Agree with most everything except wondering if last bird is a forked tail swallow or a sparrow maybe? Per Budge's dictionary p.cxxvi entry 53 issa kite. In any case we have "land Shasu YHWA [tetragrammaton?]".
For biblical archaeology this could well be the Midianite land of Qeturah whose father Yithro introduced Moish to the El[ohiym] of Yisra'el, though iirc AEL has direct terms for Midian.
In the excavation report and all other publications following this initial reading, the final sign is classed as G43 bird (w), but this was a mistake, and the sign is clearly the G1 falcon representing aleph.30The same final sign, G1 falcon, is also found in the Amara West list. Therefore, the correct transcription of this hieroglyphic phrase on Column IV at the Soleb temple is tASAswyhwA. Since the word or-der infers that the construct is being used, the phrase translates as the “land of the nomads of yhwA.” This appears to be equivalent to the deity name Yhwh known from West Semitic texts.31 The bound prisoner motif also implies that these SAsw nomads of yhwA were an alleged “conquered” or “subdued” people. As discussed previously, there is no land determinative, and therefore yhwA is probably a per-sonal name, not a place name, nor is there a nTr “god” sign or honor-ific transposition, indicating that yhwA was not a deity worshipped in Egypt. The above criteria demonstrate that the translation should be the “land of the nomads of Yahweh,” not “Yahweh in the land of the nomads,” which does not follow grammatically or in the context of the other SAsw groups associated with names in the Soleb inscriptions
Depicted on the columns of the hall in relief, the bound prison-ers are rendered differently according to region or ethnic group. On the various pillars, some are depicted as Nubian, some as Canaanite, some as Syrian, and some as SAsw. Although many columns are bro-ken and the heads are missing from several of the bound prisoner reliefs at Soleb, including Column IV N4, the SAsw associated with yhwA appear to have been depicted as Semitic SAsw according to the immediate context at Soleb and the preserved prisoner reliefs list-ing the same SAsw groups on the Amara West list. Due to the geo-graphical context of the nearby inscriptions, and the general area in which the Egyptians placed the SAsw according to New Kingdom texts, these yhwA-associated nomads would have roamed somewhere in the southern Levant, and in particular the area of either Sinai, Edom, Moab, Transjordan, or Canaan. For example, texts of Ramess-es II, Merneptah, and Rameses III refer to SAsw in the Edom area.32Based upon known geography, the Egyptians seem to have regarded the SAsw as a prominent part of the population of the areas referred to as Edom, Moab, and southern Transjordan.33 Egyptian texts of the New Kingdom often mention nomadic people living east of Egypt, even specifying that some were tent dwellers – the SAsw are specifi-cally referred to as tent dwellers in Papyrus Harris I, 76: 9–10, which further suggests the mobile lifestyle of a nomad.34 Beginning slight-ly earlier, in the Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550 bce), documents de-scribe the existence of “extraurban” people, or a nomadic segment of society in Canaan and the nearby regions.35 The Amarna Letters and 18th- and 19th-dynasty Egyptian texts repeatedly mention no-madic people such as SAsw, sutu, and in some cases possibly ‘apiru, living in Canaan and the adjacent wilderness areas during the peri-od in which the SAsw cartouches were inscribed at Soleb.36 The term SAsw, known from Egyptian sources of the 18th Dynasty through the Third Intermediate Period, is typically interpreted as referring to a social group of nomads in the southern Levant region, and Egyp-tian records imply significant numbers of SAsw in this area.37 It is ac-knowledged that archaeologically these groups are difficult to trace, as most “evidence for enclosed nomadism in the southern Levant is textual. References to groups such as [...] the SAsw, either a class des-ignation or an ethnic attribution,” are viewed as belonging to the nomadic population east of Egypt in the Late Bronze Age, but the ancient texts clearly place the SAsw nomads of Egyptian texts in the southern Levant, including the regions of Sinai, Edom, and Moab.38Because nomads are mentioned often in texts from the period, espe-cially in 18th- and 19th-dynasty military texts, they likely made up a noticeable portion of the regional population, and therefore the naming of several SAsw groups on the Soleb pillars represents the idea that multiple nomadic groups or tribes lived around the Levant and east of Egypt in the New Kingdom period.
A2, O4, G43, M17, G43 and the determinative for foreign land N25.48Conversely, it has also been suggested that the earliest inscription in which the name yhwA appears is from a Moabite text called the Mesha Stele in the 9th century bce. This may be true if referring to alphabetic inscriptions. However, both Column IV N4 a2 and Block 69 from the Soleb temple contain, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, the ear-liest reference to the name yhwA around 1400 bce. The uniqueness of this name, its association with a nomadic group east of Egypt, and the contextual and linguistic implications that the name refers to a deity rather than a specific geographic location, suggests that this is an Egyptian rendering of the deity Yahweh, known from other ancient texts as the monotheistic god worshipped by the ancient Is-raelites.49 Since the only ancient people known to have worshipped a deity named yhwA (Yahweh) in ancient times were the Hebrews or Israelites, it also logically follows that these particular SAsw nomads associated with yhwA could be identified with the early Israelites before they became a sedentary population in Canaan, and that the Egyptians had familiarity with this group and this deity during the 18th dynasty and the end of the 15th century bce.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
What Kennedy calls a falcon Budge called a kite (a kite is a hi-soaring bird for all you non-rurals).
I carefully compared the stele to Budge's dictionary bird list and decided for kite over falcon. But I'm officially senior so maybe the word is obsolete this millenia. Either glyph name the sound's still the same, A.
For the ornithologists: In 1824, Vigors[2] proposed five divisions or stirpes of the family Falconidae: Aquilina (eagles), Accipitrina (hawks), Falconina (falcons), Buteonina (buzzards) and Milvina (kites, containing two genera Elanus and Milvus). He characterized the kites as having weaker bill and feebler talons than the buzzards, tail more or less forked, and wings longer than the tail.
