Free Republic

A proverbial heritage For 50 years, scholarship has tended to play down the interrelations between Ancient Egyptian culture and the religion of the biblical Hebrews. Jill Kamil argues it is time to re-open investigations Egyptian guards bring in pairs of Semitic prisoners (with long beards and heavy robes), their hands in long wooden manacles; the Pharaoh Akhenaten worshipping the solar orb as the creator and preserver of mankind; an Egyptian official receiving Semitic immigrants (tomb of Haremhab) Egypt is indisputably a part of the Biblical tradition. This much is clear, not only from the role the country plays in providing...

Proverbial truths in translationMany well-known sayings originated in ancient Greece; some of their Englishcounterparts may have subtle variations BY MARK DRAGOUMIS THE GREEK word ÐÁÑÏÉÌÉÁ (in Latin proverbium) has an impressive pedigree. It occurs for the first time in Aeschylus' play Agamemnon (lines 264-5) written in 458 BC. Hesychios of Alexandria, a Greek lexicographer, who lived during the 5th century AD, wrote that a proverb (ÐÁÑÏÉÌÉÁ) is a statement useful to life, which is said by-the-way, along the road as it were, ÏÉÌÏÓ - meaning road. Another theory has it that the word originated from the short, sharp, epigrammatic slogans...