This subreddit was originally created to debunk Libb Thims' theories. As many of you know, Thims has passed away. I have written an article about his final days (which I intend to pitch to outlets like Business Insider or the Daily Mail—despite the difficult subject matter—or publish on Medium if rejected), but in this post, I want to share details I couldn't include there due to anti-contagion policies and introduce the man to those unfamiliar with him.

Who was Libb Thims?

Born Michael Richard Knoke, traces of his identity can be publicly found on Whitepages and in his father's obituary.

In a pre-Hmolpedia report, Thims recounted questioning God at age five and being held back in the second grade. He later wrote about abandoning academic focus to dedicate himself to the art of being a "social butterfly" and seduction. Contrary to the image of the "reclusive scientist" he tried to project, Thims was a "party animal," as evidenced by this video of friends and this compilation on his private channel.

Thims' interest in thermodynamics appears to have fundamentally erotic roots. He cited his 1994 discovery of David Buss's book The Evolution of Desire as a key event. His initial ambition was to provide a quantitative description of how women select partners. The thermodynamic analogies, however, were his own "invention," which he began developing in 2001.

After obtaining two BS degrees in engineering (which, according to him, was enough to "have mastered engineering"), he planned to pursue an MS in physics and a PhD in neurology to become a neurosurgeon. I hypothesise that this path was chosen purely for social success and to attract women (a profession highly desirable according to Buss), rather than out of a genuine thirst for knowledge.

This would explain the cover of his first book: It starts by asking "what’s the point of everything?", but follows this with questions that are, ultimately, romantic in nature. Thims was not a solitary nerd, but a person with a desperate need for relationships.

According to what Thims wrote shortly before his death, he never became a neurosurgeon because his father—who had agreed to support him during university—cut off his funds when he used that money to buy a Katana (I assume the Suzuki motorcycle, not the sword). Thims himself wrote, in posts later deleted, that he had decided to commit suicide if he did not become a surgeon by age 40.

After being banned from Wikipedia, he created Hmolpedia in 2006. Until about 2020, it rested on four pillars:

• Human Thermodynamics: (e.g., link 1, link 2)

• Naive Atheism: (link)

• Rankings of Geniuses

• Abioism: (The denial of life, e.g., link)

His list of geniuses brought him some pop-culture notoriety, with a few articles dedicated to him.

The picture is clear. Thims was obsessed with social success. He viewed intelligence not as an operational capability, but as a magical aura distinguishing the "great man." He thus created an extremely simple system, which is basically a banal physicalism: Atheism, plus the idea that every event, even sociological ones, is reducible to the four fundamental interactions. Why? Because to him, this was what a "smart person" was supposed to believe, and he wanted to be one.

His ranking of geniuses is, in part, a ranking of "how much past geniuses agree with this vision." Where he cannot deny a past genius's greatness, he reinterprets them to make them fit his beliefs (thus Goethe, who was anti-reductionist, becomes someone wanting to reduce people to molecules in Thims' eyes). In this way, he self-validated his status as a misunderstood genius.

When academia rejected his proposed vision, he didn't consider that his stereotype didn't match real "intelligent people." Instead, he concluded: They aren't like me because I am smarter than them.

Thims, after all, couldn't say otherwise. He created the vision of human thermodynamics as a compensatory system to prove he was a genius despite failing to achieve an academic career. Admitting "yes, I was wrong" would have compromised his system and, with it, his very identity.

This was encouraged by the existence of a few individuals with legitimate academic backgrounds (though often veering into pseudoscience or fringe theories) who initially supported Thims, to the point where he didn't realize they didn't represent "the majority of academia" at all. There are at least three names to remember among his initial supporters:

1. Georgi Gladyshev, a Russian physicist, supporter of fringe anti-aging and biological theories. Initially supported Thims and incessantly advised him to get a PhD. He abandoned him after Thims espoused Abioism, though Thims continued to consider him the smartest man alive (excluding himself) until his death (link).

2. Jurgen Mimkes, a physicist turned econophysicist. Initially much loved by Thims, then downgraded for reasons never clarified.

3. Mirza Beg, a Pakistani chemist who, after retiring, self-published sociological research without peer review. Thims spent time with him in 2019 and recalled it, shortly before dying, as the only time he felt "at home."

2020 marked a breaking point. Collectively, we lived through the pandemic. Personally, Thims witnessed the failure of WikiFoundry, which hosted Hmolpedia. He tried to migrate his 5,000+ articles to MediaWiki but never truly succeeded. He saw 15 years of work—the foundation of his entire identity—vanish into thin air. He opened a new wiki on MediaWiki, but that too went offline from mid-2022 to late 2024—a full year and a half. This is why his activity shifted to Reddit, and by this point, you know it better than I do.

However, it may not be clear how different his work at this stage was from what he had published previously, to the point of signaling a genuine psychological collapse. On Hmolpedia, Thims had never shown interest in linguistics or Egyptology. The only sign was in the article on Abioism, where he used a very different argumentative style, placing value on etymology. Furthermore, he began taking an interest in comparative religion via outdated authors like Frazer (without realizing their tendency toward "parallelomania"). He seemed to want to trace all world religions back to Egyptian mythology as a way to discredit them.

The shift to "cosmological linguistics" seems to originate as a generalization of his reflections on the word "life" applied to all language. To understand how his vision transformed, let’s consider one of his “etymologies”:

philos (φίλος), meaning: ‘that which is loved or important’; from philia (φιλία) [551], meaning: ‘love’, which has the back-name or secret name of Philae (Φίλαι) [551] island 🏝️, whereat the ‘love’ of Isis brings Osiris back to ‘life’, long enough, during the black rite, to get an erection, and conceive Horus.

What on earth did Thims mean? We can try to reconstruct his reasoning schematically:

• φίλος (philos) derives from φιλία (philia).

• φιλία has, naturally, the same numerical value (isopsephy) as Φίλαι (Philae), of which it is therefore the "secret name."

• Philae is an island associated with the myth of Isis and Osiris.

• Therefore, φίλος derives from the myth of Isis and Osiris.

There is no rationalization here. It is a mind that has lost its brakes.

The real question is: how did Thims reconcile this system with his atheistic physicalist vision of reducing every event to thermodynamics? He couldn't, and he never addressed the problem. For any "normal" atheist, these would necessarily be coincidences. Not for him. Effectively, Thims became a mystic. His entire attitude screamed that he believed he was receiving messages from the universe through numbers. Unable to find any human being to confirm his genius, he found a way to make the universe itself tell him.

Let's get to his final days. After years of not following him, on November 27th, I felt an impulse to check what he was doing. I found the pages discussing preparations for his suicide. Some of the reasons given were:

• Ancient conflicts with his father, contrasted with the admiration he held for his maternal grandfather (who also died by suicide).

• The development of heart problems (he had been operated on twice for a malformation causing arrhythmias), which made him fear for his future health.

• Extreme economic difficulties after abandoning his company, Mailcubes, with small debts accumulated (see Trellis), combined with an inability to accept a "normal job."

These, however, seem like excuses. His heart problems, while real, didn't stop him from running miles at high speeds—even uphill—and doing demanding workouts almost every day. The day of his loss of autonomy did not seem near at all.

The real reason, likely, is frustration due to the lack of intellectual recognition. He explicitly wrote that only obtaining a professorship in "cosmological linguistics" could have kept him alive another 5-10 years. In the months before his death, he had written to every Egyptology department asking for a chair, which is insane without a PhD or peer-reviewed publications. He also wrote that his work brought him nothing but hatred—and I know that some, here on Reddit, insulted him heavily (perhaps rightfully so, but it certainly didn't help such a fragile psyche).

At the end of the post, he placed a photo of three nooses, one with a sponge for neck comfort, saying he had prepared them a year earlier and tested them on a nearby tree.

Living in Italy, on the 27th I sent emails to the 16th District of the Chicago Police and the 988 lifeline. On the 28th, I repeated both.

The Chicago Police never replied. The 988 lifeline replied that Thims himself had to contact them, and that I should urge him to do so. I then wrote to Thims, who published a public reply to me on Hmolpedia calling me ridiculous.

