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June 5, 2006

Did I Get It All That Wrong?

Eisenbrauns is peddling a very cool mug that has the first two lines of the Enuma Elish and a rather strange colophon.

The first line of the colophon reads in Akkadian amiltamkâr (LÚ.DAM.GÀR) kib-rat erbetimtim which I translated "merchant of the four shores (regions)." About which James at Idle Musings of a Bookseller says, ". . . he [that would be me] missed the colophon." He would have preferred the translation "merchants of the four corners [of the earth]." He further explains that "of the four corners [of the earth]" was a classic epithet of the Neo-Assyrian kings. Perhaps it would be more accurate to have said, "kib-rat erbetimtim was a classic epithet of the Neo-Assyrian kings."

Now I readily admit that Neo-Assyrain is not my long suit. Give me peripheral Middle Babylonian any day. But I do feel a need to defend myself a little. Apparently, James thinks I made two mistakes: 1) I read LÚ.DAM.GÀR as a singular and 2) I misunderstood kib-rat erbetimtim.

Well what do I have to say for myself? As to the first "mistake," I plead not guilty. These three ideograms should likely read amiltamkâr, construct state of tamkâru, "merchant." There is nothing there to indicate a plural. No MEŠ, no nothing.

The issue with my second "mistake" is a little more complex. kibru from which kibrat is derived has a range of meanings from "shore" (the one I chose) to "edge" to "rim" of a cup. In fact Jeremy Black and company translate the expression kibrat erbetim, the "'four edges' of the world."

So I did what any Assyriologist in this position would do. I Googled for "Assyrian king 'four shores'." At a University of Michigan site I found the royal title translated, "king of the four shores." And in an article by Thomas Scheffler, it is apparently translated the same way. Now this is a minority report and the translation that James prefers in certainly well within the meaning of the word kibru. Perhaps I shouldn't have added the parenthetical "regions" but I was struggling to put the phrase in the context of the next line of the colophon, "www. eisenbrauns.com. Was I wrong? Its just not all that clear that I was. It is true that I failed to associate the expression with the tutelage of the Neo-Assyrain kings.

Reference:

Black, Jeremy, Andrew George and Nicholas Postgate, eds., A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000

Posted by Duane Smith at June 5, 2006 1:44 PM | Read more on Archaeology |

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Comments

You are correct on the first one. It is singular, there is no MEŠ. As to the second, we asked Bob Whiting, from the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project to assist us with the cuneiform and idiom. The epithet "of the four corners" is part of the Neo-Assyrian kings' titles.

I would say you were philologically correct, but idiomatically incorrect. How is that for a waffle? :)

James

Posted by: James at June 8, 2006 9:19 AM

James,

Thank you and I agree with your waffle. I was likely idiomatically incorrect. However, I cannot keep from thinking that "shore" in the sense of the mythological edge between the land and the primeval seas may have been the image that was intended.

Posted by: Duane at June 8, 2006 9:56 AM

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