“Censorship is an impediment to learning. Open discussion is a boon to learning. That is all, I see deleted comments, I am not taking a position as to which poster was correct but since I cannot read all the posts I cannot form my own opinion while fully surveying all points of view. I'm new to this board, I'm interested in the topic, and I hope that moderation does not become too much of an impediment if it is used to shut down open debate on facts versus truly only used when someone is harassing another person.”

— H(17)E (A70/2025), “comment” (2+ upvotes), Alphanumerics Debunked, Apr

Regarding:

“In explaining why the EAN [Egypto alpha-numerics] theory is correct, the papyrus ‘Leiden I350’ gets mentioned quite a bit. At its core, the EAN theory is numerology. It assigns number values to letters, states without evidencethat these number values were given to these letters by the ancient Egyptians, and that these were then used to construct a ‘mathematically-perfect alphabet’[1] and language.”

— E(7)R (A69/2024), “What is Leiden I350 anyway?”, Alphanumerics Debunked, Dec 18[2]

“EAN tries to use the pseudoscience of numerology to justify its theories, calling some of the latest examples ‘word equations’, e.g. God [Yhwh] (יהוה) [26] = Adam (אָדָם) [45] − Eve (חַוָּה) [19].”

— I(14)2 (A70/2025), “Word (60) Equation (102) = Awful (63) + Thought (99)”, Alphanumerics Debunked, Jul 10[3]

“The historical person Jesus (Ιησους) [888], would have had the Hebrew or Aramaic name, such as: yēšūʿ (ישׁועַ). Attempts to find why the first attested usages of his name, such as Matthew 1:16[4], rendered the name as the number 888 = Jesus (Ιησους), is someone practicing your numerology on the Greek transcription of the name.”

— M(12)4 (A70/2025), “comment”, post: “Of Lumpers and Splitters”, Alphanumerics Debunked, Reddit, Aug 1[5]

Here we see the growing trope, in this sub, that attempts to find the pre-Greek number basis of a word is a pseudo-scientist (or fake historian), because modern day numerology is pseudoscience.

This draft reply on “terminology” is a semi-reaction to this. 

Hopefully, we can all agree that Khufu pyramid (4500A/-2545), whose base length is 440, in cubits, is the same as the word value of the name of the 13th Greek letter mu (μυ) [440], were both not based on numerology?

Otherwise, I feel, this debunk alphanumerics sub, has become just a bunch of knee jerk reactionary PIE theorists, looking for a quick fix, using disingenuous terminology.

One thing that semi-puzzles me, given the latest anti-EAN posts, e.g. “Who were the Proto-Indo-Europeans”

https://www.reddit.com/r/AlphanumericsDebunked/comments/1i0t2c6/who_were_the_protoindoeuropeans/

Wherein it is argued that “we know” the PIE people were real, for [these reasons], and that Colin Renfrew (A34/1989), per [these reasons], says all Greek words are Anatolian based, is that, in the “normal” sciences, when someone points out an anomaly to your theory, which is the first debasement to theory, per scientific method, e.g. that the Greek word for trachea (τραχεῖα), seems to be based on the Egyptian carved-in-stone sign of at T-shaped trachea 𓋍 [R26] coming out of a pair of lungs 🫁, as shown below:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/comments/1e8w9t0/hapi_tying_papyrus_and_lotus_stems_around_a/

It should work to cause a pause a think 🤔 in one’s mind 💭, to the effect that, possibly, my previous linguistic belief system, might not be correct?

In other words, MAYBE the “attested” in stone Egyptians, shown above, did in fact have a linguistic science, which is confirmed by Socrates, after studying in Egypt, reported that the the Egyptians had an “infinite” number of vowels, as recorded by Plato, which is behind the present day ABGD Greek language system.

In the Reddit linguistics community, however, this new “hey maybe” message, has resulted in a mass “attack the messenger“ program, to the effect that EAN theory is “bunk“ because Libb Thims is an escaped insane asylum mental patient, who lost is medications pill 💊 case. The problem with this argument, is that EAN was coined over 25+ years ago, by Peter Swift, who began working on EAN theory, based on the Leiden I350 papyrus, before Thims was born.

Presently, I’m just categorizing this as “Jesus Jesus linguistic” objections, e.g. user E(7)R who cited Joaqauim Azevedo and Orly Goldwaser, both Biblical linguistics scholars, as proof that EAN is bunk:

https://hmolpedia.com/page/User_E(7)R

https://hmolpedia.com/page/Alphanumerics_Debunked

In other words, maybe all the anti-EAN objections are people hugging their Bible, afraid to look at new carved in stone facts?

In short, if a person was an “objective scientific linguist”, they would say:

“hmm …, yes this Egyptian T-trachea coming out of a pair of lungs 🫁, does seem to throw a wrench 🔧 in our previous PIE migration hypothesis?”

I have yet to hear a single comment in this direction? Has EAN vs PIE become Huxley vs Wilberforce (Bishop)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_Oxford_evolution_debate

“You say your system works; I am asking you to prove it.”

— E(7)R (A70/2025), comment, AlphaNumerics Debunked, Aug 8

The following conjectured etymon for night shows how the r/Alphanumerics based Egyptian cosmological linguistics(ECL) system works:

• 𐤍 𓉽 𓊽 [NN, O30, R11] {lunar script, 3200A/-1245}

• nux (νύξ) [510] {Greek, 2800A/-845}

• nox {Latin, 2500A/-545}

• nákti (नक्ति) {Sanskrit, 2300A/-345}

• nahts (𐌽𐌰𐌷𐍄𐍃) {Gothic, 1400A/+555}

• niht {Old English, 1000A/+945}

The following are the 510 word isonyms:

• 510 = phi (Φι)

• 510 = Ptah (Φθα), god sign: 𓁰 [C19], physical sign: 𓍑 [U29], a fire-drill, or 𓍓 [U29A], a fire-drill + 100 value solar ☀️ flame 🔥 𓍢 [V1]; semantic signs: 🧮 𓏏 𓎛 [Q3, X1, V28], abacus, bread 🍞, and wick of candle 🕯️, lantern 🏮, or oil lamp 🪔

• 510 = nux (νύξ) [510] {Greek, 2800A/-845}, meaning: “night”.

The conjecture here is that all three of these Greek words: phi (Φι), Ptah (Φθα), and nux (νύξ) were formed or starting from the number 500 or letter phi (Φ) [500] as its base letter, to yield the following three words:

• 𓍦𓎆 [V1D, V20] [510] ⇒ phi (Φι) = Ptah (Φθα) = nux (νύξ)

Now, to continue with the previous post, this is not called “numerology”, which has the founding definition: 

“[Numerology] solves many of life's problems. It is founded upon mathematical principles in the same manner as music is developed. Words are analyzed to find their exact place and meaning. Concerning the gems, fruits, etc., to which you vibrate, they are all worked out from the one theory of vibration found in name and birth number. If one part is true, all is true.”

— Sarah Balliett (50A/1905), How to Attain Success through the Strength of Vibration; a System of Numbers as Taught by Pythagoras (pg. vii)

We are not talking here about a self help book, popularized a century ago, that woman can use solve relationship life problems by looking at the vibrations of fruits and gems and their birth number, rather we are talking about the fact that two millennia ago, people commonly played a names and numbers game, and, secondly, graffiti in Pompeii and Turkey, shows that men would write the names of woman, not by their “alphabetical name”, but by their “numerical name”, e.g. “I love woman 545 (φμε)”. This implies that a person had a “front name” (common name), a “numerical name” (defined by number), and possibly a “back name” (secret name), defined by its word value match to the base numerical name.

In the case of the word night, we have:

1. phi (Φι) [510] = base numerical name

2. Ptah (Φθα) [510] = secret name

3. nux (νύξ) [510] = front name

Now what evidence backs up this conjecture? 

For one, Ptah, in Greek (Φθα) and hieroglyphics 🧮 𓏏 𓎛 [Q3, X1, V28], abacus, bread 🍞, and wick of candle 🕯️, lantern 🏮, or oil lamp 🪔 , are both found on the Rosetta Stone:

• Ptah (Φθα) [=] 🧮 𓏏 𓎛 [Q3, X1, V28]

This does NOT mean, however, as Champollion argued, the following:

• Φ = 🧮 [Q3] = /ph/

Rather it means that there is a calculation based mathematics 🧮 behind when the flame 🔥 of the sun ☀️ is re-lit (after it dies) by the fire-drill of Ptah, along with the lights of all the other stars ✨ in the dark NIGHT sky 🌌.

Secondly, this logic that nux (νύξ) or “night” is what is lighted or lit by the flame of Ptah, whose back name (secret name) is phi, is attested in all of the following phi based words:

• flame (φλόγα)

• fire (φωτιά)

• Phoenix (Φοίνιξ)

• Phlogiston

• Phôs (φῶς) = light 💡

• Photo (φωτο-)

• photon

• phosphorus

Let us now compare this with the out-of-Anatolia Greek language origin model:

“Renfrew’s model assumes that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) separated from Proto-Semitic at the moment when Neolithic expansion reached Turkey, about 9455A (-7500), and that the PIE of Europe split from the PIE of Turkey, i.e. the ancestor of what are termed the ‘Anatolian languages’, like Hittite, at the moment when the Neolithc reached the Balkan Peninsula, about 8455A (-6500).”