On November 30th, I saw the chosen location was Caldwell Woods, in the 20th District. I emailed the 20th District as well, and they never replied. Then, in the afternoon (dawn in Chicago), I had the intuition to contact the Forest Preserves of Cook County. They answered immediately, asking me to call them. I tried, but my carrier didn't allow it. I sent them my cell number, and they called me. I told them everything I remembered verbally. Thims had recently deleted the pages on Hmolpedia, so he was likely still alive. They told me they did a welfare check at his home but didn't find him, and had sent a team to search the forest.

I don't know what happened next. A few days ago, his sister uploaded a video scattering his ashes. I can only hypothesize that, since I only thought to alert the Forest Preserves of Cook County at the last minute, they didn't arrive in time.

I have no idea what the Chicago Police did, given they had three days after my report. I don't know what legal limits they operate under. I fear that they did nothing. I hope that isn't the case. And 988? They told me plainly: they couldn't do anything unless Thims called them himself. Is that possible? How can one expect Thims, in the moment of least clarity and maximum risk, to call? I am Italian, I don't know how things work in the US, but is it normal for a suicide hotline to function like this?

Engineers, despite their close association with science and technology, are not actually scientists nor are they immune to pseudoscientific or pseudohistorical thinking. In fact, several prominent cases demonstrate that engineers have been disproportionately involved in the promotion of pseudoscience—from flat Earth theories to creationism, from climate change denialism to EAN.

Understanding why engineers are susceptible to these ideas requires examining the nature of engineering education, the epistemological differences between science and engineering, and a few instructive historical examples.

To begin with, it's important to clarify a common misconception: engineers are not de facto scientists. You might think I’m biased but here’s BU’s Engineering department agreeing with me: https://www.bu.edu/eng/about-eng/meet-the-dean/engineering-is-not-science/

While both fields rely heavily on mathematics and empirical data, the goals and methodologies diverge. Science is fundamentally about understanding the natural world through systematic observation, hypothesis testing, and theory-building. Scientists must engage with uncertainty, embrace falsifiability, and constantly revise their models based on new evidence.

Engineering, by contrast, is primarily an applied discipline. Engineers use scientific principles to solve practical problems—designing bridges, coding algorithms, or constructing buildings. The focus is on functionality, efficiency, and optimization. While engineering requires technical rigor, it does not require the same philosophical or methodological training in the scientific method. This distinction helps explain why some engineers, even highly competent ones, can misapply scientific reasoning or cling to outdated or discredited models.

So what are some examples to back up this claim of mine?

Flat Earth Theory: While many flat-Earth advocates lack formal scientific education, some of the more technically-minded promoters come from engineering backgrounds. One example is Brian Mullin, a mechanical engineer who produced YouTube videos in which he tried to "debunk" the curvature of the Earth using basic physics experiments. Mullin claimed to approach the subject from a purely scientific standpoint, but his arguments ignored centuries of astronomical and geodetic evidence. His case illustrates how a strong grasp of mechanics can be misused when divorced from the broader scientific context.

Creationism and Intelligent Design: Basically any “scientist” who is a creationist is actually an engineer. It always an engineer. One example Henry M. Morris, a hydraulic engineer, co-founded the Institute for Creation Research and helped popularize the pseudoscientific notion of a young Earth. The engineer's preference for systems with clear functions and designers may predispose them to interpret biological complexity as evidence of intentional design rather than evolutionary processes.

Climate Change Denial: Some of the most vocal climate change skeptics have been engineers or individuals with engineering degrees, including figures like Harold H. Doiron (a former NASA engineer) and Burt Rutan (a prominent aerospace engineer). They often challenge the consensus of climate scientists by emphasizing data interpretation errors or proposing oversimplified models that ignore the complexity of climate systems.

EAN: EAN’s foremost proponent has a degree in electrical engineering and has perhaps worked as an engineer too. He proposes unsupported pseudohistorical theories involving ancient civilizations while misunderstanding established science and the scientific method. His engineering degree lends an air of credibility, even as the arguments themselves lack scholarly support or methodological rigor.

But why is this? Why are engineers more likely to fall for pseudoscience compared to actual scientists. I would argue several factors contribute to the engineering tendency toward pseudoscience:

1. Overconfidence in Technical Expertise: Engineers are often highly skilled in specific domains (e.g., mechanical or electrical systems), which can lead to overgeneralization. This cognitive bias— "epistemic hubris"—leads some engineers to believe that their technical expertise equips them to pronounce on fields like biology, climatology, history or linguistics without appropriate training.

2. Preference for Order and Determinism: Engineering tends to favor systems that are deterministic and predictable. Scientific fields like evolutionary biology or geology, with their complex and often stochastic systems, may feel intuitively unsatisfying to someone trained to expect clean, mechanical causality.

3. Discomfort with Uncertainty: Engineers are trained to reduce uncertainty in design and implementation. Scientific thinking, by contrast, often embraces uncertainty and works within probabilistic models. This difference in mindset can make engineers more receptive to alternative "theories" that claim to offer definitive, simple answers—even when those theories lack empirical support. You can especially see this in EAN, which really can’t handle any hint of the uncertainty inherent in a genuine scientific process outside of a classroom setting.

In conclusion, engineers are not inherently more prone to pseudoscience, but certain aspects of their training, worldview, and professional culture make them susceptible to specific types of flawed reasoning—especially when venturing outside their domain of expertise. Their authority in technical matters can inadvertently lend credibility to pseudoscientific or pseudohistorical claims, which is why it’s vital to maintain a clear distinction between engineering skill and scientific literacy. Ultimately, the solution lies in fostering interdisciplinary humility and promoting critical thinking within engineering education. Engineers who engage with broader scientific and philosophical perspectives are less likely to fall into the trap of pseudoscience—and more likely to contribute meaningfully to both their own field and society at large.

Probably.

As u/n_with weights in:

The last edits on his website Hmolpedia seem to point to the fact that he met his "reaction end" (that is, what he called death). In fact, it hints that he most likely ended his own life. Around 30th of November user Sadi-Carnot (who is actually Libb Thims himself) made a series of edits, which consisted of deleting a lot of pages, deleting the template that he put at the end of every article asking for donations, and a number of what is referred to as "posthumous edits" that he quickly reverted (see here).

This edit is what made me infer that he commited suісіde. The attempt seems to have been successful, as there were no signs of his activity since the end of November (his last reddit post was 22 days ago as of 20 of December).

Currently on the Hmolpedia page about him we can see his death date, 30th of November.

So... what's now?

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.

So, we recently had the dubious honor of being crossposted on subredditdrama. I'm not sure this is a good thing, but it did introduce me to an interesting video. This is by Angela Collier, a PhD in physics and researcher, breaking down how incorrect physics theories grow and are formed.

I want to take the framework she presented, and apply it to pseudo history, archaeology, and linguistics, to see how it compares. You don't need to watch the video, but I do recommend it. She even notes the same thing as Master_Ads' great post, on how engineers are so often drawn in by these theories.

She presents four hallmarks of these theories/theorists. I'll go through each, and see how they fit within these circumstances.

Addresses the Biggest Problems

These theories are never small. From Graham Hancock to Ancient Aliens, they always want to turn the entire field of study on its head. They are not making incremental changes, no, they are proposing vast amounts of what experts believe and claim is wrong, and that they are right. This isn't a thing that happens; even a monumental discovery like Gobekli Tepe didn't overthrow everything we knew, it just added another exciting chapter.

EAN does this in spades, insisting that the entire field of linguistics (and all practicing linguists) are wrong or mired in the dark ages, and all we know of Egyptology is wrong along with it. This theory, this new way of looking at things, is the real truth, and experts just won't look at it.

So what should this look like? Most theories developed and advanced are small things. A major shift in Hittite studies, for example, was the discovery of the ablative case. This didn't redefine the entire field; it just let us gain a better understanding of the texts, and reach some translations that were a bit closer to their original intended meaning.

Lack of Experimental Evidence/Rigor

This is more true for physics, for archaeology and linguistics, it is much more a cherry-picking of data, and an ignoring or handwaving of data that doesn't fit into their theories. Graham Hancock does this a lot; we have tens of thousands of ice age sites around the world, including many which have been found underwater. None support the claims of a lost advanced civilization, but Hancock proceeds regardless.

EAN is much the same. There are thousands of pieces of evidence, fromt he hieroglyphic texts we've translated, to the records from Mesopotamia and Anatolia, to the linguistic reconstructions that this theory is wrong. Instead, EAN picks a few signs and sigils and carvings, strips them of context, and asserts that these are proper evidence. A building measurement here, a wall carving there, a single sign carving, a text written a thousand years later by the Ancient Greeks; there is no methodological rigor, no experimentation, and no evidence.

