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December 26, 2005

Weighing the Evidence

I've begun work on my next post on the texts in the short cuneiform alphabet. I'm working on an inscription on a knife from Mount Tabor (KTU 6.1). There is a fair amount of secondary literature on this, some of it from quite obscure places. So while I'm rounding it all up, I thought I would start some detailed work on the problems in understanding this short text of only thirteen letters. While there are a couple of higher-level problems like the date of the inscription and exact Semitic language or dialect, there are really only two problems with the text as a text.

The one I want to discuss here not only affects the details of how one understands this text but may also address the higher-level issue of language or dialect. Here is the problem. Why is the second letter in the common Semitic word for "son (bn)" missing? There is little doubt that we are supposed to understand the lonely b as "son" even if the almost ubiquitous bn might be expected. You'll see why when I post my formal study of this inscription. As far as I know, there are only two possible reasons for the missing n.

  1. The scribe/engraver made a mistake and omitted it.
  2. The n is lost to a common linguistic phenomenon called progressive assimilation. In other words, the n in bn is absorbed in to the first letter of the following word.

If this is assimilation, we have something like it in English. The indefinite article "an" looses its "n" when the noun it modifies begins with most consonants. We usually think of it the other way around but it works, pretty much, the way I described it.

So how do we tell which it is: error or assimilation? One way is to see if we can find other examples of this phenomenon that are less ambiguous. If we can, it increases the possibility of the phenomenon being assimilation. If we can't, it increases the possibility of it being the result of a scribal error. Because most scribal errors have well understood mechanisms, one would still need to explain how the scribal error occurred. "Random error" may be the answer but it is not nearly as likely as one of the several documented types of scribal errors. A little more on this later.

First of all, the assimilation of the sound associated with the Semitic "n" (and other sounds as well) into a following consonant is very well documented. There are even grammatical rules for when it does and when it doesn't happen. These rules do vary a little by language and dialect. But examples of it happening with the word bn, "son," are very rare. Dietrich and Loretz (1988) 243, n. 288, suggested three possible examples in Ugaritic texts: two from KTU 4.178:2, 4 and one from KTU 4.696:9. They are not certain of any of them. The tablet KTU 4.178 is very seriously damaged with so much of the text missing that it is almost impossible to know what any of it means. It's some kind of a list but beyond that not much can be said. Tablet KTU 4.696 is also damaged but a couple lines are very readable and one of them, line 9, contains a possible example of assimilation of the n in bn into the first consonant of the following personal name.

Here's the text of KTU 4.696:9: ’gptr . b . yny . b . gt [ ].
I made the bugaboo "b" red.

While the first few lines of this nine-line text are broken, each line seems to start with a personal name followed by the preposition b, "in," followed by an estate or place name. On at least four occasions, the estate or place name begins with gt, literally "winepress." Because there are word dividers between every readable word, there is little doubt about how the scribe wanted us to separate the words.

So what are the choices for understanding this line?

1) yny as a place name: "’gptr in yny in the 'winepress' of ?" (See the place name yny in KTU 4.355:20, 379:6.7, 693:43, 765:9 and perhaps KTU 4.320:2)

- or -

2) yny as a personal name and the n in bn is lost by progressive assimilation into the y of yny: "’gptr son of yny in the 'winepress' of ?" (See the personal name yny in KTU 4.44:22, 55:30 and 5.1:2). Yes, yny can be both a place name and a personal name.

- or -

3) yny as a personal name but there is a scribal error: the erroneous omission of the n caused by the similarity of the words and letters in the preceding lines (haplography by homoioteleuton, for the initiated; a common type of scribal error, for those that are not.). Notice that the preposition b and noun bn both start with the letter b and every readable line before line 9, the last line on the tablet, has the preposition after the first word, always a personal name. So the scribe may have omitted the n because he was influenced by all the bs in each of the previous lines.

So can I use KTU 696:9 as an example of assimilation of the n in bn into the following consonant? I think not. With so many Ugaritic examples of the word bn in a construct relationship with a following personal name and this being, so far, the best example of possible assimilation that I have seen in Ugaritic, the weight of the evidence is against option 2. Personally, I think KTU 696:9 has the scribal error I suggested in option 3. However, it would be hard for me to give a "drop dead" defense of this opinion or even to say much more than I have already said.

I have found a few examples where I think the n in bn has assimilated into the first consonant of a following personal name. It appears to occur in some, but not nearly all, of the earliest linear Phoenician texts: KAI 6:1, KAI 7:3 (but not in line 2 of this text), KAI 8, and the Byblos Cone #2, [Gibson (1982), 12, #3]. You might worry, because there is not assimilation of the n in bn in line 2, that my example of assimilation in KAI 7:3 may also be a scribal error instead. If it were not for three things, so would I. First, it is not the only example in such texts. Second, the name in KAI 7:3 (yhmlk) also appears in KAI 6:1 and also with only a b rather than a bn before it. Third, the name following bn in line 2 begins with an aleph and nuns never (or at least, extremely seldom) assimilate into alephs.

However, other old Phoenician texts like those on the Rapa’ arrowhead, the Raweiseh arrowhead, the Al-Biq'ah arrowhead, Azarba'al arrowhead (all in Gibson [1982], 6), the Kefar Verdim Bowl (Alexandre [2003]), and the Tekke Bowl (Sass [1988], 91) do not show this kind of assimilation.

I'm also looking at a few names like mbi-ri-di-ya, called "the man of Megiddo" in the El Amarna texts (see EA 242:3) or mbi-di-i-lu, envoy of the king of Qadish to Ugarit, (see RS 20.172:7, 23). These names and others like them have their own problems but they are interesting when compared to names like mben-a-zi-mi (EA 120:32) and mben-ar-mu-na (RS 17.150:45) (but mben-sà-ra-ti [RS 17.150:38]. ben at both El Amarna and Ugarit is represented by the DUMU [tur / mâru] sign. One might not think much about these names if the determinative came after DUMU rather than before it.

I'm still searching for additional examples to evaluate. Any ideas?

By the way, the other problem in KTU 6:1 is how to read the second and third letters of the inscription. The text is damaged at that point. It is nearly certain that these are the first two letters of a personal name.

Posted by Duane Smith at December 26, 2005 2:42 PM | Read more on Ugarit |

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