HERMOUNTS

Lehite GN	Wilderness area "infested by wild and ravenous beasts" (Alma 2:37).

Etymology

Hugh Nibley compared the Greek GN Hermónthis, the Graecized transliteration of the Upper EGYPTIAN nome around Thebes^[1] *Ḥr-Mnṯw = the god of Iwnw-Mnṯw,^[2] the sanctuary of *Ḥr-Mnṯw, the falcon-headed warrior-god Month, whose name is often written with a falcon on a standard as the divine determinative (Sinuhe, B 206)^[3] = Coptic Ermont and Rmont (Arabic ʿArmant). EGPTIAN Month/Mendes is, of course, the equivalent of the Greek god Pan, god of wild places and things.^[4]

In the New World the name may be analogous to the Mexican wilderness of Tehuantepec "Hill of Wild Beasts," from Nahuatl tecuani + tepec.^[5] This is merely indicative of the types of translated forms into which a Book of Mormon toponym might be converted in the course to time, as different peoples move into an area and adopt certain aspects of local culture. Such was true over the centuries of many of the toponyms adopted by new peoples moving into and taking over sites in the Holy Land, whether by conquest or via slow adaptation.^[6]

See MANTI, MORMON.

RFS

Variants

Deseret Alphabet: 𐐐𐐊𐐡𐐣𐐂𐐤𐐓𐐝 (hʌrmɑːnts)

Notes

↑ In his first Improvement Era series (1948), and recently repeated in his article on the "Near Eastern Background of the Book of Mormon," in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism (1992), I:190; cf. Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, V:27, 32; VII: 169-170.
↑ Jaroslav Černý, Coptic Etymological Dictionary. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976.), 345, 351.
↑ Raymond O. Faulkner. A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian. (Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1962), 110.
↑ H. Nibley, Since Cumorah, 192 = CWHN VII:169-170.
↑ Meleseo Ortego Martinez, Reseña Historico de Tehuantepec (Oaxaca, 1998), 5, cited by Lawrence Poulsen in FARMS Review, 19/2 (2007):16-19.
↑ Yohanan Aharoni, The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography, 2^nd ed., trans. A.F. Rainey (Phila.: Westminster, 1979).