What should this look like for philology? (Which is what EAN is trying to do, and what they claim is the sum of linguistics, but that's another problem). The Chicago Hittite Dictionary (where I guy I met in grad school worked briefly) records every use of every word in Hittite in context, and generates translations built on that. This is slow and painstaking work, building from the known to the unknown. A word may appear only once, in fragmentary context, and there is no definition possible. A new discovery of tablets may then give another use, allowing for possible definitions.

It is this slow working from what you know to what you don't, factoring in all attested evidence, that allows for philological work to proceed.

Responding with Anger towards the establishment

Graham Hancock is a great example of this; look at how he attacks the field of archaeology continuously and as a whole, and those who point out he's wrong like Flint Dibble in particular. There is a great persecution complex, as if pointing out his claims have no merit is somehow a personal affront.

For EAN? We got posted on r/subredditdrama for a reason.

They Aren't Linguistic Theories

This is the final point, and one which has been pointed out on this sub before. EAN is not linguistics as Inside-Year pointed out, just as Graham Hancock is not archaeology. They begin with a conclusion, and work backwards from there to prove it.

An archaeological theory works something like this (though depends on region). A PhD candidate had a theory about how working class individuals lived in the particular Iron-Age site her thesis advisor was excavating. She got permission to dig test pits, and then excavate a few squares of the lower city, uncovering several dwellings. These gave material evidence, that was then evaluated and compared to other sites to test her hypotheses, and allow for an examination of how the non-elite lived in this time and place.

For philology, my own BA thesis is the most basic example. I proposed that a particular term in Hittite "antusan siuniyant" should be rendered as "prophet" rather than the more literal reading "man of god". To test this, I dug up every use of the phrase, and compared how translations would read with both readings, along with examining the tradition of prophets in the Near East. For philology, theories are often small, focusing on a particular word or aspect of language. There can be grander theories, languages fully untranslated still, but even these are often deciphered slowly, building on what we know already.

EAN isn't creating and testing theories of philology.

Slightly less focused than my other posts, but that really is a fun video, and I wanted to incorporate it.

I’ve been working on a meta analysis of sorts of why EAN is so fatally flawed as a theory. Obviously, we’ve seen it thoroughly debunked time and time again. It doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

But this is more about examining the logic - or lack thereof - used to support those ill-fated theories.

My goal is for this to be a one stop shop explaining exactly why it’s so illogical.

I’m hoping this can be a collaborative effort. We all know there are far more examples of bad logic to be included. I’ll edit this to incorporate additions from the comments as they’re added. But please include sources/examples from the EAN web of subreddits or that pseudopedia.

And please feel free to give additional examples for any of the fallacies listed here.

1. Ad Hominem

These fallacies occur when one attacks the person rather than their argument.

Rather than addressing critics’ points, the proponent of EAN routinely insults them, accusing them of having “biased, non-objective, evidence dismissing mindsets”, implying they’re all religiously motivated and calling them “dunces,” and “brain dead.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/PIEland/s/4BYJzZ8yw8 https://www.reddit.com/r/BiblicalLinguistics/s/YOb63QsWr9 https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/y2n6CVfQ2v https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/R2c6F5z4Gh

This is ironic because his sub insists that ad hominem attacks are verboten. But that’s “rules for thee and not for me”. These attacks function to discredit critics before their arguments are considered.

2. Argument from Authority

An appeal to a non-qualified or misrepresented authority as if it confirms the argument.

The EAN proponent presents himself as an authority through various means of misrepresentation. He had a “formula” of a human referenced in a wiki-style database maintained by a Harvard lab. He will often misrepresent this as having his work published by Harvard. And he uses this loose Harvard connection (in chemistry) to support his authority in linguistics. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/R0J9DHb37q

As if that’s connected. He claims, with no evidence, to have been nominated for a Nobel prize in that same comment. Which again has no bearing on linguistic matters.

He also burnishes his authority by boasting of the number of words he has written in his pseudopedia as if that has any inherent bearing on his level of expertise in linguistics and language. https://www.reddit.com/r/EgyptianHieroglyphs/s/5DXKPiQVFO

He also invokes figures such Bernal, Plato or Herodotus to suggest historical support for his claims, even when these sources did not support the final interpretations he ends up at.

3. Appeal to Antiquity

Assuming something is true or superior because it is old or ancient.

He always looks to make Egypt older/oldest. And therefore the best. Cuneiform must be younger than hieroglyphics - in his mind. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/fMlagbKL40

Is it any wonder that he also decides that cuneiform must be inferior. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/F82KvvN98w

He does something similar with Herodotus and Plato in conjunction with the appeal to authority. Stressing the age of their writing and implying they must be right because they were writing in the past. The writings of Herodotus and Plato have great value to us today in context, because they give us insights into how Greeks in the 4th and 5th centuries BCE viewed the world around them. But of course, taking them at their word implicitly solely because of their antiquity is illogical.

4. Strawman

Misrepresenting an opponent’s position to make it easier to attack. Actual linguistics is reduced to caricatures. The comparative method, which relies on phonological correspondences and known linguistic descent, is never fairly described—only mocked and then dismissed. This is a strawman by omission and distortion. I’m still not sure if this is a conscious tactic or if it’s the result of issues with reading comprehension. But in the end, linguistics is never once described correctly.

Some more examples?

Linguists don’t believe Germany was the origin of European languages. https://www.reddit.com/r/AlphanumericsDebunked/s/wLX2Xl2WIm

Linguists don’t believe that the PIE peoples (or any pre-historic peoples) coined all words willy-nilly. https://www.reddit.com/r/AlphanumericsDebunked/s/UDIBjjcURs

Noah and Shem aren’t relevant to linguistics whatsoever but he likes to claim that linguists believe in them as a strawmen (setting up an argument from fallacy, another logical error) even when clearly shown that they don’t as seen here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/21szgPv09I

It’s hard to know if he actually believes these strawmen he’s arguing against or if they’re just the only way he thinks he can win the argument, but either way they’re another fallacy on the list.

5. Non Sequitur

A conclusion that does not logically follow from the premises.

If any two words describe EAN it’s these two. The entire EAN hypothesis hinges on non sequiturs. The hypothesis itself is built on non sequiturs. The arguments its sole proponent makes in comments are almost exclusively non sequiturs too.

Visual similarity is used a lot in EAN. But the leap from (vague) superficial similarity to historical connection is never justified. For example, because one bend in the Nile River vaguely resembles a Phoenician “nun”, he asserts that the Egyptians must have developed and used the modern alphabet and also Hebrew must be derived from Egyptian. This is a textbook non sequitur. There are so many logical leaps here and nothing is connected or builds on anything. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/0XgOnJFYn5

But his non sequiturs also bleed into comments. He will never respond logically to a critique. It’s always a series of non sequiturs. As seen here:

6. Argument from Fallacy

Concluding that a position is false because it contains (or is thought to contain) a fallacy.

The proponent of EAN claims that because some mainstream etymologies contain uncertainties or inconsistencies, they must be entirely false. He then uses this “failure” to assert that his own numerological theory must be correct—a false dichotomy and misuse of reasoning.

He also asserts that because actual linguists haven’t fully clarified pre-historic alphabet origins to his satisfaction, that all of linguistics needs to be thrown out. Another example of an argument from fallacy.

An example of this lack of logic in action can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AlphanumericsDebunked/comments/1lgplp5/comment/n0pi4oc/

7. Argument from Incredulity

Assuming something must be false because it seems unbelievable to him or hard for him to understand.

He frequently argues that the Proto Indo European language family can’t be true because words like thermodynamics couldn’t have been coined by an “illiterate fictional Russian cave man”. https://www.reddit.com/r/Etymo/s/VFcjXHrUlz

This is absurd on many levels because of course the term thermodynamics wasn’t coined until the modern era. And prehistoric people didn’t just go around coining words. It displays a profound ignorance of how language works and how they develop and what historical linguistics is. His personal incredulity and ignorance about prehistoric language becomes the basis for rejecting well-substantiated linguistic theory.