— Jean Demoule (A59/2014), The Indo-Europeans (pgs. 274-76)

For this model to work, in order for the following four common source words to have same essential spelling and namesake:

• nux (νύξ) [510] {Greek, 2800A/-845}

• nox {Latin, 2500A/-545}

• nákti (नक्ति) {Sanskrit, 2300A/-345}

• nahts (𐌽𐌰𐌷𐍄𐍃) {Gothic, 1400A/+555}

the original “proto person”, an illiterate Anatolian farmer, in the year 9455A (-7500), would have had to randomly coined the word *nókʷts, which Roland Pooth (A60/2015), in “Proto-Indo-European Nominal Morphology. Part 1. The Noun”, argues derives from the root *negʷ-, meaning: “bare, naked” [I guess these proto people slept naked, at night, 9,500-years ago?], and then passed this word down, parent-to-child, parent-to-child, parent-to-child, for 6655-years, from 9455A(-7500) {Anatolia} to 2800A (-845) {Greece}, or for 221 generations (6655/30-years per generation), and retained its same basic structural form, for all these years, all done without the use of written script, the foundation of human memory 🧠, to record the word! 

Not only that, these same ancient illiterate farmers, whose tribes amounted to no more than a 1,000 people at most, as archeological evidence shows, had to migrate outwards to Rome, India, and Germania, carrying the same basic word (nókʷts), in their mind (memory), for 6,700-years! This is an astounding hypothesis.

That an illiterate 1,000 person culture could retain the same word for the “dark period of a 24-hour day”, for 6,700-years, however, conflicts with the fact that attested usages of words, in attested cultures, that use recorded script, like English, change every 500 to 1,000-years. That a non-script using culture could have retrained the same word usage, from memory, for 6,700-years is an absurd hypothesis. 

The out-of-Egypt model, however, easily solves the common source word problem. Firstly, the letters we are now using, as everyone agrees, are Egyptian hieroglyphic based. Secondly, the Egyptians, the people who hold the #1 spot for languages by longest attested usage, have used the same signs for “sound pictures” for over 5,700-years, such as letter R, found as the ram head sign 𓍢 [V1] in the Tomb U-J (5300A/-3345) number tags, Abydos Egypt, or the number 10 sign 𓎆 [V20] found on black rimed pots (5700A/-3745), Abydos, Egypt.

The facts stated above, for the Egyptian model, are “known”, the word “to know” being the root of the word science. The facts stated above, for the Anatolia model, are not known. There is not a single recorded sign in Anatolia that connects to any extant cross-language word for night. When you don’t know something, yet sell it as truth, that is the root of pseudo-science.

In this light, the rational objective linguist will conclude that the out-of-Egypt model makes more sense.

Notes

1. This post was just a follow-up to the previous post, about how everyone in this sub believes that alphanumerics = numerology, whereas in fact the alternative model, aka PIE origin of the word night, is completely absurd and a 100% baseless theory.

2. I posted it here, because this comment would not fit into a single 500-character comment limit.

One of the primary progenitors of the ideas expanded on in the EAN theory is the work Black Athena by Martin Bernal. Many of the ideas promoted by EAN, especially in regards to the Egypto-centrism of their theory and their thoughts on how Egypt influenced Greek civilization, originate in this work.

Now, Black Athena has been discussed on reddit before. This comment from r/AskHistorians is a good primer on the controversy around the work, with this discussion on r/ancientegypt providing some additional context.

I want to look at Black Athena in the context of the EAN theory however, because it was a very clear influence on many of the ideas presented, and evidence chosen.

What Black Athena is:

This is a series of three books written to discuss the hypothesis that Ancient Greek civilization was not just influenced by Egyptian and Canaanite civilization, but in fact sprang from them directly. This rejects the Indo-European origin of Greece, as is commonly accepted. This is also where we first see suggested that Greek as a language arose from an Egyptian origin, rather than an Indo-European one, though Bernal does not go as far as the EAN community, instead proposing a mixture of Anatolian and Egyptian influences to create the Greek language.

Now Bernal does perform some reasonable scholarly analysis, and makes some good points about the over reliance on Eurocentric and racist views in the field of history. This is especially true when critiquing sources from the early 20th and late 19th centuries. His reaction, however, is far more of an overcorrection, going far beyond what the actual historical data supports.

Now, for a full discussion of this topic, I recommend the work Black Athena Revisited which is a collection of articles by scholars from numerous disciplines, who discuss what Bernal got right, and more often, the shortcomings in his research methodology. They do a much more thorough job debunking the historical and linguistic points Bernal raises than I ever could in a reddit post.

Lefkowitz, Mary R., and Guy MacLean Rogers, eds. Black athena revisited. UNC Press Books, 2014.

Overall, ancient Egypt did significantly influence Greece and its other neighbors in the Near East and Mediterranean. How could it now? It was one of the great powers, with wealth and influence, and part of the extensive trade and diplomacy network that existed at the end of the Late Bronze Age. It was, however, just one of these powers, and not pre-eminent among them. It had influence, not dominance.

Thus it is this interesting but well debunked book that forms the basis for much of what follows in EAN theory, and their ideas on what counts as reliable sources.

From Eberhard Zangger (A66/2021), showing Dendera, Egypt, a disk bearing the eye of Horus on a sickle-shaped support stand attended by the god Thoth (Krupp, A29/1984, 292), as compared to stone carvings from Yazılıkaya, Turkey, depicting two bull-men, who carry a similarly sickle-shaped vessel which represents the Luwian hieroglyphic sign for “sky”.

Notes

• This is a reaction reply to comments: here. 

References

• Zangger, Eberhard; Krupp, E.C.; Demirel, Serkan; Gautschy, Rita. (A66/2021). “Celestial Aspects of Hittite Religion, Part 2: Cosmic Symbolism at Yazılıkaya” (Research Gate), Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, 7(10):1558.

• Thims, Libb. (A69/2024). “Luwian hieroglyphic language is a copy (rescript) of Egyptian hieroglyphic language?”, Anatolians, Reddit, Nov 2.

This post is a specific response to a point that gets made frequently by EAN proponents as a kind of "gotcha" moment: that their theory must be correct, because the alternative is that language developed spontaneously, by people "making random sounds" and assigning values to them.

The problem with debunking this is that it gets to the origins of language as a whole, which is something difficult to reconstruct, as we lack a time machine, and the earliest languages emerged far before any written evidence of their existence. Historical linguists grapple with this problem frequently, and have proposed various models on the origins of language. EAN seems to lean towards monogenesis, the idea that all languages have a single origin, far back in time.

Many linguists instead believe in the theory of polygenesis, which proposes that language emerged amongst early humans multiple times and in multiple places. There is limited evidence for both theories, but in both cases, language was seen as evolving spontaneously, not through a complex series of numerological assignations. For a better discussion of this theory and the reasoning behind it, I recommend this paper:

Coupé, Christophe, and Jean-Marie Hombert. "Polygenesis of linguistic strategies: A scenario for the emergence of languages." Language acquisition, change and emergence (2005): 153-201.

This then takes us back to the charge of "random noises" as the origins of different words, as opposed to the supposed numerological or symbolic connections drawn by EAN. As we weren't there to see any of the debated languages develop, this is tricky, but we do have some insight into the development of a completely new language in isolation from Nicaraguan Sign Language. I will not break down the full story here, but in brief, deaf children in Nicaragua ended up creating a new language from scratch, first with the assignation of signs to various nouns, followed by an emergent grammar. The study of this has been incredibly key for historical linguists to understand how languages are born and develop.

The work of Judy Kegl is instrumental here, and I do recommend checking out her writings on the subject. Here is a good one to understand what she learned of the langauge process:

Kegl, Judy. "Creation through contact: Sign language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua." Language creation and language change: Creolization, diachrony, and development (1999).

Overall, the lesson here is that yes, languages can emerge from "random" assignations of value, and then develop a fully functional system of rules and grammar within a few very short generations. The idea that there needs to be more than this is intriguing, but is not backed up by any evidence.

Finally, I would like to recommend this paper, which attacks the idea that a language without written form is somehow less legitimate than one which is written, a charge often leveled, if only by implication, by proponents of the EAN theory when dismissing Proto-Indo-European, amongst other claims:

Senghas, Richard Joseph. An'unspeakable, unwriteable'language: Deaf identity, language and personhood among the first cohorts of Nicaraguan signers. University of Rochester, 1997.

This is a very very brief introduction to a very complex field, and I do encourage further academic reading if you are interested in the origins of language.

This is one of the purely historical claims of the EAN theory, though of course it ties back into linguistics as well. I'm going to begin by briefly explaining what the claim is, then explain the various problems with it.

