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April 23, 2006
Ashdod, Ugarit and Monkey Suits
After my post on that strange list of names and designations (KTU 4.635) the other day, I started thinking about Ashdod. I know this is going off on a tangent and has nothing to do with my study of the texts in the short cuneiform alphabet but sometimes one needs a little vacation. Today I want to look at what the Ugaritic and Akkadain texts from Ugarit tell us about Ashdod and Ashdodians.
You'll remember that Ashdod is spelled addd in KTU 4.635, well, to be more precise, it was spelled addd plus the gentilic y. It occurs at least 21 times in KTU 4.635 always after a personal name and once followed by tb‛ (? see my earlier post) and once followed by bd . skn ("in the hands of the governor"). Astour (1970), 125-126, has argued that KTU 4.635 is a list of residents of Ma'hadu and he may well be correct. He bases this on the fact that many of those named in this tablet are known from other tablets to be affiliated with Ma'hadu. Five of the names that appear in KTU 4.635 with adddy following them also appear in KTU 4.134. This tablet, a list of thirteen names in total, is headed spr . bdlm, "list of merchants." None of the names on KTU 4.134 has attributions or gentilics following them. The evidence that Astour adduced now leads me to believe that my initial tentative interpretation of this list was incorrect and that it is much better understood as a list of merchants. If Astour is correct, than bd should be translated, as Loren Fisher suggested, "in the service of" without implying that the person so designated was a slave or prisoner. I am not quite so convinced that he is right about them residing in Ma'hadu. There is one problem with his interpretation. One that he noted. KTU 4.635:17 reads in part bn . pdġy . mhdy, "Bn Pdġy the Ma'hadite." Why would a list of people living in Ma'hadu have someone who was listed as a Ma'hadite on it? It may be that this was simply how Bn Pdġy was known or best identified.
But addd occurs in other Ugaritic texts also. I what follows I will look the most important of them.
KTU 4.709:2 is the only place where the geographical name occurs without the gentilic ending. It also occurs with the gentilic ending in KTU 4.96:3 and in the form adddmy, Ashdodians, in KTU 4.721:3. adddy appears in a very broken but still instructive context in KTU 4.352:9. Note that adddn is in KTU 4.14 IV:7 as a personal name.
In addition, the name occurs in an Akkadian text from Ugarit as URUÁš-da-di (RS 19:20:3).
Let's look at these texts one at a time. KTU 4.709, which I once knew as RS 1957.701, is one of the Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets published by Loren Fisher and his team. Mitchell Dahood studied this economic tablet. The image to the right is of a cast of this tablet. I have circled the name Ashdod in red. Dahood, correctly in my view, took the obverse and the reverse to be in different hands.
The obverse where addd occurs reads in my translation,
1) Seven talents of wool
2) for one Ashdod talent.
───────────────────
3) and in terms of an Ugarit talent,
4) five talents.
5) One thousand eight hundred heavy (shekels)
6) which I have given.
In the interest of readability, I have placed my philological notes in a PDF file. Feel free to download it if you are so inclined.
Turning to KTU 4.96:3, we again see adddy, "Ashdodian." KTU 4.96 is a list of persons on two different plantations. Again in my translation, the tablet reads,
1) Merchant (?) of the plantation of Bun Tabshuni:
2) Bun Mnyite,
3) Aryn the Ashdodian
4) Agiptheru
5) Shuba'alu the Mulukian.
6) N‛mn the Egyptian
7) Ya'elu the Canaanite
8) Gdn son of Umy
─────────────────
9) Kun'amu the Š‛rtyite
10) Abrpu the Ubur'ite
lower edge) In the plantation of Bun Tlţ
Reverse) Ild B[un?] Psħn
Please read the PDF file if you are interested in my reasons for translating this text the way I did.
Here we learn that an Ashdodian is working on or with the estate of one Bun Tabshuni along with other foreigners.
