Scandinavian Orientalistic Studies Presented to Professor Dr. FREDE L OKKEGAARDScandinavian Orientalistic Studies Presented to Professor Dr. FREDE LO@KKEGAARD on his Seventy - Fifth Birthday, January 27th 1990 Edited by Egon Keck, Svend Sondergaard, Ellen Wulff Museum Tusculanum Press - Copenhagen 1990 © Muscum Tusculanum Press & The Authors ‘Typesetting: ¢.. arab-text, Kvistgdind Print: Special Trykkeriet Viborg a+ Cover; Thora Fisker ISBN: 87-728-083-S Muscum Tuscutsnum Press University of Copeshages 94 Njalsgade, Copenhagen DK-2M0 DenmarkOn Akkadian Texts in Greek Orthography: EBBE EGEDE KNUDSEN 1, Texts and text editions. Akkadian and Sumerian texts in Greek orthography are very rare. Although some were known to specialists several years before the turn of the century none were published then, apparently because the language seemed so different from what could be expected from the reading of cuneiform texts. The first scholar to find that the time for publication had come was T. G. Pinches, one of the great names of early Assyriology. His first specimens of ‘Greek’ texts appeared in 1902, in the March issue of the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology? The edition called forth comments by A. H. Sayce and F. C. Burkitt who had been working on the same texts in the British Museum? Reading and understanding the new type of texts were aided by the fact that almost all had known cuneiform parallels in the form of a cuneiform version on one side of the tablet. Only one text on a tablet in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin was without a known parallel. It was in a very fragmentary state of preservation with just a few words being legible. Even now nearly 90 years after the publication of the first specimens of ‘Greek’ texts one can appreciate Burkitt's enthusiasm in his statement that “in the fragments . . . we have for the first time a transcript into a European alphabet of the still living language of Babylonia” (p. 143). The circumstance that these fragments constitute some sort of missing link between the Babylonian past and our own modern present, behind the cuneiform system of writing, is as exiting now as it was at the beginning of the century. I remember very well the effect they had on my own imagination, when as a student at the University of Copenhagen in the fifties I first read about the Greek transcriptions in O. E. + This paper is an extended version of a lecture givea at the Swedish symposium on Semitic studies held at Kivik, Skine Avgust 5-6, 198% T.G. Pinches, PSBA 24 (1902), pp. 108-119. A.H, Sayee, ib, pp. 120-125, F. C. Burkitt, ib. pp. 143-145. A copy by L. Messerschmidt was published by Pinches, p. 118 and Sayce, p. 125. BE. Schmidt, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archdologischen Institwss $6 (1941), pp. 813-815 gave a short statement on the text together with a photograph (Abb. 16).148 Ebbe Egede Knudsen Ravn’s monograph on Akkadian nominal morphology? Actually the very ex- pression ‘Greek’ texts was coined by him. Ever since preoccupation with these texts has reminded me of my student days and it is, therefore, a great pleasure to present the following pages as a tribute to my first teacher in a West Semitic language. Further texts did not appear until 1928, when W. G. Schilcico published two. well preserved joining fragments with six lines of text, but without a cuneiform version. Reading and translating the language in Greek orthography now had to stand the test and Schileico’s treatment did so convincingly. A scholar of today can add little to his edition. The next 34 years brought no new texts, but in 1962 E. Sollberger presented a catalogue of all known Greck texts or Gracco- Babyloniaca as he preferred to term them? The catalogue also included copies and transliterations of old and several new fragments from the collections of the British Muscum. Having joined the staff of the British Muscum Sollberger had ‘easy access to Pinches’ posthumous papers and it was among these papers that he traced the unpublished fragments, Sollberger classified the small corpus of 14 tablets and fragments listed in the catalogue as (A) Lexical, (B) Literary (in the widest sense of the term), and (C) Unclassified (p. 63), The group of lexical texts included excerpts from the series HAR-ra = hubullu and Syllabary B. There were several literary texts, a fragment giving the opening lines of the so-called Description of Babylon, part of a bilingual incantation against evil spirits, and the private votive inscription in Leningrad published