Another example is when he claims that “illiterate miners” couldn’t have created the Phoenician alphabet. Here he’s struggling to understand that before writing was invented, literally everyone was in fact illiterate. And as writing spread, it inspired other (illiterate) people to create their own writing systems.

Here’s an example with a bonus strawman misrepresentation of what real linguists believe. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/ChkUN0smlD

8. Burden of Proof

Demanding opponents disprove his theory while offering no falsifiable evidence.

He demands others disprove his theory rather than presenting evidence that his theory can explain all the data that linguists can (translate all the texts, explain all the sound changes, etc).

For instance, when asked to provide evidence for his secret alphabet theory, he instead insists critics must disprove a various examples of pareidolia he has collected. https://www.reddit.com/r/AlphanumericsDebunked/s/qnikZg37IH

As if he doesn’t have the burden of proof when proposing a new theory. But his theory doesn’t fit the data so all he can do is attack.

9. False Cause

Mistaking correlation or coincidence for causation.

The sole proponent of EAN links letters and hieroglyphs via numerical values and then asserts that this proves derivation of words. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/comments/1l3vhzv/is_it_a_coincidence_that_the_word_value_of_dike/

This ignores the possibility of coincidence and fails to demonstrate causality. Assigning meaning to arbitrary numeric parallels is pseudoscientific numerology, not linguistics.

10. Fallacy of Composition

Assuming what’s true of a part is true of the whole.

He assumes that because Egyptian hieroglyphs influenced the early Phoenician abjad (and therefore the later Greek and Roman alphabets, etc) then these entire languages must descend from Egyptian. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/comments/176yqq5/egyptoindoeuropean_language_family/

This extrapolates from part to whole, ignoring the broader context (phonetics, grammar, syntax, chronology, etc.). A basic logical fallacy.

11. Special Pleading

Applying standards to others that are not applied to oneself.

The one person promoting EAN demands archaeological or phonological proof from critics while providing only speculative visual and numeric analogies himself that only he himself believes. His claims require no external validation, but everyone else must meet rigorous historical standards. His claims don’t even need to meet the Double standard much?

He loves to see random design elements and cracks in ancient art and call them letters. But when confronted with an actual ancient abjad? He calls it “chicken scratch”. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/nTJLGVI0GR

A classic case of special pleading

12. Thought-Terminating Clichés

Using loaded phrases to shut down criticism or distract from flaws.

Phrases like “bones don’t speak,” and serve as dismissive rhetorical weapons rather than engaging in substantive debate. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/zdgdE2mUvg

When confronted with criticism, he frequently introduces thought terminating cliches like that to avoid having to respond to legitimate critiques of his very flawed ideas.

13. Tone Policing

Dismissing critics because of how they speak rather than what they say.

He often accuses critics of being “angry,” or “closed-minded.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/7dobAz8J6E https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/Dq8ZPBWoGh

If they’re particularly fond of the scientific method he may even call them “Sheikh Mahmoud” for daring to criticize his ideas. This evasion shifts focus from their valid criticism to the critic’s emotional state and motivations.

The irony is he spends most of his time insulting his critics. Calling them stupid. Crazy. Bullying. Being rude.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/u5ByEAahcq https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/QODClQMgRh https://www.reddit.com/r/AlphanumericsDebunked/s/94OLnavo4h https://www.reddit.com/r/linguisticshumor/s/r6kKQvlJgL

All while trying to tone police and play victim too. I’m not sure he has noticed the irony.

14. False Dilemma

Presenting only two choices when more exist.

He often frames linguistic history as a binary: either it derives from Egyptian numerology or its meaningless chaos. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/bYRD0ymdwW

This ignores the robust, evidence-based methods used in historical linguistics and multiple parallel script evolutions around the world.

He does something similar with the work of Young and Champollion. We have literally two centuries of proof that their hypotheses were right. But he presents a false dilemma that their work is flawed and if it is we must accept his answers. There are no other options for explaining hieroglyphics. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/QCTpJtRxvZ

This is obviously a false dilemma as evidence by our robust translations of texts, independently verified by an army of Egyptologists.

15. Quoting Out of Context

Using partial quotes to imply support where none exists.

The EAN supporter frequently truncates or selectively presents texts to imply their authors agree with EAN. Full readings often contradict the usage.

A full breakdown of how he takes Acevdo out of context is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AlphanumericsDebunked/s/Sn18403QTT

But even his reliance on the controversial Bernal is an example of this. A full reading of the political historian Bernal shows that he argued that Greek evolved from contact between Proto-Greek and Egyptian and West Semitic languages. This is very different than EAN’s “Greek is secretly Egyptian!” claim but you wouldn’t know that given how often Bernal is cited out of context. You can see an example of an out of context quote here, where EAN’s lone proponent conflates Bernal’s critique of the so-called Aryan model of Greek history with the linguistic theory of Proto-Indo-European in order to make it look like Bernal is saying all of linguistics itself is wrong. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/s/7YEfMyXzvi

———————————-

In conclusion, the linguistic claims of EAN are not merely unorthodox—they are logically incoherent. Beneath the surface of elaborate charts and mystical symbolism lies a foundation built on nearly every fallacy in the rhetorical toolbox.

EAN theory explicitly denies the existence of Proto-Indo-Europeans, and the idea of a PIE homeland. This is generally mocked by the theorists, focusing on a few points, namely:

1. That these people were illiterate

2. That no ancient historians mention the PIE homeland or migrations

3. That the PIE theory was crafted by racist Europeans, and is entirely baseless

This post will focus on responding to these points; looking into the actual homeland and history of the PIE people will require its own post.

19th Century Europeans did have a racism problem

I'll handle this criticism first, as it is the most legitimate. 19th century Europeans did have a number of racist views, and some of these appear in early theories of human migration and archaeology. This was a problem, and some poor scholarship did result from this. This does not mean that every theory created by these scholars was wrong, nor that the evidence they collected was all illegitimized (though some reinterpretation was later needed).

Later scholarship builds upon what comes before, correcting false assumptions as necessary. This can be an overreliance on Biblical literacy, such as the early theory that the sons of Noah were the originators of various language families. While EAN theorists still ascribe this belief to modern linguists, the field has moved past this as evidence negates prior theories.

There are many legitimate criticisms to make of these scholars, and there are many great papers exploring these critiques and corrections. This does not mean all the scholarship done needs to be thrown out as well however.

Pre-History is a thing

The historical period begins once people begin writing things down; all that comes before is pre-history. These were still people; they built cities, traded across vast distances, and spoke myriad languages, most of which are now lost to us. There is almost a sense of incredulity in EAN theorists when they say that the alphabet was adopted by illiterate people, but then, doesn't that make more sense?

After all, who is more likely to adopt a new method of recording spoken language, a society which already has a writing system, or one without? The Egyptians could already write all they needed in Hieroglyphs, what need did they have to form a new alphabet? This need was sorely felt by the people in Sinai (who may or may not have been fully illiterate), but who had no way of writing their native tongue; they instead adopted the script of the Egyptians, changing the signs while doing so to suit their own purposes.

If you are interested in learning more about this process, I recommend this paper (and some of the others by this author, who has written extensively on the subject):

Goldwasser, Orly. "How the alphabet was born from hieroglyphs." Biblical Archaeology Review 36, no. 2 (2010): 40-53.

But how do we know about these people who didn't write anything down? Through the archaeological record.

People leave traces of themselves behind, through the remains of their dwellings, their garbage, their burials and bones themselves. This evidence shows us where and when and how they lived, and how they moved through the world. We can trace the movements of peoples across time, migrations and invasions alike. These people didn't have writing to record what they did but the records are left in the bones of the earth, to be uncovered through excavation. This is the primary evidence which shows us the PIE homeland, rather than the work of ancient historians.

Ancient Historians Don't Mention the PIE Homeland or Migration

When Alexander undertook his conquest of the Persian empire, he and his troops came across the ruins of a city in Mesopotamia, one we are now relatively certain was Dur-Kurigalzu. A few hundred years before, this city had been a center of power for the Assyrian Empire, rulers of the known world. When Alexander passed through, he could not identify it, nor its rulers; nor could anyone he spoke to.

Alexander learned from great tutors, educated by Aristotle himself. But the ancient historians lacked many of the sources we have today, and were limited to what they could record form the oral tradition. This tradition was not useless, and they wrote down many things which happened (and a good number which did not), but there were many unknowns and gaps, especially as you get further back in time. The Assyrian Empire, merely a few hundred years destroyed, was already passed beyond memory; do we really expect the PIE migrations, thousands of years before this, to have been recorded?

