A moment of joy! Now ....tell me...

Posted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on May 13, 2000 at 10:39:43:

In Reply to: Of Tenderness and Henna posted by Babaganooj on May 12, 2000 at 20:21:32:

Definitely a moment of joy!

Your discussion of the connection of henna and tenderness
linguistically is one I've been looking at in the dictionary for
ages....(the Wehr Arabic-English). Thank you, thank you!

Now ..... if I can ask further.....
Looks like in Ugaritic (2000 BCE Syria) the root for henna is KPR, .
I'm guessing this is related to Kopher in ancient Egyptian and Cyprium
and Camphire in Latin. However the root for the word "red" in the
Canaanite language is "chna" which I believe to be related to the
Greek Kino for henna, and henna in the Semitic languages. Am I on the
right track here?
Here's a further hunch ..... which seems to have been tripping up
scholars previously .... does the KPR root refer to the same plant as
CHNA? Is the difference because of the different linguistic groups,
or do the two words refer to the two different uses of the plant: KPR
referring to the flowers and perfume and CHNA referring to the leaves
used for dye? I found a Babylonian text that uses both, and in the
context, it makes sense that both perfume and dye were being used in
the same preparation; that would incline me to believe that the two
words expressing different uses of the same plant (like wheat and
straw) .
Of course, after the 6th century and spread of Arabic with Islam,
things get a whole heck of a lot simpler.

I've been craving a good linguist to talk to about this for AGES! I am
absolutely thrilled to find someone to ask these questions to!
I work with Arabic in henna patterns because that was part of henna in
the 10th to 15 centuries, (parallel to the calligraphy in art) and I
am fascinated with it, but I've never been any good at learning other
languages. I just try to copy without messing up.

And I would love to see that bazaar in Aleppo. I know it was full of
henna, textiles, wonderful things 4000 years ago ..... (still waiting
for repairs on the transporter beam AND the time machine)

You've been through a US university? (sorry about Americans ....
chronically thick subspecies) Which one? I did UCLA and I teach at
Kent State.

Follow Ups:

• Re: A moment of joy! Now ....tell me... Babaganooj 23:04:54 5/13/00 (2)
  • Woops some typos Babaganooj 23:24:08 5/13/00 (1)
    • Bedouins, and more linguistic shifts Catherine Cartwright Jones 11:30:12 5/14/00 (0)