Does Babi mean ‘the Bull of Baboons’?

Babi is the underworld god of baboons. People translate his name to mean ‘the Bull of Baboons’, with ‘bull’ meaning chief/leader/ruler. But at closer examination, this clearly isn’t correct.

 

The Ancient Egyptian word for bull was ‘ka’. As there is no ka in Babi, people’s translation to Babi is off to a bad start.

What about Ancient Egyptian words for baboon? In the Middle Kingdom, there were aana, iana (male) and iant (female). The New Kingdom had aan, aaan and aaany. Aani is used in mythology to denote dog-headed apes which are now identified with yellow baboons (despite baboons not being apes).

Babi itself was sometimes used to mean ‘baboon’ (presumably hamadryas baboons, the species to which Babi belongs). Indeed, some people think Babi’s name is where the English word baboon originates. Obviously, Babi can’t mean both ‘baboon’ and ‘the bull of baboons’ at the same time.

Clearly none of the Egyptian words for baboon combine with ka to form Babi. Using the actual translations of ‘the Bull of Baboons’, it would be ‘ka ian’ in Egyptian (or ian ka, depending on Egyptian grammar). That’s nothing like ‘Babi’.

 

So I decided to look at the source material where Babi and ‘the Bull of Baboons’ are conflated: the Pyramid Texts.

Here, the pharaoh identifies himself as ‘Babi, the Bull of Baboons’, reading ‘Babi ka ian’. If Babi and ‘the Bull of Baboon’ were the same thing, it would say ‘Babi Babi’ (which it doesn’t). Clearly, ‘the Bull of Baboons’ is used as a title. It is neither the meaning nor translation of Babi.

So no, Babi does not mean ‘the Bull of Baboons’.