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April 27, 2006

Another Can of Wedges

I'm back to staring at the inscribed potsherd KTU 6.71 from Tell Nebī Mend, ancient Qedesh. The text on this potsherd has only nine "readable" letters plus what is likely a word divider and another not so readable letter. To extend charity to the scribe, one might call the scratches that he made on this pot before it was fired, "stylized." Millard, (1976), thought the text was written in a short cuneiform alphabet and that is why I am interested in it. He came to this opinion on mostly morphological grounds but he also noted the use of what he called s₂ and what he thought was an /‛/.

Here's the problem, there is a letter that looks like this and Millard says it should be read /‛/ but calls it ‛2 to let us know that he thinks it looks more like a ġ than an ‛. However, Dietrich and Loretz, 217f, think it is a ġ pure and simple. But truthfully, it doesn't look like one to me. Here is what a canonical ‛ and ġ look like: . And even taking the direction of the writing into consideration, neither of these looks much like . So what is it? Well, I'm not sure but what Millard calls s₂ and what Dietrich and Loretz calls s is very similar to the s in RS 88.2215, the south Semitic abecedary from Ugarit that I discussed in an earlier post. Not exactly the same, but very close. So is there any letter on RS 88.2215 that looks something like ? Yes, there is, the š. It is true that the three wedges converge at their points in the RS 88.2215 š but still looks a lot more like that š than it does any ġ I have ever seen. I've reproduced my tracing and my transliteration of RS 88.2215 below so you can see what I mean.

Here's the real problem. If this letter somehow turns out to represent an /‛/ then there is a possibility that the text is a candidate for inclusion among the short alphabet texts I am considering. And if it turns out to represent a /ġ/ it is very unlikely that it would be in the short alphabet. Unless this is the only one known to date of the ġ standing for both an /‛/ and a /ġ/ rather than the other way around. Remember, no one thinks it looks like an ‛. If it turns out to be a š, then it is not among the short alphabet texts even if it is not a canonical Ugaritic text either.

Before we go any further, I should give each of the readings so far suggested.

[ ] ‛ml . lmb‛₂ls₂kn (Millard) (Millard sees a ġ but reads a /‛/)

[ ] -ml . l mbġl skn (Dietrich and Loretz and Puech)

[ ] -ml . l mbšl skn (Me)

Miller sees the previously well-attested personal name B'lskn in the last six letters and takes the lm before them to be some unusual form of the preposition l, "for" or "belonging to." In other words, he bases his reading of on the name B'lskn. Dietrich and Loretz see the text in the long alphabetic tradition. So they read ġ as /ġ/. Their problem is that they have no idea what it means and so they posit a hither to unknown personal name. Dietrich and Loretz cite Arabic baġl meaning "mule" and the fact the personal names are built on the root of this word. The only problem is that mbġl is not known as a personal name. My reading suffers from the same problem. I did find an Akkadian word, bašalu, "to be cooked," "to become ripe" but I could not find either a noun or a personal name based on it. I kind of like the "cooking" or "ripe" theme because this inscription is on a potsherd from a large storage jar. But this fact does not seem quite enough to settle the case.

Back to the library and the books.

Tracing and Transliteration of RS 88.2215

References:

Posted by Duane Smith at April 27, 2006 7:47 PM | Read more on Ugarit |

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Posted by: Joe Cathey at April 28, 2006 6:07 AM

Posted by: Duane at April 28, 2006 7:37 AM

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