by Schileico. The fragment in Berlin mentioned above also belongs to the group. This text was classified by Sollberger (p. 71) as part of a hymn or incantation and by E. Schmidt ss an excerpt from the Description of Babylon, though as yet unidentified 1 would prefer to be less specific and classify it as a list of oaths taken by various gods. Of the unclassified fragments one is probably a writing exercise of unconnected letters, Two others were already suggested by Sollberger (p. 71f, though hesi~ tantly, to be a catalogue of stars and a verbal paradigm. The remaining two can be identified as a list giving the names of different types of flour and quoting among other terms gému, tasgit and upuntu (C 1), and a bilingual list giving in the right hand column the Akkadian infinitives kandSu, kandnu and Sagamu or Zagaiu, and in the left hand column the ends of the corresponding Sumerian terms (C 2), In a postscript to his catalogue Sollberger (p. 72) mentioned the existence of another Greek text, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. A few years ago this + ©. E Ravn, Ont nominernes bgjning 4 babytonsk-assyrisk (Kobenhava 1909), particularly Me. pM. W. G. Schileico, A/ 5 (1928-29), pp. 11-13. 7 E Sollberger, [rag 24 (1962), pp. 63-72 with plates XXV-XXVI. * Schmidt, p. 814,On Akkadian Texts in Greek Orthography 149 text was published by J. A. Black and S. M. Sherwin-White? who concluded that it was written neither in Akkadian nor in Sumerian. The editors suspected the language to be Aramaic and submitted a transliteration of the text to the Aramaist Dr. Sebastian Brock of Oxford University. Though he found “a number of sequences of letters which suggested Aramaic words”, Dr. Brock “did not feel that these amounted to sufficient evidence to conclude that Aramaic is the language of the text’? The Ashmolean tablet has no cuneiform version. The most recent addition to the Greck texts is a tablet in the collections of the Harvard Semitic Museum inscribed in cuneiform with a Greek transcription on the reverse. The text is a monolingual Akkadian incantation known clsewhere from a number of manuscripts. It was identified by D. O. Edzard and F. M. Cross as carly as 1962, the year Sollberger published his catalogue, but it remained unpublished until an edition by M. J. Geller appeared in 1983" Dr. Geller kindly informs me that he is preparing an edition of the whole corpus of Akkadian and Sumerian texts in Greck orthography to appear in Zeitschrift fair Assyriologie. 2. Who wrote the Greek texts? ‘The large majority of the texts are undoubtedly school texts and Sollberger (p. 63) considered them to have been written by Greck students of Sumerian and Akkadian some time during the late second or early first centuries BC Apparently he relied on the statement by Sayce (p. 120) that palacographically the fragments cannot be earlier than the end of the second century BC. Other Suggested datings vary within a century or two. In the opinion of H. G. T. Machler and W. E. H. Cockle of University College, London, the Harvard tablet is “unlikely to be carlier than the first century A.D.""? Schileico (p. 11) dated the Leningrad votive inscription B 4 to the first century B.C. and K. Schubart and W. Kortenbeutel dated the Berlin tablet B 3 “etwa Zeit des Tiberius”? Some years ago I submitted copies of the texts published by Sollberger to the late Papyrologist Dr. Leiv Amundsen, then retired professor of Classical Philology at the University of Oslo, and asked for a palacographic dating. In his view the writing dates from the time of the Roman Empire and preferably from its carly period, There is no resemblance to Ptolemaic writing. This last mentioned point ° J. A. Black and S. M, Sherwin-White, frag 46 (1984), pp, 131-140 with plate IX. %® Quotation from Black and Sherwin-White, p. 138 note 141. In the opinion of Dr. M. J. Geller the text is an Aramaic incantation. HM, J. Geller, ZA 73 (1983), pp. 114-120 with Fig. 1. 