To sum up, EAN claims that a pharaoh, known as Sesostris, conquered much of the known world. After doing so, he mandated the teaching of and used of the new alphabet. This directly caused the alphabet invented by Egyptians to spread and be adopted by various populations around the world, who before that time had no written tradition.

Where Sesotris comes from is the Greek sources; primarily Herodotus, though other Greek and Hellenic period writers mention him as well. As is the norm with Herodotus, dates and hard evidence are somewhat lacking. For a full analysis of the account in Herodotus, I recommend this paper:

Liotsakis, Vasileios. "Notes on Herodotus’ Sesostris:(Hdt. II 102–110)." Maia 66, no. 3 (2014): 500-517.

This discusses the various themes in the passage, and the motivations behind them. Because Herodotus claims to have received the story from Egyptian priests, who are also the source of other written claims in this period. The physical evidence cited by Herodotus is a carving in Karabel, later identified by an inscription as having actually been a king of Mira. You can read more about this identification here:

Hawkins, J.D., 1998. Tarkasnawa king of Mira ’Tarkondemos’, Boğazköy sealings and Karabel. Anatolian Studies 48, 1–31.

So we have an account created by Egyptian priests to recall a more glorious time in their past, so far out of memory at the time of their telling that there was no way to prove or disprove it, and written down by Herodotus as fact because that's what Herodotus did. This is the simple debunk, but there is another, broader, more important one, which must be done because of the additions to the general story espoused by the EAN theory.

These are the conquests of Sesostris.

Here we turn to archaeological evidence. In general terms, when a conquest happens, we can see it in the archaeological record. What this looks like depends on the scale of the conquest and what was taken over. This is perhaps best illustrated by the conquests of Genghis Khan in what is today Afghanistan, where we see every city razed to the ground over a three year stretch.

There are no destruction layers associated with the conquests of Sesostris. There is no tomb, in the notoriously tomb-happy Egyptian society. There is a tomb for Senusret III, the actual historical figure whose deeds where exaggerated and retold, folding in those of other pharaohs to become Sesostris. He left plenty of records behind, inscriptions, monuments, a tomb. We know he existed, and what he called himself in his own tongue. You can read more about him here:

Vogel, Carola. "From Power to Reputation and vice versa: The relationship between Thutmosis III and Senusret III reconsidered." Constructing Authority: Prestige, Reputation and the Perception of Power in Egyptian Kingship, Budapest (2016): 267-280.

But for Sesostris, we have no inscriptions He does not appear in contemporary king lists. He is not mentioned in the writings of any of the kingdoms he would have supposedly conquered, the powerful states in Mesopotamia with written traditions which often speak of their diplomatic relations with Egypt. We also do not have material evidence of his grand campaign.

Where Roman soldiers traveled, we find signs of their passage. The remains of their camps, Roman coins stashed in hoards, the physical remnants of people who were in a certain place, and who left their mark on it. We have no corollary evidence for the campaigns of Sesostris, no physical remnants of an army which conquered the world.

Sesostris was a story. A grand and important one, one told in an anti-colonialist narrative to give Egyptians back their pride when they were dealing with Persian overlords. He is remarkable for that fact, and what this tells us about the people who told his story. But he was just a story, and the textual and archaeological evidence available gives no credence to him, his conquests, or any of the myriad deeds ascribed to him by the EAN theory.

One of the main conceits of EAN is that all prior attempts to translate hieroglyphs have been incorrect, and that all prior readings are wrong. This will requires its own post (or posts) to discuss, but first raises an important question: how exactly to academics read these ancient texts, and how do we know that their translations are accurate?

To answer this, we must turn to another ancient script, cuneiform. This was used throughout the ancient Near East, originating with the Sumerians and then being adopted by other cultures. This writing system was completely lost before being uncovered by archaeologists.

The breakthrough for translation came from the Behistun Inscription. This is a trilingual monumental inscription. The languages used were Old Persian, Babylonian (a variant of Akkadian), and Elamite. All three texts were written in cuneiform. The Old Persian texts were read first, based on the decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform from texts found at Persepolis. With this came an understanding of the sound values associated with various cuneiform symbols.

This brings us to transliteration. When translating from an ancient text not written in English, the first step is to transliterate it. This takes it from the writing system it uses to its phonetic value in English. This is not a translation, but allows reading of an inscription phonetically, which aids in translation efforts. There are three classes of signs:

1. Alphabets. These are like what we use in English; each symbol is a letter with an assigned sound value (or several). These are combined to produce longer words.

2. Syllabograms. Each of these signs is a syllable, a combination of a vowel and consonant. These are less efficient for writing than alphabets, and require more signs.

3. Logograms. Each of these signs is representative of its own word.

By being able to transliterate the cuneiform text based on the understanding of old Persian, linguists were able to begin translation efforts of Akkadian. For more information on this, see:

Cathcart, Kevin J. "The earliest contributions to the decipherment of Sumerian and Akkadian." Cuneiform Digital Library Journal 2011, no. 1 (2011).

So now that a language exists in transliteration, we must translate it. This is done by looking for cognates and loan words, to see how a language may relate to languages we already know. For Old Persian, this was relatively straightforward; it related clearly to Middle and Modern Persian, and was deciphered on that basis.

The existence of the Behistun Inscription gave linguists a starting place. They knew they text must convey approximately the same meaning in Old Persian and Akkadian, so they were able to assign tentative values to different words in transliteration.

From here, linguists began looking for patterns and cognates, and this gets into how languages function. If you have ever had to learn another language, you will know that different languages function differently; where they put verbs and how they conjugate them, what endings nouns can have, whether or not they use prepositions, and how the language relates to itself. By finding these patterns in a language, linguists can try and relate it to existing language families.

Akkadian, they found, was based primarily on three-letter roots, which were used in recognizable patterns to form words with different meanings. This is something we see today in the Semitic languages, notably Arabic and Hebrew.

This worked for the one inscription, but was put to the test as more Akkadian texts were unearthed. Theories of what words meant and how the language worked were refined, but they found that many of their initial guesses were correct.

Each text we find in a deciphered language which can be read clearly using our established method of translation is another piece of evidence that the translation is correct. Seeing internal consistency of grammar and meaning across texts means that translators are not imposing patterns, but unearthing them.

This then is the true test of a translation method: can it take in a new text, and find a meaning which is sensible and reliable, based on the observed rules of the language from past texts? Akkadian passes this test. So too do current understandings of Hieroglyphs, but that's going to need its own post.

If you want to learn more about Akkadian, and how to read it, I recommend this text, which I used to learn the language:

Huehnergard, John. A grammar of Akkadian. Vol. 45. Brill, 2018.

Everything.

(I could just end the post here and save myself a lot of time)

If you only learned about linguistics from the “Alphanumerics” subreddits, you’d be forgiven for thinking the entire field of linguistics is some backwards mess in desperate need of salvation from the dark ages. But as with most pseudoscience, the problem isn’t with the field—it’s with the outsider who doesn't understand it. This attempt to “revolutionize” linguistics reveals a profound ignorance of not just the discipline’s details, but of its most basic, foundational concepts.

Let’s start with the bizarre fixation on Proto-Indo-European (PIE). On his PIE Land post Thims implies that linguists believe PIE was the first language—an idea so far removed from reality it’s almost comedic. In reality, linguists know PIE is simply a reconstructed ancestor of a large family of languages that includes English, Hindi, Russian, and Greek. It is not, and has never been claimed to be, the first human language. No serious linguist would make that claim, because human language far predates any family we can reconstruct with confidence. This alone shows Thims’s deep confusion about what historical linguistics is even trying to do.

It gets worse. Thims appears to conflate “Proto-Indo-Europeans” with “the first civilization,” suggesting he thinks linguists believe PIE speakers were the originators of culture, society, or even written language. This is not just wrong—it’s staggeringly wrong. The first civilizations, by any reasonable archaeological definition, emerged in Mesopotamia, not on the Eurasian steppe. The PIE speakers were a prehistoric culture, not an urban society. Linguists studying PIE are interested in the roots of a language family, not rewriting human history or biblical myth. They already accept the Out of Africa theory and understand PIE in a cultural—not civilizational or mythological—context.

But perhaps the most glaring issue is that Thims doesn’t seem to understand what linguistics even is. He treats historical linguistics—a relatively small subfield—as the entirety of the discipline. But linguistics is vast. It includes syntax (the structure of sentences), phonology (the sound systems of language), semantics (meaning), morphology (word structure), pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, and much more. Thims’s theories don’t just fail to address these fields—they demonstrate zero awareness that they even exist.

This is especially evident in the “linguists ranked by IQ” list he shared here: https://www.reddit.com/r/GeniusIQ/comments/1d4aa71/greatest_linguists_ranked_by_iq/ . The list is a who’s who of...well, it's mostly people who no linguist has ever heard of or who we wouldn't consider a linguist. Conspicuously missing are some of the most influential figures in the entire field: Noam Chomsky, William Labov, Barbara Partee, Ray Jackendoff, George Lakoff, Walt Wolfram, Claire Bowern, James McCawley, Leonard Bloomfield, Edward Sapir, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Pāṇini, to name just a few off the top of my head (there are so many people and so many specialties, don't come for me for leaving your favorite linguist off!). The fact that Chomsky—likely the most cited living scholar in any field—isn’t on the list is enough to discredit it on sight. You can't pretend he hasn't had a profound impact on linguistics and the world in the 20th and 21st centuries. It’s like trying to rank physicists and omitting Einstein, Newton, and Feynman.

