# The first s in "Oasis"



## inquisitiveness1

This question may be a result of me not having much knowledge of Ancient Greek, but I wanted to know why did the Greek word ὄᾰσῐς (and thus Latin and English Oasis) have the /s/ sound when the Egyptian word that is the source (I am seeing "Demotic wḥj") lacks an /s/? I get that the Ὄ presumably represents the /w/ sound, but an /s/ representing the ḥ (/ħ/ I assume) seems strange.


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## M Mira

inquisitiveness1 said:


> but an /s/ representing the ḥ (/ħ/ I assume) seems strange.


Why? What else do you expect?


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## berndf

M Mira said:


> Why? What else do you expect?


Chi?


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## CyrusSH

The Greek word from the same Indo-European origin is _oikos_ (dwelling place) and in Avestan _vaesma_, the Persian word for oasis (آبادی) is from the same origin.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> The Greek word from the same Indo-European origin is _oikos_ (dwelling place)


Which "same" IE origin if Greek ὄᾰσῐς is not of IE origin at all?


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Which "same" IE origin if Greek ὄᾰσῐς is not of IE origin at all?



Why? Because of it:

oasis | Origin and history of oasis by Online Etymology Dictionary



> 1610s, from French oasis (18c.) and directly from Late Latin oasis, from Greek oasis, *probably* from Hamitic (compare Coptic wahe, ouahe "oasis," properly "*dwelling place*," from ouih "dwell"). The same Egyptian source produced Arabic wahah.



What is the Indo-European word for "dwelling place"? proto-IE *_wéyḱs._

Greek oikos, cognate with Latin _vicus_, Avestan _vaes-_, Sasnkrit _vesa_, Gothic _weihs_, Czech _ves_, ...

Why not an Indo-Iranian origin for Greek _oasis_? In Persian the word for "oasis" and "village/dwelling place" is the same.


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## Delvo

M Mira said:


> Why? What else do you expect?





berndf said:


> Chi?


I'd expect no letter at all between the alpha and the iota, but a dasia on the iota. But that's if we figure they'd try to represent the original sound at all. The sigma is a sure sign that either the origin is incorrect or there's been a sound shift with the sigma representing the sound that ended up there afterward, not the original.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> What is the Indo-European word for "dwelling place"? proto-IE *_wéyḱs._


Only because it has the same meaning you cannot simply exchange the etymology. If it is of Egyptian origin it is of Egyptian origin and not of Indo-European.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Only because it has the same meaning you cannot simply exchange the etymology. If it is of Egyptian origin it is of Egyptian origin and not of Indo-European.



I don't believe in the God-given etymologies, Herodotus talks about an oasis in Libya (Histories 3.26) but it is very possible that Persians who were there, called it oasis, not Egyptians or Lybians.


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## Dib

inquisitiveness1 said:


> This question may be a result of me not having much knowledge of Ancient Greek, but I wanted to know why did the Greek word ὄᾰσῐς (and thus Latin and English Oasis) have the /s/ sound when the Egyptian word that is the source (I am seeing "Demotic wḥj") lacks an /s/? I get that the Ὄ presumably represents the /w/ sound, but an /s/ representing the ḥ (/ħ/ I assume) seems strange.



If it is indeed an Egyptian loanword, won't a pre-Demotic Egyptian, wḥꜣt, loaned into early Greek as something like *wohatis (the final -s is a case ending, not a part of the word-stem itself) make more sense - at least phonetically speaking? This would become "oasis" in at least some dialects of classical Greek. This, however, probably requires a mid 2nd millenium date of borrowing at the latest to remain phonetically viable (ti > si seems to be early - present even in Mycenaean), which may be a problem.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> I don't believe in the God-given etymologies, Herodotus talks about an oasis in Libya (Histories 3.26) but it is very possible that Persians who were there, called it oasis, not Egyptians or Lybians.


And that allows you to proclame whatever crosses your imagination and fits your Perso-centric view of the world without any substantive evidence?

The standard etymology is uncertain, nobody has denied that. But that doesn't mean you can replace it with random nonsense.


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## berndf

Dib said:


> If it is indeed an Egyptian loanword, won't a pre-Demotic Egyptian, wḥꜣt, loaned *into early Greek*...


If I understand the entry in LS correctly, ὄᾰσῐς was introduced by Herodot.


Delvo said:


> I'd expect no letter at all between the alpha and the iota, but a dasia on the iota.


That would be phonologically impossible. Spiritus asper can occur in the middle of a word only in combinations and contractions of different words. Etymologically, a spiritus asper is a weakening of word-initial /s/ (cf. _ὕμνος_, not cognate with but from the same root as _song_). Also Herodot wrote in Ionic and and Ionic has no spiritus asper.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> And that allows you to proclame whatever crosses your imagination and fits your Perso-centric view of the world without any substantive evidence?
> 
> The standard etymology is uncertain, nobody has denied that. But that doesn't mean you can replace it with random nonsense.



random nonsense?! Perso-centric view?!! The word "Oasis" was first mentioned by Herodotus in describing the Persian conquest of Egypt, of course about 150 years after this event (150 years of Persian rule in Egypt), in the same book when he wants to describe the distance between two cities, he uses the Persian unit of parasang, there are several other Persian-origin words in his work and it is certainly not strange in the period that Persians had the highest influence on the region.