2 Geller, p. 14. Sco E. Schmidt, p. 815. This dating does not conform to the statement by Sayce, p. 120 (qooted by Black and Shorwin-Whitc, p. 134f) that the Berlin fragment formed part of a collection that included the bilingual hymns published by G, Reisner the dates of which range from 163 10 81 BC,150 Ebbe Egede Knudsen is also stressed by Black and Sherwin-White (p. 134) who favour a date of second century B.C. for the Ashmolean tablet. The evidence of palaeography suggests a division of the tablets into three groups: an early group characterized by a non-cursive handwriting and lack of ligatures, an intermediate group with some later forms of letters and a few cursive features, and a late group with a more cursive handwriting and use of a few ligatures. The early group includes the literary fragment B 1, The De- scription of Babylon, considered early by Sayce (p. 123) and dated to the second century B.C. by Black and Sherwin-White (p. 134), as well as the incantation B 2 and the lexical lists A 1 and C 2, To the intermediate group belong the Leningrad votive inscription B 4 dated by Schileico (p. 11) to the first century BC, the Berlin list of oaths B 3 dated by Schubart and Kortenbeutel* to the time of Tiberius, and the lexical lists A 4, A 5 and C 1. The fragment of verbal paradigm C 4 is very short and may or may not belong here. The tablets assigned to the late group are the Harvard incantation dated by Maehler and Cockle" to the first century A.D. and the lexical lists A 2 and A 3. As we shall see presently there is some linguistic evidence to corroborate this chronological classification of the tablets (see below §§ 3 and 4). The evidence of palaeography points to the time between the second century BC. and the first century A.D. as the chronological framework for the texts in Greek orthography. At this late period written Akkadian cannot possibly have coexisted with any form of living spoken Akkadian. We have reasons to believe that the language was replaced by Aramaic as the dominant spoken language of Babylonia as early as the middle sixth century B.C.* The extensive deportation of foreign populations during the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires may well have contributed to this situation. During the Hellenistic period the old language culture gradually lost its importance, socially and politically, and the vacuum it left was filled by Greek rather than by Aramaic. As the language of government Greek came to enjoy enormous prestige. It is against this background that we shall consider the question whether Greeks or Babylonians wrote the Greek texts. Several Assyriologists favoured the former view,” among them Sollberger. On the other hand, J. Oelsner took these texts to have been the last remnants of a late Babylonian literature in Greek writing Even though there are few indications to support the latter view, I agree with Black and Sherwin-White that “it may on balance seem more probable that the writers were Babylonians” (p. 139). In my opinion it is unlikely that Greek fathers should send their sons to Babylonian schools in order to learn Akkadian, a language that had been extinct for 400 years or more and whose practical use 14 Schmidt, p. 815. 8 Geller, p. 114. 18 See W. Eilers, OLZ 37 (1934), p. 90 f. 17 See Black and Sherwin-White, p. 138 with references. J, Ocksner, MIO 17 (1972), pp. 356-364.was limited to the native temple administration and an exotic temple service. It seems even more unlikely that they should want them to learn Sumerian, a language that had been extinct for nearly 2 000 years.” In spite of the prestige of Greek throughout the Near East at the end of the Hellenistic period there are no obvious parallels to a hypothetical shift of writing system from cuneiform to Greek. Egyptian began to be written in Greek characters in the third century A.D, in the form we term Coptic. However, Pre-Christian Egyptian texts in Greek characters are extremely rare and a commonly accepted Greek orthography for Egyptian was hardly possible before the disintegration of pagan culture and the conversion to Christianity. In this important respect circumstances in Egypt and Babylonia were not parallel. The Akkadian and Sumerian texts in Greek orthography faithfully reflect the old cultural tradition of Mesopotamia. On the other hand, Greek writing was used for pedagogical purposes by the church father Origen writing in the third century A.D. He used Greek letters for transcribing the second Hebrew column of his Hexapla. Similarly a century or so later another church father Jerome used Latin letters for transcribing Hebrew in his Latin commentaries on the Book of Genesis. In conclusion, we have good reasons to believe that Ba- bylonian students wrote the Greek texts and that their teachers used Greek orthography for pedagogical purposes, very much as modern Assyriologists use transliterations. Therefore, I prefer to see in these texts the evidence of a Late Babylonian traditional pronunciation of Akkadian and Sumerian. I fully agree with the now almost forgotten statement by Burkitt that the writer of the Greek texts “has given us the traditional