EgAr ḥānūtī حانوتي , pl. -iyyaẗ
ID … • Sw – • BP … • APD … • © SG | 5Sep2022
√ḤNW/Y
n. (nominalised nsb-adj.)
1a corpse washer; b undertaker, mortician, gravedigger – BadawiHinds1986.
▪ Prob. nsb-formation from ↗ḥānūt in the latter’s sense of ‘burial chamber, vault’ (cf. †ḥaniyyat, pl. ḥanāyā, ḥaniyy, ‘vault; bow’ – Hava1899), related to ↗ḥanā/ḥanà ‘to bend, bow, flex, curve, crook’.
▪ Meaning possibly influenced by the obsol. n. †ḥanūṭ, var. †ḥināṭ (emph. ‑ṭ!), ‘perfume or odoriferous substances of any kind that are mixed for a corpse, in particular, or for grave-clothes and for the bodies of the dead’ (Lane ii 1865) ↗ḥannaṭa ‘to embalm, mummify’.
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DISC ▪ Cf. G. Yver [M. Yalaoui] in EI² article on “Ṭabarḳa”:1
»The modern population of the region [Ṭabarqa, NW Tunisia] certainly seems to have very ancient antecedents. Libyan inscriptions and Punic inscriptions have been discovered in the burial chambers (ḥwānet, pl. of ḥanūt) which are found in underground caves hollowed out of the cliff and covered with bichrome drawings.«
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