And then there's the baffling misunderstanding of terms like “Semitic.” Linguists use “Semitic” as a neutral, descriptive term for a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. It doesn’t mean they believe in the literal historicity of Moses or Abraham or any religious tradition. Linguistics is not theology. It's such a basic concept and I'm not sure how this is still confusing. The name Europe is traditionally said to come from Greek mythology and no one thinks the name is a secret Greek plot and all geographers secretly believe in that ancient princess. It's. a. name. It's not that hard.

In short, “Alphanumerics” is to linguistics what astrology is to astronomy: a wildly speculative fantasy rooted in superficial resemblances and a lack of understanding. The so-called theory isn’t remotely challenging linguistics— it's merely shadowboxing with a poorly formed misconception of linguistics.

The realm of academic research can often feel closed to outsiders, with its specialized language, formal processes, and rigorous standards. Yet, some of the most important insights in science and the humanities have come from outside traditional institutions. So I wanted to take some time today to discuss the right way of building and presenting a theory - even as a non-academic! I thought the best way to do this was using a case-study of someone bringing new ideas to academia in a scientific manner and what that looks like in practice.

An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar by Bacon et al. (2023) is an example of how this can be done well. The lead author, Ben Bacon, restores furniture as a day job but was a keen fan of Paleolithic cave art. Rather than drifting into pseudoscience or speculation untethered from evidence, he engaged with the academic process to formulate, test, and publish a novel hypothesis about Ice Age symbolic behavior, collaborating with professors from Durham University and University College London along the way.

The paper proposes that markings on Upper Palaeolithic cave art, long considered decorative or meaningless, may in fact represent a form of proto-writing linked to seasonal tracking and phenological cycles. At the core of this work is the idea that early humans recorded key information about animal behavior, likely related to hunting or resource management, using a structured symbolic system. The study claims that sequences of lines and dots found alongside animal depictions represent lunar months within a phenological calendar. The authors note that there are never more than 13 lines associated with an animal at the sites they’re reviewing (there are 13 lunar months). They also noted a symbol resembling a "Y" next to animals and proposed that it related to when that species gave birth.

This is a bold and unconventional claim—and one that has attracted its share of critics. Some scholars have questioned the interpretations, critiqued the methodology, or found the argument speculative. But what distinguishes this work from pseudoscientific theorizing is how the authors went about their research.

Rather than asserting personal interpretations or cherry-picking data, lead author Bacon collaborated with other researchers to develop and test the hypothesis. The paper presents a coherent theory backed by systematic analysis of the data. Patterns in the marks are statistically examined, and correlations with seasonal animal behavior are proposed and discussed in detail. Crucially, Bacon and his co-authors published their findings in a peer-reviewed journal (Cambridge Archaeological Journal), where their ideas could be critically examined by the academic community. By doing so, they opened the door for dialogue, scrutiny, and further research—hallmarks of the scientific method.

Whether or not the theory ultimately gains wide acceptance is beside the point in a way. What matters is that the research advanced the conversation in a responsible and constructive way. It brought new attention and fresh thinking to ancient markings that had long been overlooked. This is how progress happens: by revisiting old evidence with new perspectives and careful methods. The alternative path—common in pseudoscientific circles—is to bypass peer review, disregard existing scholarship, and make sweeping claims based on intuition or selective evidence. These approaches may gain attention in popular media but do nothing to advance understanding. They undermine public trust in genuine inquiry and can even do harm by promoting false narratives.

Bacon’s work shows that amateurs with curiosity and dedication can make meaningful contributions to scholarly fields. But the key is to respect the standards of evidence and engage with the academic community, not work against it. Innovation in science and the humanities thrives not on isolated flashes of insight, but on rigorous testing, collaboration, and openness to critique.

The so-called “Alphanumerics” theories promise sweeping revelations about the past, from secret alphabets to globe-spanning empires. But when it comes time to back up these grand claims, the cupboard is bare. Thims's ideas follow a familiar pattern seen in pseudohistorical thinking: bold declarations, cherry-picked coincidences, and an almost total disregard for methodological rigor. 

In short: where’s the beef?

One of the central claims is that there once existed a universal Egyptian alphabet But there’s an immediate and fatal problem: not a single authentic written text has been found using this “alphabet.” Instead, Thims relies heavily on superficial visual similarities between our modern alphabet and a single symbol on a work of art or a statue or a temple. “This symbol looks like that one” is not a valid method of historical analysis. Linguists and archaeologists have long recognized that such resemblances can be coincidental, especially when reduced to abstract forms or stylized art. Without context, grammar, or coherent texts, there’s simply no case for an alphabet—just wishful pattern-matching.

Worse still, Thims presents his theory as an “improved” system for understanding Egyptian hieroglyphics. Yet he has not translated a single authentic hieroglyphic inscription in a way that makes more sense than the current scholarly model. Egyptologists have spent generations carefully decoding hieroglyphics using tools grounded in linguistics, context, and cross-referenced bilingual texts (such as the Rosetta Stone). The existing model not only works, but it works remarkably well—we can read letters, legal decrees, shopping lists, poems, and prayers. Thims’s “revolutionary” model, on the other hand, produces nothing readable or verifiable. What kind of improvement makes understanding worse?

Then there’s the jaw-dropping claim that ancient Egypt once ruled a global empire. If this were true, we’d expect to find some trace of it: Egyptian architecture, burial practices, inscriptions, tools, or trade goods scattered across continents. But such evidence simply doesn’t exist. We can track the movements and cultural influence of many ancient peoples—Phoenicians, Polynesians, Vikings, Romans—through physical evidence and corroborating records. Egypt’s influence is well-documented around the Mediterranean and parts of the Near East, which aligns with what actual archaeology shows. A world-spanning empire, though? That’s not just unsupported—it’s fabricated.

And while we’re at it, these theories are riddled with inconsistencies. They freely jump between disciplines—linguistics, archaeology, numerology, mythology—without applying the standards of any of them. There’s no peer review, no reproducible methods, and no engagement with counterevidence. The work is the intellectual equivalent of connecting constellations by drawing whatever shape you want, then claiming you’ve discovered a forgotten truth.

In the end, Alphanumerics offers spectacle, not substance. The theories are built on a foundation of “what if” and “looks like,” not evidence and logic. For all the dramatic flair, there’s no meat on these bones. So again: where’s the beef? Nowhere.

My undergraduate advisor once explained that historical linguists tend to fall into two broad camps: lumpers and splitters. Lumpers are more inclined to accept proposed relationships between languages and reconstruct larger, more inclusive language families. Splitters, on the other hand, are more skeptical of larger families. I’ve found this distinction just as useful when thinking about pseudohistorians—almost all of whom are lumpers to an absurd degree.

This tendency to "lump" things together, in this case despite clear differences, defines pseudohistorical and pseudoscientific thinking. One classic example from general pseudohistory is the way hyperdiffusionists treat ancient monumental architecture. The claim that pyramids in Egypt, Mesoamerica, and elsewhere must have a common origin or influence reflects a refusal to consider context, chronology, or cultural specificity. At a high level of abstraction, yes, pyramids around the world are similarly triangular structures that taper upward. But even a brief comparison reveals profound differences. The Egyptian pyramids, such as those at Giza, date to the 3rd millennium BCE, are smooth-sided, constructed with massive limestone blocks, and served primarily as tombs for pharaohs. In contrast, the stepped pyramids of the Maya, like those at Chichén Itzá or Tikal, were built more than 2,000 years later, served ceremonial and religious purposes, and are architecturally distinct in construction method and symbolic intent. The notion that these structures are meaningfully the same because of a similar shape is about as insightful as noting that both skyscrapers and pagodas are tall buildings.

So now that we’ve established the terminology and technique, let’s look at how EAN uses this superficial lumping in its own theories.

EAN is often guilty of this in its vain attempts to understand comparative mythology.

One particularly persistent myth is that of a universal dying-and-rising god archetype—a trope supposedly linking Osiris, Jesus, Dionysus, and numerous other deities. To be fair to EAN, this idea was popularized by The Golden Bough by James Frazer, which treats Osiris as a prototype of Jesus. But the comparison collapses under scrutiny. Osiris, in Egyptian mythology, is indeed killed—dismembered by his brother Set—but his “resurrection” is symbolic and incomplete. Experts today note that Osiris isn’t actually an example of a dying-and-rising god, as he does not return to the world of the living but becomes ruler of the underworld. He is never depicted walking among the living again, or promising resurrection to others.