pronunciation of the words, not the sound indicated by the... . Babylonian system of writing” (p. 145). The existence of a traditional pronunciation has a number of parallels in the Semitic world. The most evident instances from the past are the Jewish pronun- ciations of Hebrew underlying Origen's Greek transcriptions and the phono- logical statements by medieval grammarians. Modern instances of traditional Pronunciations are known from Ethiopia (Geez), among the Christians of Le- banon, Syria, the Mardin province of Turkey (Tur Abdin), northern Iraq and neighbouring areas of Turkey and Iran (Syriac), among the Samaritans (Hebrew and Aramaic), among the Mandeans of Iraq and Iran (Aramaic), and among Scholars disagree on the date of the extinction of Sumerian as a living spoken language. The most recent detailed discussion of the subject is J. S. Cooper, “Sumerian and Akkadian in Sumer and Akkad”, Or. 42 (1973), pp. 239-246 who concluded that Sumerian was dead or nearly so in the Ur Ill period and that the displacement of the language was in progress in Early Dynastic III (p. 241 f,. The statistics from the Sargonic period reported by B. R. Foster, ib. 51 (1982), p. 299 show a significant overweight of Sumerian names in documents from the South (average 805 %) as against a corresponding overweight of Akkadian names in documents from the North (average 77.66 %). On the other hand, D. O. documents from the South (average 805 %) as against a corresponding overweight of ‘Akkadian names in documents from the North (average 77.66 %). On the other hand, D. O. Edzard, RIA 7, 37b sv. Literatur and ZA 78 (1988), p. 139 f. assumes a date a century or so after the Ur III period. 2 Cf. for example the introduction in W. C. Till, Koptische Grammatik (Grd ed., Leipzig 1966), pp. 29-34.152 Ebbe Egede Knudsen several Jewish communities in the Arab world, particularly the Yemenite Jews now living in Israel (Hebrew and Aramaic). In Europe Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews have preserved quite distinct traditional pronunciations of Hebrew. Modern Literary Arabic is an adaptation of Classical Arabic with many features due to interference from the colloquials. Special occasions, however, require a highly formal classical language with several characteristics of a traditional pronun— ciation. 3. Orthography. The transcriptions of Origen and our Greek texts share a number of common features. Greek vowel letters have the quantitative values known from classical school grammar. Unvoiced plosive /p t k/ are rendered as Greek aspirates, emphatic plosive /t q/ as non-aspirates. The Greek alphabet had no means of distinguishing between different unvoiced sibilants and the unvoiced series /s $ §/ are spelled 0. There is however no evidence, neither from Hebrew nor from Akkadian linguistic history, to suggest a merger s 3 > s. Aramaic tran- scriptions of Akkadian proper names prove the existence of the distinction for Neo-Babylonian and so does the cuneiform orthography of the Aramaic incantation text from Uruk?! for Late Babylonian. Palaeographically dated to the second century B.C. the Uruk text is contemporary with our Greek texts and its use of cuneiform orthography is essential to our understanding of the status of the sibilants in the Late Babylonian traditional pronunciation of Akkadian. The following spellings are relevant: () _si-ip-pa-a ‘doorpost’ 2. @ id-anlni ‘tongue’ (abs. st.) 58, li-i3-34-ni-P ‘my tongue’ 3, liS-34-né-¢ “his tongue’ 25 (partly broken at the end of line 22). 3) ka-sa-ta-a/a ‘what is broken’ 17.42 (rev. 16) The Uruk text is the earliest preserved specimen of Eastern Aramaic. Later stages of the language confirm the phonemic status of the sibilants and the words quoted appear as sippa, li38dna and gasG0d the last mentioned with the meaning ‘piece of bread’, particularly the bread of the Eucharist (Syriac) and ‘part, section’ (Babylonian Targumic Aramaic). A characteristic feature of the Akkadian texts in Greek orthography not found in Origen’s transcriptions of Hebrew is the treatment of the uvular spirant h. 21 TCL 6, 58. For references to transliterations and discussions of the text, see K. Beyer, Die aramiischen Texte vom Toten Meer (Gottingen 1984), p. 45 note 4, Beyer refers to a palacographic dating by J. J. A. van Dijk “um 150 v. “one”, Soe. also I Koopmans, Aramiische Chrestomathie (Leiden 1962) Nr. 56 and the Hebrew transcription in J. N. Epstein, Grammar of Babylonian Aramaic (Jerusalem 1960), p. 11 f.On Akkadian Texts in Greek Orthography 153 This consonant is either