A hint of Kemet in Tanach?

 According to Wikipedia, the Egyptian name for Egypt was not Mitzrayim (*gasp*) nor even Egypt (which is Greek *double gasp*) but Kemet, which is apparently Egyptian (or Kemetian?) for "black land" (something about the richness of Nile soil). One could sort of twist that to form the name Cham - חם, who was of course the father of Mitzrayim. With that said, I noticed something interesting today in the Book of Yehoshua:

It is well-known that until not long before Am Yisrael came to Eretz Yisrael, the Egyptian maintained here a strong presence. Many Egyptian artifacts have been found in digs all around Israel. However, to my knowledge and understandings, their presence here was hardly ever reflected in place-names. Rabbi Ahron Marcus in his essay "Of The Jewish Chronology" mentions in a footnote Citri's (not sure who he was) view that the name Ma'ayan Mei Nafto'ach - מעין מי נפתוח (Yehoshua 15:9 and 18:15) comes from Merneptah and that his real name was Menephtach (more similar to Mei Nafto'ach). Another possibility is that it comes from one of the early Egyptian groups, the Naftuchim. But that's really out of the ordinary. In general, place-names in Canaan are Semitic.

But as I said, I noticed something interesting today:

Kemet in modern Hebrew is spelled כמת, per Wikipedia. I don't know how ancient Hebrews would have spelled it, but in Yehoshua 16:6 and 17:7 there's a place called Hamichmetet - המכמתת - same root of כמת! Pretty cool, I thought. Neither Bar Daroma's book on places in ancient Israel nor Da'at Mikra offered any meanings for the name, so who knows, perhaps my guess is accurate. Perhaps Hamichmetet was some sort of Egyptian outpost or even a whole colony (according to Da'at Mikra, the addition of the Heh at the beginning may point to it being a whole area and not just a specific town or city)?

On that note, a more famous place is Michmas (next post will probably feature a nice story about the place), which in Hebrew is spelled pretty similar to Hamichmetet - מכמש or מכמס. Perhaps they're etymologically related?

(The Merneptah Stele - image taken from here)


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