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May 20, 2006

Is Being an Ape Always a Bad Thing?

Those of you that lack a life may remember that a few weeks ago I wrote a post on the place name Ashdod in various tablets form Ugarit. An even smaller minority may remember that I, somewhat tongue in cheek, suggested that lbš . pgi in KTU 4.721 might mean "monkey suit". Well, while looking for something else, I ran across an article by Ǻke W. Sjöberg entitled, "The Ape from the Mountain who Became the King of Isin."

This article is about a Sumerian letter from Ibbisin of Isin to Puzrnumuša of Kazallu. This letter calls Išbiertra from Mari, "ugu2.ugu4-bi kur-bita e11-de3" which Sjöberg translates "that ape who has come down from the mountain." Now I barely know a single word of Sumerian, but I do know that UGU.DAL-bi in Sumerian equals pagû in Akkadain and Akkadian pagû means "monkey" or "ape." How do I know this? von Soden, 809, tells me so. Sjöberg, n2, notes another text that reads in translation, "the year when the heavy ape (from) the mountain sruck Ibbisim, the King of Ur." The usage is no doubt pejorative in the extreme but is just a warm up to "with human instincts, canine intelligence and an ape's features" from another letter.

What I'm wondering, and this is purely speculative, is if the reference in KTU 4.721 is to some ceremonial costume commemorative of an historical event of a legend in which one of the principle participants was originally called an ape? I don't necessarily mean the memory of Išbiertra becoming king of Isin, more likely some other event or legend. But could the history of recounting of the event or legend turned a pejorative expression into a positive expression? If this is possible and applicable to KTU 4.721, then wearing a "monkey suit" just might be a good thing on the proper occasion. Even if the pejorative expression was not turned into a positive, it could still be that wearing a "monkey suit" on some special occasion might still be the thing to do. This is very close to a random thought. The kind of thing you can get away with on a blog or in a hallway conversation, but nowhere else. Please don't make anymore of it than that.

References:

Sjöberg, Ǻke W., "The Ape from the Mountain who Became the King of Isin," The Tablet and the Scroll; Near eastern Studies in Honor of William W. Hallo, Mark Cohen, et al editors, Bethesda Maryland: CDL Press. 1993, 211-220

von Soden, Wolfram, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1965

Posted by Duane Smith at May 20, 2006 9:51 AM | Read more on Ugarit |

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