rendered as zero or spelled with a particular letter, a kind of inverted c (the contemporary shape of Greek 0) with a superscript diacritic, offering points of resemblance with Greek &. The letter is, accordingly, transliterated & As was argued above the evidence of palacography suggests a division of the tablets into three groups. In the intermediate group tentatively dated to the first century B.C. /h/ is once rendered zero (4), in the late group tentatively dated to the first century A.D. it is three times rendered & (5, 6). There are three instances of Sumerian h spelled zero, two from the early group (7) and one from the intermediate group (8). None are spelled &. Compare the following forms: (4) G08, fools <_ suhuiiu ‘young date palm’ A 4. (S) _—ckkep, [eRRep < ihri ‘he dug’ A 2. (© oe. o& < apti muhhi ‘the top window’ Geller. () (he < zh ‘to escape’ A 1. (Jap ofxxxleA < nam-tar hul-gal ‘a bad demon’ B 2. (unto < me-luh-ha from) Meluhha’ A 4. Doubling of & in (5) is unexpected and probably due to the short quality of the preceding vowel. In the broken [et Rep Sollberger p. 65 read the traces on the edge of the break as a small ¢ and interpreted the form as etepe.. However, since in this handwriting ¢ is a fairly tall letter the traces rather belong to the following line. On the photo there seems to be a weak t after the erasure of € observed by Sollberger after p. His final e. was seen neither by Pinches, Sayce nor Burkitt. If this was really so intended by the scribe, it is certainly a mis- interpretation of the cuneiform ih-ri. Therefore, I disregard the final digraph and read (5) as phonemic /ihir/. As to the Sumerian items in (7) reading and inter- pretation are supported by the cuneiform versions and other parallel texts, In the case of A 1 the cuneiform version is not preserved, but the passage is part of a standard lexical series, the so-called Syllabary B, and can be safely reconstructed from tablet A 2 of this text (MSL 3,96). There is one instance in the early group of Greek x for Akkadian /h/, though unfortunately in a problematic context. The British Museum fragment B 1 with the initial lines of the Description of Babylon has preserved a Greek version only, the cuneiform of the obverse being lost. However, a cuneiform version is known from the Berlin tablet VAT 13 101 published by E. Unger and from the duplicate Ashmolean Museum 1924-849 published by P. E. van der Meer. In its Greek version line 8b reads % For the Berlin manuscript, see the photo in E. Unger, WVDOG 48, plate 82 and the copy by the same author, Babylon. Die heilige Stadt (Berlin 1931), plate 43 facing p. 232. The Ashmolean manuscript was published by P. E. van der Meer, Iraq 5 (1938), p. 60.154 Ebbe Egede Knudsen 9) [oke ArBL8as worxpap ‘whose brickwork is m B 1, = 54 li-bit-ta-iti mah-ra-ri VAT 13 101, the Asmolean fragment offering the variant ih-ra-ri. The meaningless uaxpap referred to by Sollberger p. 69 as ‘clearly as given here’ also occurs in VAT 13 101, according to the photo mah-ra-ri though copied by Unger as mah-ra-ti. On the photo the sign ri, Unger’s i, is partly broken. The final oblique wedge covers the last vertical wedge as in the ri of lines 1 and 12, it does not appear after the vertical wedge as in the ti of lines 1 (2x) and 9, It would seem that our scribe transcribed a cuneiform version identical with that of the Berlin text, if it was not the Berlin text itself. The Ashmolean variant is not of much help, except for the fact that it confirms the ancient reading of the last sign as ri. Nevertheless Unger’s reading mah-ra-ti may have been that of the original Vorlage. It is very close to what actually appears on the tablet and it gives good sense. I take it to mean ‘is venerable, old’ and interpret the form as a stative mahrat derived from the adjective mahri. The same misreading occurs in the late Harvard incantation. In line 2 of the cuneiform version ri of the spelling mu-sir-ri is an error for ti. The parallel texts have mu-sir/3ir/3ir-ti23 The false reading then gave rise to Greek oocip. Even though there is no evidence for a correspondence x : h elsewhere in the texts, one cannot exclude the possibility that x was a conventional means of expressing foreign uvular fricative [x] in Greek transcription. If so, and if spirantization of k existed in third century Hebrew, then the correspondence x : h parallels Origen’s use of x in cases where later Tiberian Hebrew writes kaf rafuya or fricative kaf. For the early period the correspondence parallels Septuagint spellings of Hebrew personal