How many Egyptian words in Hebrew and where did they come from?

PHILOLOGOS: How Many Egyptian Words Made It into Biblical Hebrew? And does their presence illuminate the book of Exodus—or is it simply a sign that ancient Egypt was a powerful nation? (Mosaic Magazine).

Not surprisingly, the answer is "It depends."

One point not raised in the essay is that even if the Israelites spent some generations as slaves in Egypt in the late second millennium BCE, the biblical texts were not written until late in Iron Age II, more than half a millennium later. They had lived in a context of neighbors who spoke Northwest Semitic dialects cognate with, and probably mutually intelligible with, Hebrew. That's a long time to readjust the language away from any Egyptian influence from that sojourn.

Cross-file under Passover.

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