Abstract
The first part of my series „Layers of the oldest Egyptian lexicon” re-examined the controversies of P. Lacau’s old observation on a binary opposition of certain items of the Ancient Egyptian anatomical terminology in the context of many new results issuing from current progress in Afro-Asiatic (Semito-Hamitic) comparative linguistics. The etymological examination of the Ancient Egyptian anatomical terminology presented therein has corroborated a surprising distribution: one member of the synonymous pairs is usually a Semitic word, whereas the other one(s) have non-Semitic cognate(s) solely attested in some of the African branches of our language macrofamily. A relatively deeper presence of the extra-Semitic vocabulary in Egyptian has also become apparent. The subsequent papers in this series („Layers of the oldest Egyptian lexicon II-V”) focused on the rest of the Ancient Egyptian anatomical terminology, led by the wish to see to what degree was this etymological dichotomy characteristic there, and the outcome was that the overwhelming majority of the Egyptian body part names was merely South Afro-Asiatic. Now, similarly to my previous communications, the Egyptian numerals, as part of the basic vocabulary, are examined from the same standpoint so that we can see these diverse (South vs. North Afro-Asiatic) layers of our numeralia.
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