Common Afrasian (Afro-Asiatic) terms related to the magic, supernatural, spiritual and mythic: Etymologies and reconstructions

Alexander Militarev

doi:10.13135/1825-263X/8242

Alexander Militarev Russian State University for the Humanities

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/8242

Abstract

The paper contains 38 reconstructed common Afrasian (Afro-Asiatic) terms related to the magic, supernatural, spiritual and mythic rather conditionally combined into 10 groups (Soul, essence of life; Spirits, gods, ghosts and other supernatural creatures; God, spirit as an ancestor; Wonder, miracle, fortune-telling; Evil magic; Healing magic; Sorcery as knowledge; Spell, omen, magic speech or sign; Offering, sacrifice; Mythical and fantastic animals and their origin).

Each Proto-Afrasian term is reconstructed from a set of cognate words with compatible meanings in various branches and groups of the AA superfamily based on established regular consonant correspondences. The PAA language was supposedly spoken by the human community in the Near East at the turn of the Mesolithic and Neolithic—according to my glottochronological calculations, in the last third of the 11 millennium BCE—and their original homeland was either the Levant (the author’s hypothesis) or East or North Africa. The reconstruction can provide valuable evidence for anthropologists, archaeologists, mythologists, prehistorians.

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Author Biography

Alexander Militarev, Russian State University for the Humanities

The academic background is zero. Graduated from the Faculty of Translation of the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages, six lost years. The family duty—to publish a draft doctoral dissertation on Semitics by my grandfather—polyglot and orientalist Solomon Maizel, who passed away at 52—led to graduate school at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where I miraculously got without knowing either linguistics or Semitics. Had to master everything myself. With great difficulty wrote my first dissertation. Received an offer from Igor Diakonov to participate in the compilation of the Comparative Historical Afrasian Dictionary. In 2001-2013, Head of Afrasian section in the Santa Fe Institute’s project “Evolution of Human Languages.” In 2006, nominated by a group of US, European and Russian professors for the Holberg International Memorial Prize for outstanding scholarly work in the academic fields of the arts and humanities. Founding member, International Association for Comparative Semitics (Barcelona). Like my informal teachers Solomon Maisel, Igor Diakonov and Sergei Starostin, I have always sailed separately from the mainstream. The rest is on Wikipedia.

I can be contacted at: amilitarev@gmail.com