Kerala’s first appearance in epigraphic records is in the word “Keralaputra,” in Emperor Asoka’s inscription dating to 257 BCE. However, Kerala’s own people referred to their kingdom as “Chera,” as allegedly did the Greek explorer Megasthenes around 290 BCE.¹ Megasthenes’ mention of the Chera kingdom proves that it was known as such to global traders in those ancient times. Could there be other records proving the Chera land’s existence even farther back in time? Indeed, yes. Certain Egyptian tomb inscriptions dating to the Third Millennium BCE seem to suggest that the Egyptians knew of such a land, a foreign country, “filled with everything noble.”
Yet, no reputable journal has published any research papers on this connection. Why not? The answer lies in the currently accepted interpretation of an Egyptian hieroglyph — 𓄥 F36 ‘lung and windpipe’ — as representing a combination of three other hieroglyphs: [s], [m], and the vulture hieroglyph, generated interpreted as the sound [a].² Currently accepted conventions separate consonants in ancient Egyptian by a neutral vowel, typically [e], so that the generally recognized pronunciation of hieroglyph F36 is [sema].³
However, a review of various Egyptian words having hieroglyph F36 in the corpus of Thesaurus Lingua Aegyptia shows a curious pattern: almost all these words have correspondences in Malayalam, but the pronunciation is entirely different:
· kacheri കച്ചേരി ‘concert’ in Malayalam corresponds to ‘perform for someone’ in Egyptian;⁴
· charu ചാര് ‘rest,’ root of charu-kasera ചാരുകസേര ‘easy chair,’ charu-padi ചാരുപടി ‘resting seat’⁵ corresponds to ‘bed’, ‘dais’ and ‘throne’ in Egyptian.⁶
· charu ചാര്, a title appended to Nayar names, corresponds to ‘title’ in Egyptian.⁷
· chariyavu ചാരിയാവ് ‘fine woolen cloth’ corresponds to ‘cloth’ in Egyptian.⁸
· charu ചാർ ‘relation,’ ‘confidant’ corresponds to ‘relative,’ ‘household associate,’ and ‘companion’ in Egyptian.⁹
· charu ചാറ് ‘infusion,’ ‘decoction’ corresponds to ‘combination,’ ‘alloy’ in Egyptian.¹⁰
· charu ചാറ് ‘broth,’ ‘soup,’ ‘gravy’ and choru ചോറ് ‘rice’ correspond to ‘eat’ in Egyptian.¹¹
· chiri ചിരി ‘laughter’ corresponds to ‘joy’ in Egyptian.¹²
· cheri ചേരി ‘street,’ corresponds to ‘road,’ ‘path’ in Egyptian.¹³
· cheri ചേരി ‘assemblage of people,’ ‘division of an army’ corresponds to ‘band,’ ‘troop’ in Egyptian.¹⁴
· cheri ചേരി ‘husk and fibers of coconut’ corresponds to ‘branches,’ ‘twigs’ in Egyptian.¹⁵
· cheru ചേര് ‘unite,’ ‘join’ corresponds to ‘unite,’ ‘join’ in Egyptian.¹⁶
· cheru ചേര് root of cherppu ചേർപ്പ് joining, mortising (in carpentry) corresponds to ‘hogging truss’ (used to join together the beams that make up the hulls of wooden boats) in Egyptian.¹⁷
· chervu ചേർവ്വ് ‘mixture’ corresponds to ‘mixture,’ in Egyptian.¹⁸
Most interestingly, two words stand out: (1) chera ചേര, the epithet of ancient Kerala kings, corresponding to ‘epithet of kings’ in Egyptian;¹⁹ and (2) chera ചേര, name of the ancient Chera kingdom, corresponding to the toponym of an unknown land in Egyptian.²⁰
What does this pattern show? First, the Egyptian sound [s] lost its fricative and became [ch] in Malayalam. Second, the final sound of hieroglyph F36 must have been [r] rather than [a] when the language influenced Malayalam. Lastly, [m] was clearly dropped in Malayalam. Well, as none of the currently accepted sounds of hieroglyph F36 — [s], [m], or [a] — occur in the Malayalam words, there should be no correspondence, right? Wrong, because the variance is consistent between Egyptian and Malayalam in all these words and there is a good enough linguistic explanation for it.