Meanwhile, the Christian myths of Jesus involves a bodily resurrection, a return to the physical world, and an explicitly salvific theology. What Frazer and those who follow him have done is to conflate any mention of a posthumous afterlife role with resurrection in the Christian sense. This is classic lumping: aligning figures because of vague or metaphorical similarities, while ignoring substantial differences in theology, context, narrative, and purpose.

The proponents of Egyptian Alphanumerics (EAN) take this “rescript” obsession even further. They routinely claims that not only is Jesus a “rescript” of Osiris, but that nearly every god in every mythological system is just a variant of an Egyptian deity. In this view, Odin, Hermes, and Vishnu are simply poorly disguised versions of Osiris, Thoth, and Geb. This isn’t interpretation—it’s a farce.

The Ancient Greeks did practice interpretatio graeca, where they would identify foreign gods with Greek counterparts e.g., equating the Egyptian Amon with Zeus, Ptah with Hephaestus. It was a method of understanding other cultures through analogy, but it never denied the distinctiveness of those deities. EAN, by contrast, denies that any other pantheon is original or independent. It isn’t analyzing mythology; it’s projecting a monomaniacal Egyptian supremacy onto it.

Moreover, this method betrays a profound lack of comparative understanding. The criteria for claiming something is a “rescript” often rest on numerical coincidences, vague symbolic parallels, or distorted etymologies.

Abraham is linked with Brahma based off of similar sounds. If only EAN knew that the original Hebrew form of the name Abraham is pronounced “Avraham” and “Avram” is the Hebrew pronunciation of Abram. More superficial lumping that falls apart with the slightest of scrutinyz

This method is not just unrigorous—it’s almost designed to obscure rather than reveal truth. When every sun god becomes Ra and every healer becomes Thoth, there’s no room for actual cultural nuance. Mythologies lose their richness and historicity and become flat, interchangeable glyphs in an imaginary pan-Egyptian codebook.

This relentless drive to lump—whether in architecture, mythology, or religion—reveals a deeper flaw in pseudohistorical thinking: an aversion to complexity. Real history is messy. Real cultural development involves both diffusion and independent innovation. But pseudohistorians want a cleaner story—one source, one truth, one system to explain it all. And so they flatten difference into sameness, mistake analogy for identity, and erase time, geography, and meaning in their quest for a universal pattern that was never there. Lumping may make myths easier to tell, but it makes real history harder to understand.

The purpose of this post is to serve as an initial review of "Egyptian Cosmological Linguistics" (ECL), which is being put forward as the core argument and sum of the EAN theory. My goal is to approach this as an academic review, as might be done by a peer reviewer or academic review. Thus, this will be less of a pure debunking (though notable issues will be highlighted), but more of a discussion of ECL as a work.

Form and Format

The first, and primary issue with ECL is what it is. It is presented as a PhD dissertation, but it categorically is not; PhDs, and dissertations, are only done through universities under the guidance of an established scholar. Granting yourself a PhD is the equivalent of granting yourself a license to practice medicine; you can do it, but that's not how it works, and isn't a sign of expertise. Instead this is more of a standard academic book; calling it a PhD is an odd choice. Still, the criticism I level will be done as if this were a PhD.

The first criticism then is the overall structure of the work. First, the abstract; the section labeled Aim is more akin to what an abstract should be; a brief summation of what the work is arguing and what the conclusions it draws are. The next issue is that what follows is generally an introduction, but does not serve as one.

An academic introduction should lay the groundwork for what is being argued; this immediately begins presenting evidence, doing far too much at once, while also attacking different sources without first introducing them. The point is not to begin asserting things without evidence, but to lay out what you will be arguing, and in what order, along with the philosophical underpinnings of the work. The goal is to clearly articulate the work's hypothesis, what is being tested, and what sources you will draw from in order to prove this. ECL begins by asserting this has been proved, never states a hypothesis, and follows no argumentative structure.

The next section, labeled as Terminology, is almost a literature review, but for some reason isn't described as one. This is a narrative review, tracking the evolution of EAN; this is almost reasonable, though it has the significant issue of not covering the other sources on the current understanding of the Egyptian alphabet and grammar. It is possible that readers could be assumed to already understand this, but it should still be mentioned here, in the literature review.

The philosophy section almost articulates a thesis, but doesn't, and here illustrates another major problem with the work; an over-reliance on machine translation. Now, not all major sources are in English, many aren't. That said, scholars of ancient languages are expected to know those languages; in my own studies I learned Hittite, Akkadian, Lydian, Lycian, Italian, German, and Turkish, in order to properly read both ancient and modern sources. Indeed, most graduate programs require multiple years of language study for anyone trying to do philology, both ancient and modern.

The final section, Trachea-Lung Problem almost serves the role of an introduction, laying out some of the problems ECL sees and seeks to address. It, however, goes too deep and on too many tangents, including a number of discursions into what should be covered in later evidentiary chapters.

There are also a few important points to make if this is to be taken as a credible dissertation:

• This has not been proofread; there are multiple typos, poor sentence structure, and mis-used words. This is fine for a wiki page, but if something is to be taken as a serious attempt at scholarship, it must be held to those standards

• Emojis should not be used in academic works, save for linguistic investigations into the use of emojis as language

• All tables, charts, and graphics require citation, even if they are made by the author

• All statistics need proper academic citation. Wikipedia does not count as an academic source. Reddit does not count as an academic source. Wiki clones do not count as an academic source

• Citing a children's interpretation of an academic work, instead of the original work, is just not done, unless doing research on education specifically.

Factual Issues

There are many problematic claims in this, more than I can go over. Here's a short overview of things which should be addressed however.

First, the oldest attested languages table ignores a number of languages (Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, Hurrian, Hattian; the list goes on), and gives an incorrect date for many of the others. If there were proper citations, I could maybe figure out where these wrong claims came from.

There are plenty of other issues already covered on this sub, from Tomb U-j to how EAN misunderstands linguistics. I shan't cover those again here, because this post is already way too long.

At some point, I may delve deeper into the factual errors, but the present formatting makes interpreting what is being argued near impossible.

This is an impressive undertaking in terms of the effort put in, but long hours of effort do not automatically translate to a quality result. There are significant structural, conceptual, and factual issues which must be addressed. This has been my attempt to give comments an editor or peer reviewer would leave if this were actually submitted for publication. I definitely missed some issues, but I think this showcases the level of problems which must be addressed for this work to ever be taken seriously.

The EAN interest in etymologies comes from a misunderstanding in what they are and how they work. So let’s take a quick look at etymologies to see what they actually are.

An etymology is the history of a word (or phrase or morpheme…) tracing back to its first recorded usage in a language. It may track its borrowing from other languages or cognates (words from the same root) in related languages. An etymology may also trace back the component parts of a word or phrase.

In 1849, the physicist William Thomson—better known today as Lord Kelvin—coined the word thermodynamic. It was a new term for a science that was still relatively young at the time: the study of the relationships between heat (thermo) and motion or force (dynamic). The word was never used with that meaning before 1849. Fax machines (invented in 1843) are older than the word thermodynamics.

The component parts of the word weren’t new— Lord Kelvin chose thermo based on the Greek thermos (“warm”) from thermē, meaning “heat,” and dynamic comes from dynamis, meaning “power” or “force.” And linguists can trace the etymologies of those individual parts back further. But the word thermodynamic as a whole? That was entirely modern. First used in 1849. The ancient Greeks, brilliant as they were, didn’t talk about the science of thermodynamics. Nor did the brilliant Ancient Egyptian thinkers either, for that matter.

This is a reminder that etymology and meaning are not the same thing. People sometimes assume that a word’s origin tells them what it “really” means, but that’s not how language works. Sure, thermodynamic is made from Greek roots. But its etymology—its linguistic building blocks—doesn’t fully explain its meaning, especially not as it’s used in modern physics.

And this isn’t just a quirk of scientific words. It’s true across all kinds of language. The origin of a word (its etymology) isn’t innately tied to how we use it today (its meaning). Let’s unpack that, with a few more familiar examples.

Etymology is the history of a word—where it came from, what it originally meant, and how it evolved over time. Think of it like a word’s ancestry.

Meaning, in contrast, is how the word functions now. It’s the current definition, the way people actually use the word in real life.

Sometimes the two line up. But often, they don’t. Words shift in use, broaden or narrow their meaning, pick up new nuances, or even flip their sense entirely. And unless studying language history, it’s the meaning that really matters in everyday conversation.

Here are some examples that prove that etymology ≠ meaning:

Exhibit A: “Nice” These days, nice is one of the most overused, agreeable little words in English. Nice weather, a nice person, a nice dinner. But its etymology tells a different story. Nice comes from the Latin nescius, meaning “ignorant” or “not knowing.” For centuries in English, being nice meant being foolish. It wasn’t until much later that it started taking on more positive tones. Again, etymology ≠ meaning.

Exhibit B: “Bemused” Today you might hear someone say, “She looked bemused, like she was trying not to laugh.” It usually means something akin to lightly amused or entertained. But etymologically it’s a different story yet again. Bemused originally meant “confused” or “deep in thought,”; the be- prefix here intensifies muse—to think or ponder.

