Kehek language

The Kehek language was spoken by the Kehek people of Ancient Libya. It is the earliest written non-Semitic and non-Egyptian Afroasiatic language. It is only attested scarcely in papyrus texts written in hieratic, pertaining to snake magic, written during the New Kingdom era. Whether other ancient Libyans such as the Meshwesh or the Libu spoke the same language as the Kehek is unknown.^[1] The language might also be the earliest example of a written down Berber, or Proto-Berber variety though its nature as a fragmentary text makes it hard to identify as anything other than Afro-Asiatic.^[2]

The language's phonemic inventory seems very similar to the currently proposed phonology of Proto-Berber, even more so than Egyptian, Semitic, or the Nilo-Saharan languages.^[2]

Full text of the best preserved part of the papyrus in Kehek:^[3]

yꜣ-wꜣ-y ṯꜣ-r-mꜣ-tj

j-smj tj-t-yw-t [mꜣ] ṯꜣ-r-mꜣ-tj

j-smj jw-š -mj-š-tj-n-kꜣ ṯꜣ-r-mꜣ-t

j-smj tꜣ-š ṯꜣ-r-mꜣ-tj

j-smj mꜣ-n-qꜣ-nꜣ-ṯꜣ-r-mꜣ-tj

j-smj j-ṯꜣ-r-bw ṯꜣ-r-mꜣ-tj mꜣ-y

j-smj š-h-j-pꜣ-tꜣ ṯꜣ-r-mꜣ-tj

The papyrus is located int the university of Turin, and has been previously misinterpreted as being a war chant, though it's now known that it is a chant against snakes.^[4][5]

The only verifiable word in the text is ṯꜣ-r-mꜣ, probably meaning snake. As it was written in hieratic, many of the language's consonants may not have been present in Hieratic, however ṯꜣ is known to have been used in other texts transliterating other languages (mainly semitic ones) to mark sounds such as zˤ. If this was the case, it would mean that Kehek "zˤ-r-m-t" (possibly vocalized as "aẓramat") shares the same consonantal root for the word as modern Berber "zˤrm" (for example, Kabyle aẓrem), also meaning snake.^[4][6] Other words that don't have known meaning but may be identified with modern Berber cognates are the following: