Etymology Of The Word Pyramid
When you examine the etymology of the word pyramid, you are in for some real surprises. The word can easily be traced back to the French word “pyramide,” a similar Latin term, which was borrowed from the Greek word “pyramis.” At this point the history becomes a little murky, as the derivation of the Greek word from the earlier Egyptian word “pimar,” is loose at best, and it’s mechanism not agreed upon by many scholars.
Pimar is a two syllable word. Pi is loosely translated as “the” or “that.” Mar is a very ancient Egyptian and proto-AfroAsian word with many connotations. Essentially, it is used to describe a place of burial. But not just any place of burial. Mar describes a mound shaped or hillock type place or building made for a funeral or made to house the dead. In Egyptian, the Mar syllable is simplified to “MR.”
In the proto-Bantu language, an early antecedent of Egyptian, the word for a pyramidal shaped cone made of spears placed over the grave of a King was called “MraMra.” In various other proto-African languages related to Egyptian, the syllable MR or closely related ML have been discovered to mean alternatively a heap, a mound, clouds, (which heap up), and even the sky which is above the mound, in the sense that the summit of the mound or heap approaches the heavens. One famous cone shaped mountain in Africa is called Mt. Meru.
Putting the pieces of the linguistic puzzle together, we see that the MR was a special conical heap mound or structure created for the burial of the Pharoah and his family. The addition of the syllable Po connotes the sense of “place” of the funeral mound, or “house” of the funeral mound, or “the” funeral mound or “that” funeral mound. not unlike the modern “funeral home.”
All of this ancient history of the word is obscured by the loose transition from Egyptian to Greek. While the Greeks preserved the “r” and “m” in pimar, they reversed their order. Historians are not even sure how the word pyramis came to exist. It is suggested that the Greek pyramis may have been derived from “pira,” a pyramid shaped funeral fire, + mid meaning amidst. Egyptians did burn incense inside the pyramids, although this wasn’t their major function. Alternatively the word is related to the purely Greek word pyramis meaning a wheaten cake, whose shaped vaguely resembled a pyramid. However, the Greek term was derived, it’s connection to the Egyptian origins appears loose.
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