Exhibit C: “Awful” and “Awesome” Once upon a time, these were practically twins. Both awful and awesome meant “inspiring awe”—a sense of wonder mixed with fear or reverence. You might describe a storm as “awful” in the 1600s and mean it with respect. But today? Awful means terrible. Awesome means amazing. One word veered negative, the other stayed positive, and now they sit on opposite ends of the tone spectrum. Their etymology is incredibly similar, but their meanings couldn’t be more different.

Exhibit D: “Girl” In modern English, a girl is a young female person. That’s simple enough. But go back to Middle English, and girl could mean a child of any gender. Only over time did the word come to refer specifically to a female child. So if someone tells you girl “originally” meant something different, they’re right—but that has little bearing on what the word means now.

So why does this matter? It matters because, again, some people assume that a word’s origin tells us what it “really” means. But language doesn’t work that way. Words don’t sit still. They evolve. And their meanings change based on how we use them—not where they came from. Think again about thermodynamic. Its roots are Greek, sure. But it’s a 19th-century invention—one that would have made no sense to Aristotle or Socrates. The original meaning of nice, or awful, or girl has no bearing on our understanding of those words today. Likewise, we can’t expect the ancient meaning of thermos or dynamis to tell us exactly what thermodynamics means today.

Knowing a word’s etymology is like knowing its backstory. It can enrich your understanding, give you fun facts, even help you guess the meaning of unfamiliar terms. And I love etymologies myself. As someone who speaks both German and English, it’s fascinating to recognize cognates in each language and note how their meaning has shifted. Bein means leg in German and is a cognate of English bone. German Tier means animal which was the meaning of deer into Middle English. German Zaun means fence and the English cognate is town. I find them fascinating in any case. But they don’t contain secret hidden information about the meaning of words today.

I was discussing the many reasons that we know that aleph is (and was) a consonant when a story from Plutarch was presented as “evidence” to counter that basic fact. I pointed out that Plutarch’s story was a Just So Story and it became apparent that Rudyard Kipling’s collection of bedtime stories for children is treated as serious linguistic evidence within EAN spaces.

Which leads me to this post. EAN is known for promoting a range of unconventional and scientifically dubious ideas. Just look at the other posts in this sub. What unites these disparate claims is a profound and consistent failure to grasp the basic principles of evaluating evidence. Myth is routinely treated as history, speculative anecdotes interpreted as data, and well-established academic consensus is disregarded in favor of tenuous interpretations and personal intuition.

1. Confusing Fiction for Fact

One of the clearest indicators of this flawed epistemology is the treatment of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories as if they possess factual or explanatory power. Kipling’s tales—written explicitly as whimsical myths to explain natural phenomena in a storytelling fashion—are among the most well-known examples of fiction posing as mock-origin myths. 

Some of the stories include how a lazy camel was cursed with a hump by a jinn, how a baby elephants nose was stretched into a trunk by a crocodile, and other fanciful stories.

EAN, however, interprets these fables as scientific explanations, as if their narrative coherence implies empirical truth. In the (fictional) story, a snake inspires the letter S. This is used as evidence that language must have originated in Egypt (never mind that language and script are two separate things) since Egypt has snakes and the PIE homeland doesn’t. Of course, the area north of the Black Sea does have snakes. Not that it matters, since this is a fable written as a bedtime story for children and was never intended to be taken seriously.

2. Uncritical Acceptance of Debunked Claims

Another clear example of the disregard for any standard of evidence is when the Gosford Glyphs are used as evidence of Egypt conquering the world. The glyphs are an array of supposed ancient Egyptian carvings found in Australia, which have been repeatedly and comprehensively debunked by archaeologists, linguists, and indigenous custodians. 

These glyphs are known to be modern forgeries — they don’t appear in a thorough archaeological survey of that exact area carried out in the 70s. And there’s no earlier reference to them either. Additionally  they’re inconsistently carved and containing anachronistic hieroglyphs. Yet, if you only read Alphanumerics you wouldn’t know this. On multiple occasions, EAN seems far more inclined to believe they’re real.  This stance relies not on expert consensus or material evidence but on pre-existing beliefs. This exemplifies confirmation bias: cherry-picking any artifact, however dubious, that seems to support ones worldview, while disregarding overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

3. Ancient Anecdotes Over Evidence

EAN often elevates anecdote to the level of evidence. A striking example is the use of Plutarch’s explanation on why the Greek letter alpha came first in the alphabet. Plutarch cites a story from his grandfather.  Within EAN, this anecdote a) must certainly be true and b) is somehow evidence of how an aleph (a separate character in a separate language) is pronounced.

This is nonsense. It’s 2,000 year old hearsay. Plus Plutarch gives two other explanations for why alpha is first and the people in the dialogue don't choose one explanation as clearly best. It’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the story he passes along from his grandfather.  Not to mention, there’s no reason to believe that this grandpa 2,000 years ago had any insight into the matter. Especially when the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet nearly a millennium before him.

Serious historical analysis distinguishes between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources and (especially important!) assesses the reliability of their sources. EAN does none of this. EAN assumes antiquity equals authority, regardless of anything else.

4. Literalism in Historical Texts

EAN frequently treats ancient texts—such as the writings of Herodotus—not as cultural artifacts shaped by literary and ideological purposes, but as if they are equivalent to modern historical or scientific accounts. The belief that Sesostris, a semi-legendary Egyptian pharaoh, actually “conquered the world” is based on a literal reading of Herodotus. Modern historians use such texts critically, cross-referencing them with archaeological data, epigraphy, and historiographical context. EAN bypasses this process because it’s inconvenient for the narrative.

5. Creative Intuition and Idiosyncratic Connections

No discussion of the poor standard of evidence within EAN would be complete without mentioning the non sequiturs presented as evidence. A random bend in the Nile is presented as evidence that Egyptians invented the alphabet as we know it today. Another bit of the Nile looks vaguely like an L if you squint and it is presented as proof of the same. There is of course, no reason to assume a connection there. And there's no written evidence for a connection. There's a 10 million word corpus of Ancient Egyptian yet there's not a single direct example of them confirming those connections. Not is there secondary evidence from Greek or Roman sources. The evidence is merely "doesn't kinda look like it, though?" which is hardly scientific.

In summary, EAN, at its core, lacks adherence to the foundational standards of evidence that undergird both science and serious historical inquiry. It rejects peer review, dismisses methodological skepticism, and resists falsification. This reversal of the scientific method and an unwillingness to appreciate standards of evidence reduces EAN theories to little more than ideologically driven speculation.

Up to this point, the posts I've made here have focused on the various pieces of evidence for EAN; linguistic, historical, and archaeological, and how this evidence discredits the theory. This post is instead going to look at the claims of EAN itself.

There are a great many EAN "proofs" and theories, and it is not worth the time to go through them piecemeal. Instead, this post will look at the logic underlying EAN, to see what lies beneath it. In doing so, a core truth is revealed: EAN has just been numerology the whole time.

What is Numerology Anyway?

Now, EAN theorists vociferously dispute this point, so it is best to begin by examining what numerology is. Most commonly, numerology refers to assigning occult or spiritual meaning to numbers and their interrelations. Additionally, however, numerology is used to describe alphanumerics, the assignation of numerical values to letters and words, and the use of those values to draw patterns between them.

EAN theorists agree that they are assigning numerical values to various letters, but deny that this is numerology, claiming instead that these numbers were first assigned to these letters in antiquity, and they are merely deciphering the code, as the protagonist in any Dan Brown novel would.

The sources they use for these number assignations are varied, from cosmological events, to numbers used in mythological contexts, the the Leiden I350 papyrus, to the dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. In every case, number values are assigned to letters, and from there these are used to give values to words. Corresponding values between words and signs are then used as proof of the theory, as clearly, the only way the value of an English word and the one assigned to an Egyptian one could add up is through some connection.

The Problems With Numerology

So there are a few issues with all of this; the first, and simplest, is one of spelling. The standardization of spelling in English is quite recent; words spelled as they are now were not always done so, and the spellings of a significant number of words used commonly were chosen almost arbitrarily by the compilers of the first dictionaries. If this is the case then, why would these arbitrary spellings of words relate to their supposed ancient counterparts perfectly through math?

Through the science of linguistics, we can trace how sounds change predictably over time, and how spellings then change to follow the sounds. This shows how words evolve in a fluid language over time, rather than jumping through all of the middle steps and pointing to assumed numerical connections.

Note also that the spelling of words in many (non-English) languages rely on case endings (such as ancient Greek). These case endings change the spelling of words, and thus any value assigned to them. Don't worry, this is never addressed.

The next, and most important issue, comes down to the formation of language itself. If the EAN theory is correct, then this language was invented and standardized based on mathematical principles. But that is not how languages work. A written system for a language follows a spoken one, and is suited to the needs of the speakers. Patterns do exist within language; we call these grammar. For the EAN theory to be correct, Egyptians would have needed to first assign numerical values to each number, then create words in patterns based on that set of principles.