That [s] lost its fricative and became [ch] in Malayalam can also be seen in many other words that do not include the F36 hieroglyph. As I have mentioned in some previous articles, the vulture hieroglyph had three different sounds through the evolution of the Egyptian language from the time of the Old Kingdom (ca. 3000 BCE) to Late Egyptian (1200 BCE and later): [r], [l] and [a], the last one being its only final form. Thus, its presence as [r] in the Malayalam words is not surprising; indeed, this suggests that the older version of Egyptian influenced Malayalam.
What about the dropped [m]? Other Egyptian words having [m] between two consonants separated by vowels retain the [m] in corresponding Malayalam; thus, it is unlikely that in F36 hieroglyph, [m] was separated from at least one of its adjacent consonants by a vowel, leading to the conclusion that [m] must have formed a consonant cluster with [s] or [r]. Native Malayalam words have the consonant cluster [mr] in the form of [mpr], as in, empran എമ്പ്രാൻ and champram ചമ്പ്രം. So, it should be retained as such in the correspondence of F36 hieroglyph to Malayalam too. That it was dropped suggests it is more likely [m] formed a consonant cluster with [s] rather than [r] in hieroglyph F36. It must have been dropped when [s] lost its fricative and became [ch], for Malayalam does not have any words that start with the consonant cluster [chm]. On the other hand, all Malayalam words that start with [sm] are derived from Sanskrit. This suggests that [m] was dropped after [s] lost its fricative, but before Sanskrit entered the lexicon.
F36 hieroglyph = smera = chmera = chera
With reference to the foreign land named smera, the comments in the Thesaurus Lingua Aegyptia indicate that smera was the name for a specific type of land mentioned a few times in the Old and Middle Kingdom (ca. before 1800 BCE). According to a tomb inscription of a man named Neferseshempepy (ca. 2400 BCE — 2200 BCE) in Dendera, it is “full of cattle, goats, donkeys.”
According to another inscription engraved in the tomb of Djefai-Hapi in Asyut, smera has cultivated fields. Djefai-Hapi was a nomarch during the 12th Dynasty (ca. 2000 BCE — 1800 BCE), similar to the naduvazhi of Kerala.
Yet other inscriptions suggest a land of ponds, pastures and fertile fields. It was a land that could be man-made, a place where one could build a country house and plant many trees. Of course, such description can suggest any land anywhere in and out of Egypt; yet there is consensus that the land is not in Egypt proper. Modern day Egyptologists, hesitant to allow ancient Egyptians to travel far and wide in the world, and conflating the toponym with the word’s alternate pronunciation that means ‘unite,’ presume that it refers to a border land on the outskirts of Egypt, uniting the fields and the desert.
We Malayalees, on the other hand, can perhaps venture to offer a suggestion: this noble foreign land called Chera, filled with ponds, pastures, and fields, where one can build a country house and plant abundant trees, was likely across the Indian Ocean, in a sliver of emerald paradise sandwiched between the Great Mountains and the Deep Sea, a land we now call, “God’s Own Country.”
Notes
[1] Nagam Aiya, 1906, The Travancore State Manual, vol. 1., 232 (Trivandrum: Travancore Government Press).
[2] Alan Gardiner, 1927, Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs, 3rd ed., 465 (Oxford: Griffith Institute).
[3] Yet, consonant clusters (i.e., consonant sounds without a vowel in between) were a part of the Egyptian language. Carsten Peust, 1999, Egyptian Phonology: An Introduction to the Phonology of a Dead Language, 54–56 (Gottingen: Peust und Gutschmidt).
[4] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134470 (prefix and suffix are transposed in Malayalam).
[5] Hermann Gundert, 1872, A Malayalam and English Dictionary, 357 (Mangalore: C. Stolz).
[6] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134280; https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134310.
[7] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134200.
[8] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134690.
[9] VegA ID9072 (https://vega.vega-lexique.fr/); https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134580.
[10] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134680.
[11] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/859249.
[12] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/13426.
[13] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134350.
[14] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134600.
[15] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134450.
[16] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134180.
[17] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134620.
[18] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/134680.
