Abstract: The paper re-examines the controversies of P. Lacau’s old observation on a binary opposition of the anatomical terminology of Ancient Egyptian in the context of many new results issuing from current progress in Afro-Asiatic (Semito-Hamitic) comparative linguistics. The presented etymological examination of the Ancient Egyptian anatomical terminology 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.

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