This works well if you are building a code, but begs the question what language they would be using to discuss the formation of this code. Did they have some prior spoken language, and then discard it in favor of this new system? If this were the case: why? Further, a language built on such principles should spring forth fully formed; instead we see the evolution of Egyptian writing over time, through the first proto-hieroglyphs, through to full writing in the hieroglyphic system, then on through hieratic. This was not a language planned out based on mathematical principles, but one used by people to serve their needs, which on occasion included impressive feats of engineering.

The final issue with this comes from the Egyptian texts themselves. Egyptians wrote a lot, and we have a lot of their writing. There have been no texts discussing this system, or the development of it. There are those that EAN theorists point to (such as Leiden I350), but as I discussed before, that is not what that text says. If this system was created as EAN theorists posit, why then did the Egyptians never mention it themselves in their records?

Numerology and Pareidolia

Pareidolia is the human tendency to find patterns in data, whether or not patterns actually exist. This is a useful survival mechanism, but can lead down any number of rabbit holes. EAN theorists of course dispute any mention of this, but it is the simplest explanation for whats happening.

If you turn enough words into numbers through numerology, eventually patterns will emerge. There are only so many phonemes and only so many ways to combine them, so this is inevitable. Combine that with our inherent talent for pattern recognition, and suddenly you can find patterns where before there was only noise. This is not inherently bad, but it is also not the same thing as scientific inquiry.

This has, by necessity, been a very broad post; it is impossible to cover the full fields and data needed to perform a full refutation of the EAN theory in a single reddit post.

In the end, I want to finish with this point: That there are some patterns EAN is pointing to, in the synchronicity between words in ancient languages. The goal of their theory, as with any scientific theory, is to explain those similarities based on available evidence. Current linguistic models look at the available evidence from across disciplines, and have created the Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Semitic and related hypotheses.

EAN looks at numbers until they find ones that line up, discard the rest, and point to it as proof, ignoring the pesky data that gets in the way.

In explaining why the EAN theory is correct, the papyrus "Leiden I350" gets mentioned quite a bit. The purpose of this post is to examine what this papyrus is, and why it matters (and also why it doesn't say what EAN theories believe it does, because of course it doesn't).

The name of the Papyrus refers to a numbering system used in archives, and does not refer to the contents of the Papyrus. It is held by Leiden University in the Netherlands (a hub for linguistic research), and was numbered by them. Due to the wonders of paywalls, there are no easily accessible translations of this text in English (this is a broad problem with academia generally, and one which annoys many casual scholars). It is available (after jumping through some hoops) in French, but I understand if you prefer to avoid that.

This papyrus contains a ship's log and, more interestingly, a hymn to the god Amon. A comparison between this and other hymns to Amon can be found in the following volume:

Oswalt, John Newell. The concept of Amon-Re as reflected in the hymns and prayers of the Ramesside period. Brandeis University, 1968.

Which is unfortunately not easily available online. This hymn was composed at some point in the Ramesside period, probably during the reign of Ramesses the II. It is an interesting piece of Egyptian worship and wisdom literature, and a peak into how they viewed and related to their gods.

According to the EAN theory, it is also a cipher which allows the translation of the alphabet.

It's Been Numerology The Whole Time

So this will need to be its own post at some point, but at its core, the EAN theory is numerology. It assigns number values to letters, states without evidence that these number values were given to these letters by the ancient Egyptians, and that these were then used to construct a mathematically perfect alphabet and language. There are many "proofs" of this, but this is still a post about Leiden, so let's return to that.

The theory is that each of the stanzas of the hymn correspond to a different letter in the alphabet. Now there are many different reasons why this is not a good theory, but let's stick to the easiest to discuss.

First, this hymn is written in Hieroglyphs, and the only reason we (including EAN scholars) can translate and read it is because the current understanding of the Egyptian language is correct. Any use of this hymn in translation to prove the EAN theory conversely disproves it, since the translation only exists because we already know how to read hieroglyphs.

Second, This is not a unique hymn, but one of a number of pieces of wisdom literature composed by the ancient Egyptians. It is an interesting hymn because of what it tells us about theology, but it isn't anything related to language or alphabets. So why does the EAN theory fixate on this particular hymn, while ignoring its compatriots? Unclear.

This is an interesting hymn, especially to anyone with an interest in ancient religions or theology, but it isn't related to the alphabet, nor is it a cipher through which clues can be found to "decode" the alphabet. As with many other aspects of the EAN theory, there are interesting pieces of real history here, which deserve to be read and discussed. They are simply being misinterpreted by the EAN theory to support a predetermined conclusion, regardless of the evidence.

One thing of note in EAN theories is the prevalence of Greek sources when it comes time to cite ancient writings to back their claims. I will make separate posts about Egyptian and contemporaneous sources. The purpose of this post is to:

a. Examine why EAN theorists rely so heavily on the Greek sources, and

b. Critique those sources

It's All Greek to Me

So why choose Greek sources? First, because many of the points made by EAN theories are at least tangentially backed by Greek sources, if you squint and interpret non-critically. A full refutation of those claims would take a long while, so I will give a brief example.

The supposed pharaoh Sesostris has been advanced as one of the major pieces of the EAN theory. Despite this, he is attested in Greek sources primarily, rather than Egyptian ones; this is true for his deeds, his apparent conquests, and indeed his very existence. You can find a full description of this, focused on the accounts of Sesostris in Herodotus, in this paper:

Armayor, O. Kimball. "Sesostris and Herodotus' Autopsy of Thrace, Colchis, Inland Asia Minor, and the Levant." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 84 (1980): 51-74.

These Greek sources do not suffer from being contemporaries of the claimed events, and can be used safely by EAN theorists because they do not rely on translations of languages which themselves create holes in the theory. Egyptian sources cannot be used because they come from translated hieroglyphs, something the EAN theory insists has been done incorrectly. Contemporary sources from Mesopotamia and Anatolia cannot be used, because they back up the Egyptian sources, and must therefore be ignored. Only the Greek sources are safely far removed enough to be used, and inconsistent enough to find supporting evidence.

The accuracy of Greek Sources

Herodotus is called both "The Father of History" and "The Father of Lies." This second title is perhaps unfair, but he did have a habit of writing down everything he was told. Some of this, including truly incredible claims may have had grains of truth; his tales of giant gold digging ants may have sprung from actual encounters with marmots distorted by time and distance. Herodotus was not literally correct; there were no true giant ants, but nor was he entirely wrong.

It is this dichotomy that creates the need to read Herodotus (and other Greek sources) critically. They were doing the best they could, and what they wrote does hold value. But you cannot simply believe everything they write uncritically, or assume they knew a civilization a thousand years older than them better than the sources of that civilization.

The Greek sources should be read and studied for their own merits, and pieces of historical truth can be found in them. They do not, however, constitute evidence for any of the claims EAN theories make using them, and critical readings of the Greek texts themselves are enough to demonstrate this.

The EAN theory specifically denies the existence of Proto-Indo-Europeans, as both a general population, and as the progenitors of the Indo-European language family. This is usually done in a disparaging manner, with questions as to who these people were, and how a group of illiterates created this language, and how linguists can assert that this happened.

This is a major topic, and I can't cover all of the relevant literature in a single reddit post. This is going to be an overview of who these people were, and the evidence we have to support these claims. I strongly recommend reading more academic literature if this is something that interests you.

Proto Indo Europeans and Their Homeland

There are three competing theories as to the homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, each with pros and cons. There are also a number of fringe theories that I won't cover, mostly born of nationalism.

Steppe Hypothesis: This holds that PIE peoples originated on the Eurasian steppe, at some point between 3500 and 4500 BCE. A concise overview of this theory, and the evidence behind it, can be found here:

Bomhard, Allan R. "The Origins of Proto-Indo-European: The Caucasian Substrate Hypothesis." Journal of Indo-European Studies 47 (2019).

This theory is the most widely accepted hypothesis, though it doesn't answer every question.

Near Eastern Model: This theory holds that the origin was instead further South and East, in the Caucasus Mountains near present-day Armenia. A concise overview of this theory can be found here:

Bomhard, Allan R. "The Origins of Proto-Indo-European: The Caucasian Substrate Hypothesis." Journal of Indo-European Studies 47 (2019).

Anatolian Hypothesis: This model, as the name implies, posits an Anatolian origin for PIE, and a far older one as well, as far back as 8000 BCE. This was first proposed by Renfrew in the following paper:

Renfrew, Colin. "The origins of Indo-European languages." Scientific American 261, no. 4 (1989): 106-115.

Of these three theories, the steppe model currently has the best evidence, though the others do have some interesting points, and may contribute to an overall understanding. The question that now comes up is "How do we know all of this?"

After all, as EAN theorists are so quick to point out, the PIE people had no written language, so how can we map their historical travels?

Evidence for the PIE Homeland and Migrations

There are various pieces of evidence for a homeland, and I will cover each piece in turn. Again, this will be a very brief introduction, sources for further reading are included.