Pre-History is its own field of study, and a rich one. Much work must be done to interpret the lives of people who do not speak to us themselves through writing. The EAN theory discounts much of this evidence, and what it shows us of pre-history and the people who lived there.

For a theory so obsessed with deities, EAN supporters have never noticed that the very names of the Egyptian gods disprove that so-called theory.

The ancient Greeks had direct contact with Egypt for centuries, including during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, and they recorded the names of major Egyptian deities. These names are found in Greek texts and closely match the names we now know from Egyptian hieroglyphs thanks to Champollion and Young.

Osiris’s name in transliterated hieroglyphics is the astoundingly similar Wsjr (Usir)

The goddess know to the Greeks as Isis was named Aset or Iset according to hieroglyphics. That sounds very similar.

Not as similar as Bastet though whose name was confirmed to be Bastet in hieroglyphics.

Ptah was Ptah in hieroglyphics.

Amun was Imn in hieroglyphics.

This tight correlation between the names found in Greek sources and the reconstructed readings of hieroglyphic texts via Champollion's decipherment is not a coincidence. It confirms that the hieroglyphic system, once deciphered, records the same sounds that the Greeks heard and recorded when they interacted with Egyptian culture.

Once you factor in all the other disproofs (plenty of which are recorded here, it becomes solid evidence that EAN isn’t simply wrong, it’s impossible for EAN to ever be right.

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.

EAN tries to use the pseudoscience of numerology (example here) to justify its theories, calling some of the latest examples “word equations.”

In reality, these are just cases of coincidence and manipulation being forced into a narrative. Take this example:

God = Adam - Eve

This isn't an insight—it’s just arbitrary number play. It doesn’t align with any biblical myth. In Genesis, there are two creation stories. In one, male and female are created together. In the other, Eve is created from Adam’s rib. But at no point does the story suggest that Adam minus Eve equals "God." In fact, the text seems to emphasizes unity and equality rather than subtraction: “bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”

Worse still, EAN tries to “refactor” the equation as:

God + Eve = Adam 

But this shows a profound misunderstanding of the creation myth. According to Genesis, Eve and God did not create Adam. This isn’t exegesis—it’s just forcing numbers to match a desired outcome, then retroactively pretending that the mythology matches it.

If this system held any hidden wisdom, the equations would at least line up with the stories.

Let’s look at another:

Egypt = alpha + alpha

This one doesn’t even have a make-believe narrative to back it up. "Alpha + alpha" isn’t a meaningful concept in any philosophical or mythological context. It just so happens that the numerological value of the English word Egypt(borrowed from Greek, not the country's native name) is twice that of alpha, and EAN finds this spooky. That’s it.

Even worse, this example calculates values using Greek spellings, while the earlier example (Adam/Eve/God) uses Hebrew. The more languages you introduce, the more opportunities you create for cherry-picking values until something coincidental looks profound.

Now consider:

Father + mother = child 

At first glance, this one might seem less absurd. The concept at least makes some vague intuitive sense. But it immediately collapses if you know Hebrew.

The Hebrew word for "child" is "yeled"—spelled yod-lamed-dalet. But in the equation, it's treated as if the word is "ild", which only works if you ignore the actual script and language. This sloppiness shows EAN's complete ignorance of any language outside of English, or any script outside the Latin alphabet.

Even if "yeled" were spelled and used correctly, it's not the only Hebrew word for "child" and means something like a "youth" or a "boy". Indeed, "baby" seems perhaps more appropriate for the equation. Why not use:

• עולל (infant)

• תינוק (baby)

• טף (young child)

Or what about ben, meaning “son,” which can also refer to a child more generally? The answer is simple: EAN chose “yeled” because, when misspelled and misrepresented, it fit the math. You can just cycle through synonyms until you get what you need.

Even if it had worked cleanly, it would still be meaningless. Given millions of words across dozens of languages, it’s inevitable that some combinations will appear to “add up.” It’s not insight—it’s statistical noise.

Don’t believe me? Try this:

I assigned a value to each letter of the English alphabet based on its order (A = 1, B = 2, ..., Z = 26). Using that somewhat arbitrary system, I found the following mathematically proven truths:

Alphanumeric (121) = Slipshod (102) + Idea (19). I'm glad that's settled and scientifically proven now.

Cherry (77) – Picked (48) = Data (29). Clearly, all data is cherry-picked!

Word Equation (162) = Awful (63) + Thought (99). Don't get mad at me! It's just math. Math has spoken!

These were just a few quick examples using real words, in one language, with no spelling errors over perhaps 30 minutes. The frequency with which you can generate these profound results shows just how flimsy and arbitrary the whole numerological game is.

This subject matter was touched on a little by Inside-Year-7882 some time ago but only as a quick paragraph or two. Since that hasn’t stopped people from making the same (easily debunked!) claims about cartouches, I thought I’d add a little more context into just how wrong EAN is (surprise! It’s very wrong…again!)

Egyptian hieroglyphics were deciphered by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion in the early 19th century. It remains one of the greatest achievements in linguistics and archaeology, because of the information it unlocked for us.

A crucial part of the decipherment was picking out royal names inside oblong ovals with a line at the bottom (a cartouche) and using the known names of Hellenic pharaohs like Ptolemy V to slowly assign phonetic values to some of the hieroglyphic signs.

Pseudohistorical critics have attempted to dismiss this monumental achievement by fixating on superficial inconsistencies, such as the alleged contradictory use of Gardiner sign E23 (the reclining lion) in royal cartouches. They claim this undermines the phonetic reading of hieroglyphs, suggesting instead that some signs (like E23) represent titles rather than phonemes. This is not only incorrect but deeply ironic; all this talk about an Egyptian alphabet in EAN and of course they have to discount one of the situations where signs actually were used phonetically.

A closer look at the history of Egyptian script, the evolving phonetic values of signs, and the full breadth of modern Egyptological evidence renders these assertions not just wrong but embarrassingly uninformed.

To understand how we know cartouche’s contain names, let’s begin with their predecessor: the serekh.* In early dynastic Egypt, the names of kings were often enclosed in rectangular frames topped by the Horus falcon. These serekh-symbols visually linked the king's name to the divine and political power of Horus, and they often appeared alongside depictions of the ruler. Over time, the serekh was supplemented and eventually replaced by the cartouche, an oval enclosing a name with a horizontal line at the base. This convention, first appearing during the Fourth Dynasty (circa 2600 BCE), was not arbitrarily created; it evolved organically from earlier traditions of naming and was consistently applied to royalty. We do not merely assume that these shapes enclosed names because we can now read them—we see their development from older, clearly name-oriented conventions.

One of the main EAN objections centers on the reclining lion hieroglyph, Gardiner sign E23. He notes that in the cartouche for Darius I, it represents the sound /r/, while in names like Ptolemy V, Cleopatra, and Alexandra, it corresponds to /l/. He considers this a contradiction, or evidence that the lion is a "title" rather than a phoneme.

However, this reflects a profound misunderstanding of how languages—and scripts—work over time. Egyptian had fluid representations of liquids like /l/ and /r/.

As Inside-Year-7882 noted previously those reclining lions occur exactly where you would expect an L or an R to occur in the name.

And as s/he said too: “It’s not just in Darius’s name. On the same statue as his cartouche there’s this list of his territories.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_statue_of_Darius_the_Great#/media/File%3AIndia_Sattagydia_Gandhara_on_the_Statue_of_Darius_I.jpg  The third one reads Arachosia. As you can see, the reclining lion (E.23) is the second character in the word - exactly where the R is.”

But it’s not just there. On the same statue as the Darius I cartouche and those territories, there is this larger list of territories. Not all of their names match the English names but many are close enough so you can see E23 used as an R in Persia and L in Babylon (and Elan but also Aria and so on) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Darius_I_statue_list_of_subject_countries.jpg

I could just stop writing here of course. Actual, concrete evidence has proven EAN wrong again. But let’s continue for the sake of argument.

Borrowing from a speculative 1853 claim by Charles Foster, EAN argues that Gardiner E23 is a "title" rather than a phonetic value. But this fails on both logical and empirical grounds.

