« Our Abnormal Home Prepares for Christmas
Main
From Visual Aid to Literary Genre to Vacuous Slides »
December 18, 2005
The Cuneiform Short Alphabet: Part 6
An Inscribed Jar Handle from Sarepta in Lebanon: KTU 6.70 (Sar 3102, Pritchard [1975], 97-104)
This is the sixth in my series of studies of the texts in the short cuneiform alphabet. You can find the first study, "Amurriyu's Sacrifice to Baal: KTU 1.77" at The Cuneiform Short Alphabet: Part 1. Along with Part 1 is a brief discussion of the short cuneiform alphabet, a discussion of methodology and a disclaimer in which I advise the reader on my qualifications or lack of same to study these texts. Please read this material. There is also a table of contents to these studies at the beginning of Part 1.
KTU 6.70 - A Jar Handle with a Phoenician Inscription Written in the Cuneiform Short Alphabet from Sarepta in Lebanon
This inscribed jar handle was discovered during Pritchard's 1972 excavation at Sarepta in Lebanon (Pritchard [1978], 108-9). I cite the more accessible popular report. Those seeking more detail and rigor should consult Pritchard (1975), 97-104. With the exception of the first and last letters of the second line, the inscription is completely legible. Pritchard dated the broken jar handle to the beginning of the 13th century BCE. Excavators discovered it amid discarded shards in the remains of the Kiln G complex pottery at Sarepta (Pritchard's [1978], 121-123). Therefore, it is very unlikely that the vessel with this particular handle was ever delivered to its prospective owner. The text is written from left to right in the cuneiform short alphabet and the language is an early form of Phoenician with affinities to the Old Byblian dialect particularly as exemplified in the inscription on the Ahiram coffin, KAI 1. It is as old as, and very likely much older than, any other text in the Phoenician language. For a discussion of the dating of the linear texts, see Sass, (2005), 34-39 in my bibliography.
The other day I did a post on one of the more interesting aspects of the history of the interpretation of this text.
Transliteration and Translation:
1) An amphora, which Yiddinba'alu has made
2) for Chudashi, his lord.
If you want to understand why I read and translate the text this way, please check out the PDF file.
There are two principle reasons for thinking this text is in some dialect of the Phoenician language. First, the verb, p‛l is a Phoenician word that occurs in similar Phoenician texts, such as the Ahiram coffin inscription (KAI:1.1) from Byblos. It also occurs in this form in other Semitic languages, like Hebrew פעל. But, the Ugaritic equivalent is b‛l. Second, the relative pronoun z is the form one would expect in an early Phoenician text. It can also be seen in the same grammatical structure as KTU 6.70 in the Ahiram coffin text. I have a lot more on these matters in the accompanying PDF file.
Even though the text is written from left to right, there are several reasons to believe that it uses the cuneiform short alphabet. First, it contains the tell tale small circular impression that I call š2. Only short alphabet texts use this sign although something somewhat like it occurs in the Hurrian texts KTU 1.66:14, 15, 22, 30, 36, 37, KTU 1.108:9 and KTU 1.123:5, 7, 9, 25 from Ugarit. These Hurrain texts seem to be otherwise in the long cuneiform alphabet. I guess I will need to look at them in detail some time. Second, KTU 6.70 uses the 
sign in the way we have come to expect in the short alphabet texts. Third, the d and b signs have the construction seen in the other short alphabet texts as opposed to what one normally sees in the long alphabet texts. Again, I have more on this in the PDF file.
A very interesting feature of this text is its structure. It follows a very common formula that is well documented in Phoenician as well as Ugaritic and Aramaic. The formula is as follows:
object + relative pronoun + verb + first personal name + preposition + second personal name
Well, it almost follows this structure. Notice that in line 2 where we would expect only the preposition we find the relative pronoun plus the preposition. I'm not altogether sure what to make of this but have offered a few suggestions in my more detailed study. I give several examples and references to many more examples of the formula in the PDF file. The Ahiram coffin inscription that I mentioned above is one of them.
Posted by Duane Smith at December 18, 2005 8:08 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telecomtally.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1498
Comments
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.
Send me an email if it is important.