a few other North-west Semitic languages have a long /ō/. Thus, this common Semitic affix, -ān, became -ōn in Hebrew. There are however examples of -ān remaining -ān in Hebrew, e.g., šulhān, "table," and qorbān, "offering" or "sacrifice." See Moscati, 82, '12.21. However, since the first part of IRREANTUM is attested as a place name in Arabia, and since IRREANTUM is most likely located on the southern coast of Arabia, it should not be surprising to find the regular South Semitic form of this affix and not the usual Hebrew form -ōn.
8. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, XXX
9. Schott, Urkunden Mythologischen Inhalts.
10. Higher numbers must be expressed by combinations of lesser numbers. It is interesting to note that in the Nephite sections of the Book of Mormon, the highest numbers expressed are in thousands. Only in the Jaredite section does the number “million” appear.
Bibliography
Paul Y. Hoskisson, with Brian Hauglid and John Gee, “Irreantum,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 11,1 (2002): 90-93.