names with x for etymological *x like Axat, Ax(ehueAex and others4 ‘There is one instance of a parallel to the so-called Grassman’s Law in Greek, by which the first of two syllable initial aspirated consonants in a word loses its aspiration. As applied by the ancient scribe to the spelling of Akkadian this law did not operate in exactly the same environment as in Greek. The corresponiling Sumerian entry shows that its application was subject to free variation: (10) Akx tnpoes << Ja térubsu (pret!) = vawovxouxet < nam-mu-un-ku-ku-dé ‘do not enter’ B 2, vs. Ac @npolf] < 1a térub (pret!) ‘do not enter’ Geller, cf. (21) below. Palaeographically B 2 belongs to the group of early texts otherwise characterized by zero representation of Akkadian h and non-segolization of monosyllabic nouns § 4). In the later texts, including Geller belonging to the late group, there 2 See R. Borger, AOAT 1 (1965), p. 10 f., 171 with variants. 24 The date of the shift *x > h in Hebrew is disputed, but cf. G. Bergstrisser, Hebrdische Grammatik 30h who expressed his view in a masterly way: “zur Zeit der LXX schon abgeschlossen, aber noch nicht vergessen”.Page 155 intentionally left blankPage 156 intentionally left blankOn Akkadian Texts in Greek Orthography 157 does not prove that the resultant entity was a reduced vowel [a], as is often maintained?” (14) [fli-vu-di ‘drive out’ (imp. m. sg) 15, partly broken in 40 (rev. 14) for Itirud/, compare Syr. fro8 (PAram. *turud). ri-hu-ti-P/i ‘ran’ (imp. f. sg.) 1641 (rev. 15) for /rihiti/, compare TgAram. rahot (imp. m. sg.) 2 Sam. 18,23 etc. (PAram. *ruhuti). (15) ti-hu-ié-tis ‘under’ 32533 (rev. 7) for /tiho:/, compare BAram., TgAram. (Gen. 184 etc) tahd0, Syr. tho® (PAram. tuba), (16) qu-da~am ‘in front of 11.14.36 (rev. 10)39 (rev. 13) for /quda:m/, compare BAram, TgAram. qodm,¥ Syr. q8am (PAram. *qudam). From a comparative point of view it is certainly significant that the distinction fil vs. Jal corroborates the later evidence of Syriac, whereas the isolated pre- servation of /u/ finds support in later Jewish Aramaic. Unlike Akkadian early Aramaic had no independent short e in any position. Nevertheless, the late traditional pronunciation of Akkadian preserved short e in some environments. This must be taken as a genuine Akkadian feature. Since, on the other hand, the traditional pronunciation had no short e in unstressed open syllables, only [e:] spelled n, that must be a case of phonological interference from Aramaic, Contrast the spellings (17) eds < eli ‘above’ A 3. (18) BeAe@ < delet (cstr.) ‘lady’ B 3." (19) nove < emiig (cstr.) ‘power’ B 1. (20) undlxx(x)] < meluhhit ‘Melubha date palm’ A 4, compare the corresponding Sumerian entry undo (8). In my review of Greenstein’s treatment of Akkadian syllable structure I sug- gested that the ancient scribe wrote n for expected ¢ in nou (19) to avoid confusion with the Greek diphthong ev.>? On second thoughts and on the evi-~ 27 See, for example, J. Blau, JOS 1 (1971), p. 28 with references. % For reconstruction of the preposition, see C. Brockelmann, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen 1, pp. 185 and 499 and F. Rosenthal, Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, § 22. % Targumic Aramaic qd8am and qaSam vary according to manuscripts, see A. Sperber, The Bible in Aramaic 1, p. IX (Leiden 1959). Stress in Akkadian refers to the state of evidence considered conclusive in the author's treatment of the subject in JCS 32 (1980), pp. 3-16, particularly p. 15. 3 For the shortening of etymological 2 in beltu ‘lady’, see E. L. Greenstein, “The Phonology of Akkadian Syllable Structure", AAL 9/1 (1984), p. 42 f. and the remarks by the present writer in BiOr. 43 (1986), p. 728-730. % See reference in the preceding note p. 729.158 Ebbe Egede Knudsen dence of (20) I now prefer to interpret the two spellings as cases of pretonic lengthening influenced by spoken Aramaic. It may be argued against (20) that it is derived from the designation of a foreign country and that it may be expected to have a foreign structure. However, a vowel pattern @ - u or é - i would be unique even for a foreign word, while e - u or e - % would be perfectly normal. The final long vowel of Sumerian undo shows that the doubling of A in the cuneiform spelling me-luh-ha was purely conventional as usual in Sumerian orthography. The late tradition read this geographical name as [me:lo:x] or in phonemic terms /melu:h/, Akkadian meluhhii should, accord- ingly, be read melithit. The Akkadian and Aramaic expressions of a prohibitive are closely related, though not identical. In Akkadian negative [a is followed by present form of verb as in /@ tanaddin ‘you shall not give’, whereas in Aramaic it is followed by imperfect form of verb as in Syr. /d reqrol, TgAram. 