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## sotos

I suppose Herodotus was not the inventor of the word, but some others were using it before. I can assume that some of them noticed the similarity with the word ώα/όα (with the meaning of "edge", Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott,  A Greek-English Lexicon, Ω , Ω , ᾤα) while pronouncing "όασις", possibly understanding -σις as a productive suffix (as in θέα-σις, άφικ-σις etc).


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## berndf

sotos said:


> I suppose Herodotus was not the inventor of the word


May I inquire about what this supposition is based on?


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## sotos

berndf said:


> May I inquire about what this supposition is based on?


On the fact that most of Greek writings have been lost, and that many Greeks knew the existence of oaseis, and they were telling to the new-comers "_you know, there is an oasis in the middle of the desert_".


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## M Mira

berndf said:


> Chi?


The letter is still used to represent /kʰ/ instead of /x/ in Coptic, so my guess is that the Greek dialect spoken in Egypt probably either didn't spirantize chi or spirantized it late, and thus didn't sound as similar to /ħ/ as the sigma. Quite a leap in logic I know.


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## CyrusSH

sotos said:


> On the fact that most of Greek writings have been lost, and that many Greeks knew the existence of oaseis, and they were telling to the new-comers "_you know, there is an oasis in the middle of the desert_".



Knowing something exists can't be enough reason to make a proper name for it.


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## eamp

When Herodotus tells of the lost Persian army he uses Oasis as a proper noun, the name of a city in the desert. He might not have known it as a general term.
Strabo later writes about habitations in the Libyan desert: "The Egyptians call these habitations _αὐάσεις_." So it does not seem to have been a common Greek word then either (outside of Egypt at least).


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## CyrusSH

It can be compared to the word _mummy_, some people may find an ancient Egyptian origin for it from Coptic _mumiya_! The interesting thing is that Coptic/Arabic واحة has even no similarity with Greek _oasis_ but some people try to relate them to each other.


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## sotos

eamp said:


> Strabo later writes about habitations in the Libyan desert: "The Egyptians call these habitations _αὐάσεις_." So it does not seem to have been a common Greek word then either (outside of Egypt at least).


By Strabo's time, many Egyptians (i.e. people living in Egypt) were speaking some Greek. The greek declination indicates that the word was not unknown to greek-speakers.


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## eamp

sotos said:


> By Strabo's time, many Egyptians (i.e. people living in Egypt) were speaking some Greek. The greek declination indicates that the word was not unknown to greek-speakers.


Yeah, but he clearly seems to point it out as a local word and does not expect the reader to know it beforehand. Inside Egypt it indeed seems to have been in common use, appearing in inscriptions and on papyri. Both _οασις _and _αυασις _plus derived forms are amply attested there. 
The Oasis of Herodotus is later known as _Ὄασις Μεγάλη_, _Ὄασις Θηβαίδος_ or _Oasis Magna_/_Maior _in Latin, it is today's Kharga oasis, called in Demotic _wḥy_(-_rsy_) < _wḥ3t_(-_rsyt_) or (southern) oasis. 
For Coptic _ouahe _I could further ascertain only the meaning "oasis" (and _Oasis magna_ specifically) not "dwelling" (Maybe a supposed earlier meaning motivated by etymology?).
I don't see much reason to doubt the identity of the Greek and Egyptian words to be honest. Greeks obviously picked it up in Egypt and Egyptian is the only plausible source, even if the exact details of how it got its Greek form are unclear.


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## CyrusSH

eamp said:


> The Oasis of Herodotus is later known as _Ὄασις Μεγάλη_, _Ὄασις Θηβαίδος_ or _Oasis Magna_/_Maior _in Latin, it is today's Kharga oasis, called in Demotic _wḥy_(-_rsy_) < _wḥ3t_(-_rsyt_) or (southern) oasis.



Kharga Oasis was created by Persians with using qanat irrigation system, all ancient buildings in this region were built by Persians, so it is very possible that Persians gave the name of _vaesa_ to it.


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## Treaty

I wonder about the possibility of _ḥ _being pronounced by the locals or heard by the Greek closer to _š_ in some dialect (apparently such a shift sporadically existed in Sahidic). 


CyrusSH said:


> Kharga Oasis was created by Persians


Pretty much nonsense as always. Both Kharga and Dakhla existed long before Persians. They were (probably collectively) called _wḥ't rsyt _(Southern Oasis) as eamp said, even before Demotic era (the oldest attestation I know belongs to the reign of Takeloth III, mid 8th c. BC). Dakhla (or its western part) was also called _S' wḥ't. _


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## CyrusSH

Treaty said:


> Pretty much nonsense as always. Both Kharga and Dakhla existed long before Persians. They were (probably collectively) called _wḥ't rsyt _(Southern Oasis) as eamp said, even before Demotic era (the oldest attestation I know belongs to the reign of Takeloth III, mid 8th c. BC). Dakhla (or its western part) was also called _S' wḥ't. _



It is not really necessary that you talk about something that you know absolutely nothing about it,  I wonder that you know what Oasis and Qanat are, an oasis can't exist without water and qanat is built to supply water to a dry region in the desert.