KTU 4.352 is a damaged tablet that contains the word adddy on line 9. This is the only readable word on this line. However, readable lines on the table indicate that the text is a list of purchases mostly (exclusively?) large quantities of oil. In addition to this adddy, an Egyptian and an Alashiyian are also mentioned. Bn ‛dy is also on this list and he is associated with shipping (KTU 4.366:9). But KTU 4.352 also contains the name bn ‛zmt rišy. A town called Rishu is thought to be a coastal town in the plain district of Ugarit (Astour [1981], 12) and not necessarily a foreign location.
KTU 4.721 is a badly damaged tablet with more than its share of strange vocabulary.
While I have presented a complete translation of the first four lines with philological notes in the PDF file, for the purpose of this post, I want to focus on these seemingly parallel expressions in lines 1-3:
lbšm . ‛rpm - "garments of the dark garments ("garments of the initiates" or of the clouds or of [the place name] ‛rp/bm)"
lbšm . adddym - "garments of the Ashdodians."
Do I really think the first line refers to monkey suits(!)? Well, I really doubt it. But this is a blog and not a scholarly journal so I can have a little more freedom and a little fun. But I have no better idea of what this means unless it is a place name. Check out Akkadian pagû and my comments in the PDF file. Likewise, the words that I translate "dark" the next line may well mean "clouds," or, if one thinks of an Ugaritic "b" rather than a "p" one might prefer to translate it "initiates." Regardless of the understanding of p/b it could well be a place name. עֲבָרִים in the hill country of Moab is an example of such a place name. But if either pgi or ‛rpm are place names, why aren't they in the gentilic like the adddym?
Are these three different kinds of garments? Or are they three different designations for the same garment? It is most reasonable to assume that they are three different types of garments.
The Akkadian text RS 19:20 also speaks of garments "of Ashdod."
2) 13 talents of fish(?)
3) 5 garments of Ashdod
4) 2000 (shekels) of lapis-lazuli (but maybe "purple wool" or perhaps a purple wool garment)
5) delivered into the hands of Šukuna (or the governor)
6) for sale.
Notice that, like the Ugaritic text KTU 7.721:3, this Akkadian text mentions garments from Ashdod or at least Ashdod like garments. Na'aman, 610, also made this point. In addition, one should note that depending on how one translates RS 19:20:4, one might see a parallel with KTU 7.721:2, "dark (perhaps even red) garments." Astour, 124, notes Škny Adddy in KTU 4.635:38 and suggests that Šukuna may himself come from Ashdod.
So we have come full circle: from KTU 4.635 to KTU 4.709 to KTU 4.69 to RS 19:20 and back to KTU 4.635. We see Ashdodites involved in commerce. We see products (garments) from Ashdod and we see lots of Ashdodians living among and with the people of Ugarit. Are these Ashdodians from the Palestinian coastal city of Ashdod? Astour and Na'aman think it is likely and so do I. But the evidence is far from conclusive. It is, however, very indicative. First, KTU 4.94 mentions an Egyptian and a Canaanite along with an Ashdodian. And while there may be concern about the words I translate Egyptian and Canaanite (see PDF file), it is likely that we are dealing, at least in the case of these two, with foreigners as opposed to people from within the kingdom of Ugarit. Therefore, it is not too much of a stretch to think that the Ashdodian is also a foreigner. The central problem with this argument is that the Mulukian (line 5) comes from Mulukku in the South-West district of Ugarit (Astour [1981], 5). We have the same problem with KTU 4.352, the list of purchasers of oil. More persuasive evidence that the Ashdodians were foreigners comes from KTU 4.709 where we learn that there is a difference between the Ugarit and the Ashdod talent. If Addd was within the kingdom of Ugarit one would think that the Ashdodians would have the same talent as the rest of the kingdom of Ugarit. Being a foreign place does not guarantee that Addd refers to the Palestinian coastal city of Ashdod but it does not eliminate it either. There being no other candidates for the location of Addd it seems most reasonable to identify it with Ashdod on the Palestinian coast until a better candidate is proposed.
References can be found at the end of the accompanying PDF file.
Posted by DuaneSmith at April 23, 2006 01:17 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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