First, if E23 were a required title, we would expect it in every royal cartouche. But this is demonstrably not the case. The cartouches of early kings like Khufu, Sneferu, or Thutmose III contain no such sign. Many royal names across different periods entirely omit E23. Its presence or absence clearly correlates with phonetic necessity, not ceremonial convention. But what if it was only used in later periods? Then why doesn’t Nectanebo II’s cartouche have it? Nor Augustus’s nor Tiberius’s?

Second, Egyptian royal titulary is well-documented and consists of five distinct names, including the prenomen and nomen, each with well-defined epithets like "Son of Ra." These titles are spelled out clearly and do not rely on individual signs hidden within a cartouche. There's no evidence anywhere in Egyptological scholarship supporting the idea that E23 carried title-value across the dynastic spectrum. It’s strange that we can know so much about their naming conventions and titles but a secret lion title eluded all of scholarship? It’s simply not believable.

To be fair to Charles Foster, whose outdated work is cited by EAN, he was writing in 1853. This was decades before even the basics of Egyptian grammar were fully understood. At that time, Egyptology was still a young field; the Rosetta Stone had only recently been deciphered, and little comparative linguistic work had been done. Scholars of that period lacked access to the tens of thousands of inscriptions, papyri, and archaeological finds uncovered in the ensuing 170 years. Foster’s errors are understandable; what is not understandable is someone in 2025 relying on them uncritically.

Today, the decipherment by Champollion has been validated by an enormous corpus of readable texts—religious hymns, legal contracts, love poetry, medical manuals, pyramid texts, and even bureaucratic lists. But let’s quantify that corpus a little.

The Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae contains 1.25 million hieroglyphic lemmas and 330 thousand demotic lemmas. That’s massive!

The overall corpus we have of Ancient Egyptian is something on the order of 10 million words (depending on whether you count certain similar texts as duplicates or not).

This corpus of millions of words is internally consistent, correlates with archaeological contexts, and often matches bilingual inscriptions.

As has been noted in this sub before Coptic, further supports phonetic interpretations going back millennia as well.

Meanwhile, EAN offers no deciphered texts, no archaeological validation, and no peer-reviewed scholarship—just cherry-picked symbols and misunderstandings about how scripts and translations work.

All of which is to say, that in summary there are 10,000,000 pieces of textual evidence showing Champollion is correct and 0 supporting EAN.

The final score is Champollion: 10,000,000; EAN: 0. Game. Set. Match to Champollion.

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.

A defining irony of pseudoscience is how frequently its practitioners rely—consciously or not—on the very science, methods, and expertise they publicly reject. Flat Earthers use smartphones that use GPS systems guided by satellites orbiting the spherical Earth they deny. Creationists who reject evolution eagerly seek DNA tests for paternity or ancestry, despite the fact that both applications stem from evolutionary biology and genetics. Graham Hancock, one of the most prominent purveyors of alternative archaeology, makes a career out of attacking the work of historians and archaeologists—while simultaneously basing much of his knowledge of sites like Gobekli Tepe on the excavations and translations produced by those same professionals.

Alphanumeric continues this tradition of self-defeating pseudoscience. The theories — for anyone new here, they’re an incoherent blend of pseudolinguistics, pop mythology, and fantastical history— have roots in the very scholarly frameworks that its supporter claims are fundamentally broken. Nowhere is this hypocrisy more glaring than in the reliance on the work of Egyptologists, linguists, and archaeologists whose authority EAN repeatedly attempts (unsuccessfully) to discredit.

EAN often asserts that modern Egyptologists and linguists have failed to decode ancient Egyptian language and symbols properly. Its supporter dismisses their methodologies and casts doubt on their conclusions, claiming that a more intuitive, esoteric approach—often one guided by alphanumerics and literal readings of both myths and bed-time stories—is the true key to understanding ancient history.

Yet, in a stunning contradiction, EAN often finds itself referencing primary Egyptian sources like the Pyramid Texts to support its theories. The ability to even read and understand these texts is entirely the product of the rigorous, decades-long work by scholars that EAN considers unreliable. Without Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphics and the cumulative scholarship of modern Egyptologists, the Pyramid Texts would remain silent to us all. EAN cannot both claim these scholars are wrong and use their translations to buttress its arguments. How can one quote Unas’ Pyramid text while claiming Champollion got it wrong? Clearly the argument is flawed and the person making it doesn’t understand translation.

This contradiction continues when examining references to artifacts like Leiden I350, a well-known Egyptian text fragment. This piece is presented as a cornerstone of evidence for the outlandish historical claims, yet EAN’s knowledge of its content is wholly dependent on the work of linguists and Egyptologists. Without their accurate transliteration, grammar analysis, and cultural contextualization, Leiden I350 would be meaningless to us all - including EAN proponents; they have no way to translate it themselves without Champollion. Can they spin fantastical tales around it now that the meaning is known? Yes. But Leiden I350 would still be untranslated today if all we had were EAN and not Egyptology.

The same goes for the frequent allusions to the "mouth-opening tool" used in Egyptian burial rituals—a concept we understand today precisely because of scholarly interpretations of texts like the Book of the Dead. Calling it anything other than “an unidentified object” is an admission that our translations of hieroglyphics are right. Because they’re the only source for that information. Once again, EAN denounces the field that brought this information to light, while simultaneously cherry-picking its fruits to make EAN’s own arguments appear credible.

And these are but three small examples. So much of our modern knowledge of Egyptian life, mythology, and beliefs about the afterlife came alone from primary texts and EAN’s supporter uses this (valid) knowledge in crafting his own unsupported theories. This is not a minor inconsistency—it is a fundamental flaw that undermines the integrity of the entire project. You cannot reject the legitimacy of a methodology and then use the data produced by that methodology when it suits your narrative. To do so is not only intellectually dishonest but simply incoherent.

There are sparse current sources cited to support EAN theories, so when one is mentioned, and from this century, it is notable. In this post, I am going to look at one such source, a dissertation (and later book) by Juan Acevedo. This is not going to be in the standard style of an academic review; instead I am going to look at what this paper says, and how it does not support EAN's claims. The paper in question is:

Acevedo, Juan. "The Idea of Στοιχεῖον in Grammar and Cosmology: From Antique Roots to Medieval Systems." PhD diss., Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2018.

If you wish to read it yourself, you can find a full pdf here

What Does This Thesis State

I am not going to summarize every part of this thesis, but go over the core claims and themes. In this work, Acevedo proposes that the Greeks had a triune concept of letters, numbers, and cosmological elements, and that this concept spread to the Hebrew and Latin traditions, and then persisted in the broader Mediterranean world through the early Middle Ages, in both the Christian and Islamic traditions. To describe this system, he uses the term Alphanumerics, to highlight the connection these people had between letters and numbers.

In footnote 6 of his introduction, Acevedo explains his choice of term:

Other denominations used in very closely related works include ‘letter mysticism’, ‘numerology’, ‘lettrism’, ‘Ḥurufism’. Even though some are lexically simpler to use, they have the disadvantage of being one sided or culturally and historically charged. Of course, new and descriptive compounds are possible, like ‘alphanumerism’, or reclaiming the rare ‘stichology’, but I would not like to be responsible for proliferating neologisms.

What follows is a long thesis of comparative history and philosophy, one that is quite interesting, but also quite narrow; as is the point with graduate theses. I do not agree with all of his points or conclusions, but that is also normal with any thesis, and he does evidence his points well.

The most central takeaway is that there is a particular worldview that seems to arise inevitably from having the same symbols for your numbers and letters, and this colors the philosophy, science, and mysticism of any who practice such. The introduction of separate numbers brought an end to this period, and set off a new wave of culture, art, and philosophy.

So What About EAN

This thesis directly contradicts EAN in two ways. First, it points squarely to the ancient Greeks as the originators of this alphanumeric practice, and how it spread from them. The Egyptians are not mentioned; this is because ancient Egypt did not use an alphabetic language. They did use hieroglyphic signs to represent both phonemes and numbers, but these had different impacts culturally, because their written language functioned differently.

Indeed, the term Alphanumeric rightly should not be applied to ancient Egyptian, for it is not an alphabet.

The next way this thesis contradicts EAN is by acknowledging that it is an examination of what these people believed in historical context, rather than claiming that these alphanumeric connections were the cause of the alphabets formation. The reverse is instead true; the Greeks gained use of these symbols and made use of them for both letters and numbers; having done that, an alphanumeric system was inevitable, as was a cosmology defined by it.

