162 HEATH DEWRELL A dissenter to this general consensus is M. Görg who suggests that that the term should be connected to Egyptian pśy and means “col- ored” (“gefärbte”) 5. The linguistic connection is ultimately uncon- vincing though, since in Egyptian pśy actually means “to cook” 6. The verb only refers to dyeing when it is used in the immediate context of linens, and even in those cases such a meaning is uncertain. The first of two examples Görg offers to support the idea that pśy indicates “colored” is the phrase pś.t nw, which appears in WÄS 1 552 as “Fäden kochen (ob: sie durch kochen färben?)”. Görg summarizes the entry, however, as “Fäden kochen’ d.h. ‘färben’”, removing the question mark and the uncertainty expressed by WÄS. The second example is pś ỉnsj which appears in WÄS 1, 552 as “Färber(?) des roten Leinen- stoffes”. Again, however, the question mark is conveniently omitted in Görg’s citation of the entry. While pśy may possibly appear in the context of dyed garments, the term alone would have hardly been enough to indicate dyeing. The Egyptian verb simply means “to cook”, and the idea that this would have made its way into Hebrew as a loanword meaning “dyed”/“colored” is unlikely. A.J. Bledstein, on the other hand, suggests that it is a “sacred flounced garment”. She argues that when Jacob gave Joseph a ~ysp(h) tntk in Genesis 37, he “may have intended to confer on him priesthood with the potential for sacred kingship”, and she believes that Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams may be connected in some way to this status. Likewise, in Bledstein’s opinion, Tamar wore a flounced garment because, being a “princess-priestess”, she would have been called upon to visit her half-brother Amnon, who was (allegedly) ill, for the purpose of performing a purification rite that might bring about his healing. In support of this interpretation, Bledstein points to sever- al Mesopotamian depictions of individuals wearing flounced garments that indicate their priestly status 7. The actual evidence in the biblical narratives themselves, however, that either Joseph’s or Tamar’s garments were cultic in nature is rather thin. Thus, despite these two creative divergences from the scholarly consensus, most scholarly treatments and modern translations continue to opt for something akin to “long-sleeved coat”. This scholarly consensus, however, is based less on the convincing nature of the argument than on the fact 5 M. GöRG, “Der gefärbte Rock Josefs”, BN 102 (2000) 9-13. 6 See WÄS 1 551-552 and HANNIG, Ägyptisches Wörterbuch I 475; II 940-941. 7 A.J. BLEDSTEIN, “Tamar and the ‘Coat of Many Colors’”, Samuel and Kings (ed. A. BRENNER) (A Feminist Companion to the Bible, 2nd series; Sheffield 2000) 65-83.