1a tigtol (Ex. 20,3 etc.) ‘you shall not kill’. There are two instances of an Akkadian prohibitive in the Greek texts. Both occur in incantations and both were confused with the Aramaic form: (21) ana E-ti la te-rlu-ub-5i (1 (Ake tpoes ‘you shall not enter (his?) house’ B 2. la te-ru-ub ‘Ac enpolB] ‘you shall not come in’ Geller. The syntax is Aramaic rather than Akkadian. The verbal forms following the negative clearly reflect the preterites térubiu and térub. Apparently due to de- fective writing of the lengthened second radical in both cuneiform versions, the student scribes misinterpreted the forms as preterite rather than present and identified them with the similarly structured Aramaic imperfect of a verb primae alef as, say, *t2kul ‘you shall eat’, compare TgAram réxol, pause téxul (Gen. 2,16f. etc.), Syr. téxol (and BAram. téxul ‘she will eat’ Dan. 7,23). Correct Akkadian requires ana biti(Su) Ia terrub. To the best of my knowledge a con- struction ana biti 1a terrubu lit. ‘you shall not enter the house to him’ does not occur in Akkadian. One wonders whether the Greek transcription may represent a contamination of the former idiom and /@ terrubiu, both being well docu- mented in the language. The private votive inscription in Leningrad is unique in several respects. The text is without a cuneiform parallel and presumably an ad hoc composition requesting long life, good health and profound learning for one Bél-ipus and his four companions. It is a fascinating thought that we may have before us the names of five student scribes who were taking courses in Akkadian and Sumerian at a Babylonian temple school sometime about the beginning of the Christian era. If we assume that the writer of the inscription was a student scribe with an imperfect knowledge of Akkadian, we should expect to findOn Akkadian Texts in Greek Orthography 159 evidence of Aramaic influence in the text and we do find such evidence in two idioms: (22) [ket [ov] ocx] < balatu u Salému ‘good health and well-being’ B 4. (23) ool Jwer < Sulbur iimi ‘old age’ B 4. The expressions were modelled on the idioms Sulmu u baldqu ‘well-being and good health’ and Sulbur palé ‘prolonged reign’ respectively, the latter being quite common in royal inscriptions. Man’s memory is weak. The scribe changed the order of words in (22) and chose ialdmu instead of iulmu His native Aramaic *jalamd (> later Aramaic Saldmé) just slipped in. I know of no exact Aramaic parallel to (23), but the use of a word for ‘days’ in a designation for old age may suggest an Aramaic background, compare the adjective compound ‘attiq yominlyomayya ‘(the) ancient of days’ well known from Dan. 7,913.22. Another feature I should like to mention in this context is the historical development of certain morphologic formations comparable to the segolates of Hebrew and Aramaic. The dropping of final short vowels, including case vowels, resulted in a large number of monosyllables ending in groups of two consonants and a good deal of dissyllables ending in long consonants. In the texts of the early period final consonant groups are preserved, whereas final long consonants are shortened: (24) Aewv reflecting an unattested *limnu ‘evil fate’ and ops reflecting mursu ‘illness’, both B 22> (25) coax < asakku name of a demon B 2. In the intermediate and late periods of the texts the situation has changed. The consonant groups are dissolved by the insertion of a secondary vowel identical with the preceding one. Earlier monosyllabic formations like (24) now become dissyllabic, their patterns being indistinguishable from dissyllabic patterns like (25), However, consonant groups with final 1, the marker of feminine, are pre- served (30). Here the following rule applies: (26) HOV,CC# -> HOV,CV{C# unless C, is /t/, Among the examples to follow (27) belong to the intermediate period, (28-30) to the late period. With the exception of the verb quoted above (5) all attested cases are nouns. % In these passages the Greek version of the text is due to errors on the part of the ancient scribe who misread the adjectives lemnu and marsu of the cuneiform version as the nouns *limnu (for lumnu) and mursu respectively.160 Ebbe Egede Knudsen Q7) otov < uznu ‘ear’ B 4, 00s <_ suhusiu ‘young date palm’ A 4, cf. above (4). (28) eaday < palgu a type of canal A 2. (29) cx@ceo (2x), x@cco«er»™ < atappu a type of canal A 2. (30) tBwpe < ina biirti ‘through the cistern’ Geller. In the early period the structure of the forms was as in Hebrew. The pattern /murs/ (24) is comparable to Origen’s Boxp (Ps. 46,6) and even the later Tiberian bégeer ‘morning’ was, in its underlying phonemic form /buqr/, still a monosyllable, the insertion of segol being automatic and predictable.