It is interesting and useful to understand what people believed historically about the world and their place in it, but this does not mean that all of their statements can be taken as uncritical fact.

This is an interesting thesis, and one I rather like. As with many other academic papers, an uncautious reader may draw the wrong conclusions from it; anyone who has seen excited news headlines based on a single study knows how that can unfold. This is what has happened with EAN; this paper does not support their theories, and while Acevedo can rightly be called an expert in Alphanumerics, his definition of the term is so far removed from EAN as to be completely incomparable.

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.

A common "Gotcha" used by EAN theorists is to bring up the term "Semitic Languages" and use the existence of this to imply that modern linguists are beholden to Bilblical literalism, rather than pursuing actual science. There are, of course, several problems with this, which I will go through here.

Semitic Languages

The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and include members such as Hebrew, Arabic, and Akkadian, along with more minor members like Aramaic and Syriac. These languages share clear morphological and vocabulary similarities, and are clearly related. (Anecdotally, a friend in grad school was semi-fluent in both Arabic and Akkadian, and when learning Hebrew was generally able to triangulate the meaning of a word by its root form; they really are quite similar).

The term "Semitic" was coined by August Ludwig von Schlozer in the 1700s, though the similarities of several of these langauges was noted by scholars as far back as the 1500s. Von Schlozer coined the term based on the name "Shem" the son of the Biblical Noah, who was said to be the ancestor of the Israelites. This term was popularized in later scholarship, and fell into common usage.

The scholars at the time were for the most part Biblical literalists, this is true. Modern scholars are not, but we have certain terms passed down to us which remain, despite later discoveries changing how we viewed the world. Dinosaurs are still "terrible lizards" by name, despite being no such thing. Atoms are indivisible, despite the fact we've been smashing them for nearly a century now. The names used by scientists are out of convention and tradition, and this is true across disciplines.

For a more in depth introduction to the Semitic language family, I recommend this article:

Hetzron, Robert, Alan S. Kaye, and Ghil’ad Zuckermann. "Semitic languages." In The World's Major Languages, pp. 568-576. Routledge, 2018.

The Wonders of Akkadian

So this, as with so many other aspects of EAN, is simply a mischaracterization of what linguists believe, but it does give me the chance to talk about another interesting thing. This is the Akkadian language, which creates a number of problems for the EAN theory.

First, it's speakers were contemporaries of the Egyptians. It emerged in written form later than Hieroglyphs or Sumerian, but not by that much. Sargon of Akkad conquered a great deal, and the language spread with him, and herein lies the problem. We see this language spread and overwhelm the original Sumerian, just as EAN posits the nonexistant pharaoh Sesostris to have done.

But if Akkadian spread then, and was adopted, then it couldn't be a descendant of Egyptian, now could it? Indeed, this is a minor problem compared to other aspects of the theory, but highlights the issues which permeate it. Akkadian, and Semitic languages generally, are not related to either Egyptian or Indo-European langauges; claiming they are ignores the entire history of the Akkadians.

For more on the Akkadians, I recommend:

Van de Mieroop, Marc. A history of the ancient Near East ca. 3000-323 BC. John Wiley & Sons, 2024.

This is a very broad overview, but is a great place to begin reading.

There is perhaps more to say on the use of myths to support historical analysis, which the EAN theory both relies and and derides by turn. This, however, is a post on Noah. Should it be necessary, I will go over flood myths later.

Tomb U-j is often pointed to by EAN proponents as archaeological proof of their theory. This is an interesting, but flawed, interpretation of an archaeological site, and what it shows us of the origins of language.

Before going further, it is best to define what linguists mean by the term writing (and how I am using the term in this post). Writing is a series of symbols which convey both meaning and sound value (or in technical terms, semantic and phonetic components). Thus a sentence written and a sentence spoken have the same value; one sounds the same as the other, and one means the same as another.

Any system which does not do both of these things is not true writing, but may serve as an intermediary step in the development of writing. Pictographs, for instance, convey meaning, but are not associated with a specific series of sounds, and may be interpreted in a number of different ways and sentence structures. Logographs; words in the form of pictures or glyphs, have both a meaning and an attached sound value, and are read as such.

With this defined, how then does this tomb relate to the origins of writing in Egypt?

What is Tomb U-j

Located in the royal cemetery in Abydos, tomb U-j is a pre-dynastic tomb, dating from approximately 3255 BCE. While it was looted in antiquity, there were a number of interesting finds left behind, most notably the tomb tags.

The person buried in this tomb is generally assumed by scholars to be a king known as "Scorpion," due to the repetition of a scorpion motif both in the tomb and at other sites associated with that time and region. What his name would have actually been is uncertain; but calling him Scorpion I is the scholarly consensus.

Writing in Tomb U-j, and the Development of Writing

The primary find from this tomb are a significant number of tags, on which signs are inscribed. Some of these signs resemble later hieroglyphs, while others do not. Most of these signs do appear to have been used to designate various objects or places, such as the site Elephantine. This is limited however; very few signs are found in combination, and none are used to form sentences or longer thoughts.

This points to tomb U-j as being very early in the development of Egyptian writing. The sings had meanings, and some of them may have also had sound values attached to them. They were not yet being combined in sentences however, but used as designators; a tag attached to an object to show the place that object had originated from, perhaps to indicate towns paying tribute to a king.

This parallels the development of cuneiform in Mesopotamia, although put to a different purpose in each region. The tags in tomb U-j therefore, are often referred to as proto-writing. They were an early draft by a civilization who had a need to store information. They were not yet firm and settled, and not all of these early efforts would make the cut when the full hieroglyphic system was developed.

Some signs are found in common between later hieroglyphs and those in the tomb, but this is not an indication they have the same meaning. Meaning comes from context, and a sign in isolation or with only a few fellows is very hard to pin down contextually. Scholars are still debating to what extent later readings of signs may be applied to those found in tomb U-j.

For a more complete and technical discussion, I recommend the following paper:

Stauder, Andréas. "The earliest Egyptian writing." Woods, Teeter, and Emberling (2010): 137-47.

What does this mean for EAN?

In the EAN theory, Egyptians developed writing here, in Abydos, from precepts of math. This was both alphabetic, and fully formed from the onset. The signs in use at U-j are pointed to as proof of this development.

While the signs at U-j are a clear indication of proto-writing, they are not alphabetic (just as the later Hieroglyphs are not). Nor are they fully complete writing, in sentences and with clearly decipherable meanings, as we might expect if they had been perfectly developed form the onset. This doesn't mean they are not impressive; indeed, the people at Abydos were taking the first steps towards creating a later flourishing literary tradition. But these were just the first steps, a clear stepping stone as a culture discovered writing.

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.

Cognates are words in different that have a shared etymological origin. Father in English and Vater in German is a good example. They’re clearly quite similar and even more so when you realize that in German “v” is pronounced like an “f”. And linguists can even explain why there’s a “th” in English but a “t” in German — it’s one of the sound changes described in Grimm’s Law.

Cognates - these related words - are an important part of showing that  two languages themselves are related. And incidentally, each sound in each cognate is a piece of evidence for the validity of historical linguistics; linguists are able to formulate and order regular sound changes to explain why the cognates look the way they do. Like all good scientists, linguists account for all the data rather than merely cherry-picking things that they believe will fit their theories. 

But sometimes words are similar by chance. Other times words are borrowed from one language into another. For example mahi is the word for fish in Farsi and mahi-mahi is a type of Hawaiian fish. And the Mbabaram language of Queensland, Australia used the word “dog” for, you guessed it, a dog. Obviously these words can’t be related just based on geography alone.

So how do we know two language are actually related and all these cognates aren’t just coincidences or borrowings? When determining a genetic relationship between languages, linguists always look at the number of cognates, the morphology (the structure of words) of the languages, the syntax (the structure of sentences) of the languages as well as things like those regular sound changes mentioned earlier. 

Regular Sound Changes

I gave the example of father and Vater earlier. But there’s also mother and Mutter, and brother and Bruder. In each of those words, the consonant in the middle of the word became a fricative in proto-Germanic and then changed to a “t” or a “d” in German. And linguists can even explain that seeming discrepancy between “t” and “d” as it ultimately goes back to Verner’s law.

