FIF?EEXTT XOR?H IIERICA}I COIIFEREIICE OT AFROASIA?IC LIXCUISTICS 25-26 llarch 1987, Loa Angalca THE CI]NEITORM LTST OF EGYPTIAN WORDS FROM A}IARNA: HOW USEFUL IS IT REALL! FOR RECONSTBUCTING THE VOCAIIZATION OF EGYPTIAN? Edmund S. Meltzer The Claremont Graduate School The cunei-form vocabulary of Egyptian words found at Amarna was regarded by early commentators as possibly the work of "an Asiatic scribe learning Egyptian" (snrith and Gadd, JEA 11 [1925]: 23L) or "part of a manual for insrructing Egyprians i-n cuneiform' Prepared by a syro-Mitannian teacher" (Albright, JEA 12 tlg26): lgB, n. 4). Recent work on the recovery of Egyptian vocalj.zation, grg. Osingrs Die Nominarbildung des !.gyptischen, has utilized this rext without considering the significance of the possibility that its author riras not a native speaker of Egyptian. LIe would suggest that: 1 ' The at least possible non-native-speaker ori,gin of rrany of the cuneiform transcriptions of Egyptian in the Amarna and other Late Bronze cuneiform texts, and their being filtered through the cuneiform writing system, shoul cl recom- srend caution i'n the attempt Eo uL. them in a precise, mechanical reconstruction of Egyptian; 2' The reconstructions generally presented have largely heuristic value and assume an unrealistic or at least unproven degree of standardization in the language being reconstructed; 3' The proposed reconstruetions gloss over differences between cuneiform transcrip- tions of the same Egypti"an item; 4 ' The selfsame cuneiform transcription can often without difficulty be accouuno- dated by competing reconstructions; 5' When dealing with transcriptions which were or may have been made by scribes who were native speakers of Egyptian' we must pose the question of whether these scribes, being accustomed to writing their own l-anguage in an unvocalized seript, would be punctiliously consistent in the rendering of vowels in cuneiform.