* The pattern /murs/ was a traditional form transmitted and used in the liturgy for centuries. The loss of final short vowels which produced this pattern may or may not have been due to interference from Aramaic. In spite of von Soden’s assertion in GAG 2 g I am not convinced that foreign influence was decisive. The loss of final case vowels in the noun and final mood vowels in the verb is a universal feature in Semitic and may well be due to the tendency in language development often termed drift by linguists. While in the early period the question of foreign influence remains undecided for lack of conclusive evidence, there can be no doubt that the type of se~ golization documented for the later periods reflects Aramaic usage. Akkadian had been a dead language for nearly half a millennium and any change in the linguistic tradition must be due to factors outside the language itself. Aramaic is the most probable, if not the only possible candidate responsible for this change, since it was the dominant spoken language of Babylonia in the last centuries of the Pre-Christian era and since at this time segolization of monosyllabic nouns had already taken place in Aramaic. Compare the following spellings from the Uruk incantation: (31) _—_-ki-ta-ri ‘a (magic) knot’ (abs. st.) 1.27 (rev. 1) for /kitar/, compare Syr. getra (magic) knot’ and BAram. gitrin ‘difficult problems’ it. knots) Dan. 512.16. (32) ta-ra-ha/hi ‘a city gate’ (abs. st.) 13.38 (rev. 12) for /tara‘/, compare TgAram. tara‘ (Ex. 32,27 etc.) and Syr. tarSG (cstr. tra‘) ‘gate, door’, and BAram. tara‘ (cstr.) ‘door’ Dan. 3,26. According to Sollberger p. 65 the traces of et are “faint but readable” (erasure?). Pre~ sumably the spelling is due to a misinterpretation of cuneiform a-tap-pi as partly preserved in the preceding line. % Cf. A. Sperber, “Hebrew Based upon Greek and Latin Transliterations", HUCA 12/13 (1937-38), p. 179, the same author's Historical Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Leiden 1966), p. 196, or E. Brenno, Studien iiber hebriiische Morphologie und Vokalismus (AKM 28), p. 149. % Compare the remarks to the same effect by H. B. Rosén, RB 60 (1953), pp. 31-36 and Mélanges Cohen (Hague 1970), p. 116, and J. Blau, 10S 8 (1978), p. 102 f. and 9 (1979), p. S2f.On Akkadian Texts in Greek Orthography 161 The later patterns /uzun/ (27) and /palag/ (28) parallel Aramaic /kitar/ < *gitir < “qitr and /tara‘/ < *tar‘, compare also the cognate Hebrew segolate Sa‘ar ‘gate, door’. 5. Conclusion. Two features more than any others were characteristic of the latest phase of spoken Akkadian, the loss of case vowels in the noun and mood vowels in the verb. The morphological development parallels that of other Semitic languages. Even in terms of absolute chronology the development in Akkadian and North- west Semitic followed, step by step, the same pattern. Mimation or nunation, in the singular or in the plural or in both, was characteristic of the earliest stages of Semitic. Old Akkadian, Old Assyrian and Early Old Babylonian share this feature with the language of the Canaanite proper names in the Egyptian Execration texts and presumably Amorite. The interchange of mimation and non-mimation in Amorite proper names may be purely conventional and due to Old Babylonian orthographic usage. Later on Middle Assyrian and Middle Babylonian lost mim- ation, as did Ugaritic and contemporary Canaanite as known from the glosses of the Amarna letters. At the same time the two varieties of Akkadian preserved final case vowels in the noun and final mood vowels in the verb (subjunctive in -u and ventive in ~a), as did Ugaritic and the language of the Amarna letters from Byblos (indicative in -u and volitive in -a). As is well known these letters are written in Akkadian, but the syntax of the verb is Canaanite rather than Akkadian. In the latest phase of Akkadian from the first half of the first mil- lennium B.C. Babylonian gradually lost case inflection and the subjunctive and ventive moods and typologically came to parallel its best documented neighbours in the Northwest and West, Aramaic and Hebrew. Professor Ebbe Egede Knudsen Semittisk institutt Universitetet i Oslo