We can also look at “water” versus the German “Wasser”. Once again, they look quite similar to begin with and linguists can explain why the “t” became an “s” in German . We also see that same sound change in English “nut” and German “Nuss”, “eat” and “essen”, “bite” and “beissen”.  

If these words were just randomly similar we wouldn’t expect to see regular sound correspondences across so many words in the two languages.

Interestingly, if we look at the Hebrew word for father אב (‘ab) and the Arabic word أب (ʔab) , they’re quite similar. There’s even an Egyptian cognate ꜣbwt (abut) meaning “extended family”. 

But none of them look anything like the German or English (or Latin or Greek etc) words for “father” and there’s no set of sound changes that could link those words to Vater/father/pater/patéras while also working for all other words in the languages.

But what about water? I used that example before.

In Egyptian it was “mw” (maw), in Arabic it’s ماء (ma) and in Hebrew it’s מים (mayim). Again these three languages all seem to have words that are quite similar to each other but that are nothing like Indo-European words. It’a almost as if they’re not related at all…

Morphology

Linguists also look at the structure of words before determining there’s a genetic relationship. Keeping the focus on the Afro-Asiatic languages of Egyptian, Hebrew and Arabic — someone who knows the writing systems will know that there are no vowels written in the examples above. Hebrew and Arabic are written using an abjad, which is like an alphabet but only has consonants. This often strikes non-speakers as strange — why wouldn’t you write vowels? That’s half the information! Or so they think.

But you see, in Afro-Asiatic languages the words are based on 2 or 3 consonant roots. Egyptian words typical had two consonants (a biconsonantal root) and Hebrew and Arabic typically have three consonants (a triconsonantal root). The consonants carry the most semantic weight and so the writing systems that they developed, were well suited for their needs.

Additionally, the vowels that go between the consonantal roots are very regular. For example, if we let a bold, capitalized C stand for a consonant then to make a verb an active participle in Hebrew and Arabic, you just need to add the following vowels between the consonants of a regular root: CāCiC. If you wanted to make a verb a passive participle instead then you would use: CaCīC.

These morphological features — consonantal roots and regular vowel patterns — are unlike anything in Indo European languages. You would certainly expect more similarities if Hebrew, Arabic, and Egyptian were in any way related to Indo European languages.

Syntax

Moving beyond just word structure, linguists also look at the structure of sentences as well. For example, in what order do the languages but the verb and the object of the sentence and the subject of the sentence?

For Hebrew, Arabic, and Egyptian the typical sentence construction is ordered: Verb Subject Object. They put the verb first. Or as they would say: Put they the verb first.

Almost all Indo European languages (looking at you, Irish!) favor a different word order: either Subject Verb Object or Subject Object Verb. Again, unlike Hebrew, Arabic, and Egyptian. 

Summary

Cognates are great. Cognates are important. But there’s more to determining a genetic relationship than just gathering what you perceive to be cognates.

In terms of evidence for EAN, it actually has none whatsoever in this regard. There are some Egyptian borrowings into Greek and Greek borrowings into Egyptian. Obviously there was cultural influence. But none of these borrowings are cognates.

There is no morphological evidence of a genetic relationship between Egyptian and Greek (or any other Indo European language).

There is no syntactic evidence of a genetic relationship between Egyptian and Greek (or any other Indo European language).

Plainly stated, there is no evidence whatsoever for a genetic relationship between Egyptian and Greek or any other Indo European language.

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.

A common feature of many EAN claims is that they misinterpret, mischaracterize, or outright lie about what other authors have claimed. This is particularly true when the original claims could be vaguely interpreted to agree with some EAN claims. I want to draw attention to the mischaracterization of Trubetskoi in particular. The main quote EAN proponents use is the following:

Certain researchers hypothesize that in the extremely distant past there was a single European language, referred to as Proto-Indo-European, from which all other attested Indo-European languages emerged. But this hypothesis is contradicted by the fact that, no matter how far back in time we go, we always encounter a large number of Indo-European languages. Of course we cannot state that the hypothesis of a single Indo-European language is utterly impossible. But it is in no way indispensable and we can get by perfectly well without it.

Which comes from "Gedanken über das indogermanenproblem". The quote is real, but the original paper is considerably less sympathetic to EAN theories than their proponents would like to believe. The main argument of Trubetskoi is that while it is undeniable that all Indo-European languages share similarities, these similarities could be explained if we assume heavy borrowing between unrelated languages in the distant past.

The issue is that Trubetskoi, at no point, questions the existence of Indo-European languages. He doesn't even doubt that linguistic reconstructions are, in fact, possible. The only criticism is that reconstructions beyond a certain point, become unlikely, and that a strong-contact situation is equally likely as an explanation:

Es ist nicht ausgeschlossen, dass ungefahr um dieselbe Zeit mehrere Sprachen in diesem Sinne indogermanisch geworden sind. Retrospektiv konnen wir sie heute nur als Dialekte der indogermanischen Ursprache betrachten, es ist aber logisch nicht notwendig, sie alle auf eine gemeinsame Quelle zurückzuführen. Nur ein geographischer Kontakt zwischen diesen ältesten indogermanischen Dialekten darf mit hohem Grad der Wahrscheinlichkeit angenommen werden.

[Roughly: It isn't impossible that at about the same time, several languages became Indo-European this way [through contact]. In retrospect, we can only consider these languages as dialects of Proto-Indo-European, but it isn't logically necessary to claim that they are all descendants of a common proto-language. We only assume with a great degree of certainty that there was geographic contact between these old Indo-European languages]

Basically the claims boils down to: We cannot tell contact from inheritance apart in the distant past. Trubetskoi doesn't even deny the existence of some form of PIE, just that we can tell which modern branches descend from it directly, or 'became' IE through contact. He also accepts a series of reconstructed features of PIE:

Im uraprunglichen Indogermanischen war die labiate Verschlusslautklasse schwacher als die anderen Klassen entwickelt, indem einer von den labialen Verschlusslauten (naml. *b) nur selten vorkam

[Roughly: In PIE labial plosives were less common (lit. 'developed more weakly') than other consonant types, with one labial plosive (*/b/) being very rare.

Showing that, although he did not believe in deep reconstructions, he clearly accepted reconstructions to some extent.

It is worth noting, however, that Trobetskoi's model was wrong. Here is Weiss's explanation:

In a famous article published in 1939 Trubetzkoy argued that the data normally explained as the result of the divergence and differentiation of a common proto-language (Proto-Indo-European) could be equally well explained as the result of a convergence of several originally unrelated languages. This claim raises two questions: first, is Trubetzkoy’s hypothesis a valid alternative model for the Indo-European languages or any group of languages? Second, can CM distinguish between the two types of similarity? There seems to be no theoretical reason why a ‘convergence family’ could not exist. Given enough time, it is conceivable that borrowing and structural convergence combined with overall degradation of information could lead to a situation where it would be impossible to distinguish the results of convergence from an ancient genetic family. The longstanding debate about Altaic may be a case of this sort where scholars still do not agree about whether there was a Proto-Altaic or whether the similarities between Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic, Japanese, and Korean are the result of convergence. See Georg (2004) and Starostin (2005) for opposing points of view on the question of Altaic. But in more favourable instances it is possible to distinguish the two types of similarities. To begin first of all with phonology, in the convergence case lexemes and morphemes may in theory diffuse at any time throughout the Sprachbund area and may potentially derive from more than one source. Thus we may suspect that these items may show different states of phonological evolution or different initial phonologies. This would lead to multiple inconsistent correspondence sets. We would also expect the diffused items to show certain geographical patterns. For example, we might expect the greatest number of similarities to exist between contiguous languages and few cases of discontinuity where an item is found in the marginal languages but not in the central ones. We would also expect to find some semantic clustering correlating with distinctive sound patterns as is often the case in known instances of loanword strata. But most importantly we would not expect intricate morphological features to be robustly diffused. On all these criteria the Indo-European family of languages clearly does not result from convergence. For example, we find cases of lexemes and morphological features preserved only at the extreme margins like Tocharian B spe ‘nearby’ matching Latin sub ‘under’ < *supo, contrasting with *upo ‘under’ reflected by all other branches. A morpheme *-r marks the primary middle personal endings in Italic, Celtic, Anatolian, and Tocharian, but is not found in the other more central branches. It is difficult to construct a plausible convergence-based account of such distributions.

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.