I suggest that you read a little about qanat: Oasis - Wikipedia especially read Egypt section which just talks about Kharga oasis.

Then I will show you a full article to know how Kharga oasis was created.


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## berndf

There are numerous references to Kharga in surviving texts from the New Kingdom and some even as far back as the Old Kingdom. The Oasis has natural underground water sources. It is what is left of an ancient lake. 

The Oasis was extended during Achaemenid rule over Egypt and there are important archaeological sites from that period but archaeological evidence that the Oasis was settled reach back at least to the late Middle Kingdom.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> There are numerous references to Kharga in surviving texts from the New Kingdom and some even as far back as the Old Kingdom. The Oasis has natural underground water sources. It is what is left of an ancient lake.
> 
> The Oasis was extended during Achaemenid rule over Egypt and there are important archaeological sites from that period but archaeological evidence that the Oasis was settled reach back at least to the late Middle Kingdom.



You are actually talking about the modern definition of Oasis, but for those who lived in the deserts, it just meant "dwelling place" or "inhabitable place", all archaeological evidences show that Kharga Oasis became an inhabitable place by Persians, at the time of Herodotus, it was certainly an important Persian settlement in Egypt where different Persian palaces and temples were built, and it seems to be clear that  Herodotus knew this thing.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> You are actually talking about the modern definition of Oasis, but for those who lived in the deserts, it just meant "dwelling place" or "inhabitable place", all archaeological evidences show that Kharga Oasis became an inhabitable place by Persians, at the time of Herodotus, it was certainly an important Persian settlement in Egypt where different Persian palaces and temples were built, and it seems to be clear that  Herodotus knew this thing.


That is nonsense.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> That is nonsense.



If you consider it as nonsense then you should ignore Herodotus' account of oasis, because as eamp also mentioned, by oasis he clearly means a city, not a place with natural underground water sources.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> oasis he clearly means a city, not a place with natural underground water sources


Of course and it had been settled for at leadt that 1000 years before the first Persians arrived, probably much longer. My comment about water sources was in response to your claim that the place became ingabitable only when the Persians built qanats. Don't get me wrong, the Persian qanat system is one of the greatest marvels of human ingenuity but the Egyptians certainly did not need the Persians to tell them how to build irrigation systems.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Of course and it had been settled for at leadt that 1000 years before the first Persians arrived, probably much longer. My comment about water sources was in response to your claim that the place became ingabitable only when the Persians built qanats. Don't get me wrong, the Persian qanat system is one of the greatest marvels of human ingenuity but the Egyptians certainly did not need the Persians to tell them how to build irrigation systems.



You can't find anywhere in the world that no one has ever lived in the past, but as you read about Kharga Oasis: KHARGA OASIS – Encyclopaedia Iranica Although there is a long history of human activity and habitation in the Western Desert, the oasis was only sparsely populated during the pharaonic period of Egyptian history (Caton-Thompson, pp. 45-53). Instead, Egyptian activity in the desert was focused primarily on expeditions, trade and the procurement of raw materials (Darnell, 2013). ... There are several sites in the oasis with archaeological remains dating to the Persian period, in particular temples and subterranean aqueducts often referred to as qanāt (pl. qanāthā; Colburn 2014, pp. 149-96; forthcoming; see Kāriz) ...


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## berndf

As I said, 





CyrusSH said:


> all archaeological evidences show that Kharga Oasis became an inhabitable place by Persians


is nonsense and even your own source confirms that.


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## CyrusSH

What does it confirm? It says like all other deserts in the world, it was only sparsely populated, not an inhabitable place even as a village, what about a city. Persians were really not so silly to build qanats from a long distance with deep wells to bring water to a region where water existed on the surface.

I hope you know why qanats were built.


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## berndf

The keyword in _sparsely populated_ is _populated_. A place cannot be _uninhabitable _and _populated _at the same time. That is a contradiction in terms.



CyrusSH said:


> Persians were really not so silly to build qanats from a long distance with deep wells to bring water to a region where water existed on the surface.


The Qanat structure is in the South and I think also a few in the North of the depression of Karga. The best known are those of Dush/`ayn Manawir. That area, about 100 km south of the town of Kharga, became uninhabitable during the Old Kingdom and the Qanats made it inhabitable again. But the settlement of Kharga itself was never abandoned.


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## Treaty

There are two serious problems in manoeuvering around the word "city" (_polis_):
Firstly, Kharga wasn't the all prosperous city during Cambyses either (even if he wanted, he didn't have time to do so). It was Darius I who really made Kharga the central city during 27th Dynasty, presumably as a military-administrative base to counter possible rebellions from both Thebes and Dakhla (according to Kaper, and to Ohshiro).
Secondly, it is wrong to take for granted Herodotus' awareness of or care for the construction history of Kharga when recounting this story. Neither there is any reason to think he was referring to the older condition of Kharga, but not to the more known and contemporary condition.


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