The name "Aha" in the Book of Mormon

Parent page: Book of Mormon Names

The name Aha is attested in several early Hebrew inscriptions

Aha was one of the sons of the Nephite military leader Zoram (Alma 16:5). Hugh Nibley proposed that the name was of Egyptian origin, ʿhh, meaning "warrior". But the name is now attested in several early inscriptions as Hebrew ʾhʾ, thought by scholars to have been vocalized ʾAhaʾ and to be a hypocoristic name based on ʾah, "brother". The longer form, rendered Ahijah in the King James Bible, is ʾahîyah(û), which means "brother of Yah (Jehovah)" or "Yah is my brother",21 which is also attested in a dozen ancient Hebrew inscriptions.22^[1]

The arrowhead of 'Aha' son of 'Ashtart' in ancient Israel

In the May/June 1999 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, P. Kyle McCarter Jr. of Johns Hopkins University reports significant new analyses of three artifacts from ancient Israel. On two points the findings intersect with the Book of Mormon.
The objects are bronze arrowheads on which Hebrew inscriptions have been engraved. They come from the eleventh century B.C., a time for which hardly any other instances of Hebrew writing are known. The total number of such arrow points is now near 50, so considerable new light on the history of the Hebrew script is being revealed by examining them.
The information of special interest to students of the Book of Mormon concerns metallurgy and a name inscribed on one of the points. Using a high-magnification microscope, Dr. R. Thomas Chase of the Freer Gallery of Art, a division of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and an authority on ancient bronzes, examined the newest set of points to be located and discovered that on one "the inscription had been incised with a steel [emphasized in the original] engraving tool." 4 This demonstrates that steel was in use by about 1000 BC. The Book of Mormon of course refers to the sword of Laban, who lived four centuries later; that sword was of "the most precious steel" (1 Nephi 4:9). Some have questioned whether steel was known as early as 600 BC. but clearly the new data show that that metal was in use centuries earlier.
One of the points examined by Thomas and McCarter bears an inscription that translates as "The arrowhead of 'Aha' son of 'Ashtart.'" The name Aha is apparently the same as that borne by a man mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Alma 16:5 says that Zoram, the chief captain over the armies of the Nephites at that time, "had two sons, Lehi and Aha." Formerly the personal name Aha had not been known from the Bible or other Hebrew-language sources, but this new information documents that the name was in use long before Lehi's day.^[2]

Notes

1. ↑ John A. Tvedtnes, John Gee, Matthew Roper, "Book of Mormon Names Attested in Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9/1 (2000): 40–51.
2. ↑ Anonymous, "Out of the Dust: Bronze Arrowheads and the Name Aha," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 8:2 (1999).