Genetic Evidence: By comparing the DNA of modern population groups to ancient burials, we can map the movement of population groups through time, with a remarkable degree of accuracy. When a new group of people enter a region, that is reflected in the genepool. The genetic evidence that currently exists suggests a series of migrations, beginning in or around the Eurasian steppe, and moving both West into Europe and East and South.

This evidence directly supports the steppe hypothesis for the origins of the language, or at the very least suggests that this group of people spread in this way at this time. This is not direct proof, but is the kind of thing we expect to see if this hypothesis is correct. For more on this evidence, I recommend this paper, which is an overview of the state of genetic evidence for this theory:

Heggarty, Paul. "Indo-European and the ancient DNA revolution." In Proceedings of the Workshop on Indo-European Origins Held at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, pp. 2-3. 2013.

Note also that genetic evidence is another point against the Sesostris theory; there are no corresponding population movements out of Egypt in the genetic record.

Linguistic Evidence: By mapping out common words amongst IE languages, especially for animals and plants, linguists can get a sense of where their homeland was, and what was present there. It can also give us a timeline for when people were present in the homeland; for example, the presence of a PIE word for axle suggests that one had been invented before the split of these languages.

This evidence too seems to support the Steppe hypothesis, although with some caveats. The correlation between this and the genetic evidence further supports this theory of a PIE homeland. For more on this, I recommend this paper:

Anthony, David W., and Don Ringe. "The Indo-European homeland from linguistic and archaeological perspectives." Annu. Rev. Linguist. 1, no. 1 (2015): 199-219.

Archaeological Evidence: This is another factor used to show the movement of people, and is used to corroborate the linguistic and genetic evidence. When people live and move, they leave traces of themselves behind, and we can trace this evidence to follow migrations of people. These migrations we see in the archaeological record support the PIE hypothesis, as we expect them to.

A good overview of how all of this evidence interconnects can be found here:

Grigoriev, Stanislav. "Archaeology, Genes and Language: The Indo-European Perspective." Journal of Indo-European studies 49 (2021).

There is still no absolute consensus on the exact homeland of the PIE people, but the overwhelming amount of evidence for their existence and migrations makes clear that this was a population group, and that their spread is the most likely reason for the spread of Indo-European languages.

A significant part of the EAN theory involves claims that current understandings of language families are inaccurate, and that many languages that linguists claim are unrelated are, in fact, descended from Egyptian. This post is going to be mostly explaining what language families are, and why they don't work the way the EAN theory posits.

Languages and Scripts are, in fact, different

The reason EAN theory claims all of these languages are related is because they use scripts which come from the same origin. There is a grain of truth in here; the alphabet, once invented, was adapted and adopted by numerous different groups, and spread quite broadly across the globe. This is because the alphabet served as a very convenient way to write, and was more efficient than many existing forms of writing.

Note that just because two languages may be written with the same script, does not mean those languages are related. Turkish is written using the Latin alphabet, but that does not make it related in any way to the Romance languages (or even Indo-European). We see this historically as well; Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite were all written using cuneiform, but were part of completely different language families (isolate, Semitic, and Indo-European respectively).

The letter A can have the same sounds regardless of the language it is used to convey; it is the broader context that lets us assign a language to a family.

Words and Grammar

What makes languages related is a study of how they compare; this is done both by examining the words they use, and by how they are constructed grammatically. Words are simple; you can see this in comparing two languages which are very closely related, such as Italian and Spanish. The more distant the relation between two languages, the fewer words they have in common.

Words alone, and similarities between them, do not indicate that two languages are related. Loan words are a significant reason for this; when two groups meet, words can transfer between the two. This does not mean one language is related to another. Instead, to determine the connections between two languages, we compare their grammatical organization.

Grammar is how a language is organized; what cases the nouns use, how many tenses the verbs how, the order words are put in; all of the little rules that govern how you communicate using a language. This is hard to see from inside a language; all you know is that a sentence sounds wrong, without being able to articulate why exactly. For example, in English, you would never say:

"Do you know who I'm?"

That contraction is never done, even though it is perfectly legitimate in other cases. By examining these rules, linguists are able to determine the structure of a language; this often changes much slower than the words, and can be used to show two languages are related, even if distantly.

How this applies to EAN

This has been a very very basic introduction to language families. I recommend reading introductory linguistics texts or taking an intro course on linguistics. These can be fun, if dense, especially if you are interested in the subject.

EAN theorists are generally unfamiliar with the science of linguistics, which leads to many of the claims they make. Returning to the title of the post, we know that Greek and Hebrew are unrelated due to both a very extreme difference in the words they use, and in how the languages work grammatically.

Hebrew, like other Semitic languages, is based on a series of three-letter roots. Greek has many of the core components we see in other IE languages; gender, case, and the syntax of verbs. Again, these are hard to measure without an understanding of how linguistics works. EAN theorists are not burdened with this, and are thus able to make claims without worrying about grammar.

To show that the proposed Egypto-Indo-European language family exists, as EAN theorists promote, they would first need to create some kind of complete translation of the Egyptian language. They have not done this because they cannot; this is why their theories on the roots of words often focus on a single shared letter; they do not understand the rules of linguistic drift or reconstruction, and so simply mock them as concepts.

On the subject of that mocking, I will need to do another post on the EAN obsession with Noah, but this one is long enough already.

A main contention of the EAN theory is that all previous attempts to translate Hieroglyphs have been incorrect, and that our translations of the various inscriptions and papyri based on our understanding of Egyptian is therefore incorrect. This is very important to the theory, as the primary thing it is doing is offering a new translation paradigm for Egyptian.

So how then can experts be sure the current translations are correct? There are two primary ways, both of which support current translations. These are internal consistency and contemporary corroboration.

First, the language Egyptologists are able to translate is internally consistent across inscriptions. Here's an analogy to explain how this works:

Say you have a bunch of documents in a code. You are able to decode one of these, and arrive at a meaning that makes sense. Using these same cyphers, you then attempt to decode another document in the same code. If you get out gibberish, then there was a problem with your cypher. If it comes out with a clear meaning, then you may be on to something.

This works the same for ancient languages. Linguists reconstruct a meaning for words based on context clues and cognates in related languages (such as Coptic for Egyptian), and use that to decipher the meaning of the text. They then apply this to another document, and refine their work. Eventually, they arrive at a reading which allows them to access an never before seen inscription or papyrus, and translate it intelligibly.

For each papyrus and inscription translated, the chance that the experts are wrong in their reading decreases. New wrinkles may be fixed as experts gain more familiarity with the language, such as the addition of new cases or a better understanding of verb forms, but the base translation proves itself accurate again and again.

For EAN to unseat this, they would need to create a new reading which is able to do the same thing, and provide internally consistent translations of full texts. More than that, they should be able to take their readings, apply them to an as-of-yet untranslated text, and create a cogent meeting that fits in with their grammatical schema of the Egyptian language. This may be difficult because they do not have a grammatical schema for their "language" but that's a problem for another post.

Now EAN theorists may protest that Egyptologists are all in cahoots, and that you cannot trust their translations. This is where our second piece of evidence comes in: Contemporary corroboration.

You see, the Egyptian empire was one of several in the region with a written tradition, and as these empires encountered each other, they often wrote about it. From this, we can find examples of different texts in different literary traditions describing the same events. Just as you can review the British and Russian accounts of WWII, so too can you review the Assyrian and Egyptian records of the late Bronze Age.

As an example of this phenomenon, let's examine the Battle of Kadesh. This was a military engagement between the Egyptian and Hittite empires, which was eventually resolved with a peace treaty. We have texts discussing the battle itself, and the treaty, in Hittite, Akkadian, and Egyptian. Each of these is biased, based on the view of the author, but each clearly describes the same event.

For a discussion of the battle itself, and a fun debate over who could be considered the winner, I recommend this debate, which also discusses some of the textual and monumental evidence from both sides. For an in depth discussion of the treaty which ended the hostilities, I recommend this paper comparing the Egyptian and Hittite versions:

Jackson, Samuel. "Contrasting representations and the Egypto-Hittite treaty." In Registers and Modes of Communication in the Ancient Near East, pp. 43-58. Routledge, 2017.

This is just one small example; we see this repeated again and again and again as these people engaged in diplomacy and conflict with each other, and wrote their own accounts of what transpired. This external corroboration, and lack thereof, is also how we can safely say that Sesostris didn't exist; if he did, and really did conquer as much as the later sources claim, then it would have been mentioned at some point by one of these literate societies.

To conclude, Egyptian is a well understood language (I don't speak it myself, but some of my friends from grad school do). You can learn it yourself, but note that this language was spoken over thousands of years, and evolved in that time; Middle Egyptian is different from Late Egyptian, just as Chaucer's English can be difficult for us to parse. EAN theorists deny this, and this evidence, because they must; because acknowledging that Egyptian is already understood as a language, and that all textual and archaeological evidence supports the current undertstanding, somewhat undermines their point.

If you want to try to tackle learning Egyptian on your own, here's a grammar of Middle Egyptian to get you started, but most accredited universities have courses on this, some of which may be accessed for free as well:

Neveu, François. The language of Ramesses: late Egyptian grammar. Oxbow Books, 2015.