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October 9, 2006

Getting Hung Up on a Preposition

I've been working my way through dozens of texts in Ugaritic, Byblian, Hebrew and related West Semitic languages that use a very simple formula. That formula is the proposition l meaning "to, for, or belonging to" plus a name, title or some other identifier. In a couple of cases, the object is even an animal or group of animals and once in a while a god.

So when I came across KTU 6.44, an inscription on ivory, I was well conditioned to see the same formula. The text, spread over two lines, reads l art mrrt qbr.

So with all the conditioning I saw the l art part of the text as another example of my formula. According to Astour, 5, Aruti (art) is a town in the northeast district of Ugarit. But what was I to do with mrrt qbr. mrrt as a noun means "strong or bitter" or the like and qbr as a noun means "grave" and "to bury" as a verb. But if you read it assuming they are both nouns there are quite a few problems. What does it mean? And how do you explain the syntax?

So I sent an email to Loren Fisher and told him I was stuck. He immediately offered a couple of suggestions that changed my thinking on this text. That is what a good teacher does. First, one should start by taking mrrt to be a verb rather than a noun. The root, mrr, means "to strengthen or bless." So one could translate the last two words "you bless the grave" or "you make strong the grave." Loren suggested both of these options. In this case, what does one do with the first two words? Loren had the answer to that also. Don't read l as the preposition lê, read it as the emphatic particle la/lu. So the whole text can be understood as "Oh Aruti, you have blessed the grave" or the like. And while I'm not exactly sure what this means either, I am sure it is closer to the correct understanding than my initial efforts.

For completeness, I plan to keep this example in my list of candidate formula but will note that it's really not an example of the formula when properly understood.

The lesson here is simple. Don't get hung up on a preposition or anything else.

Reference:

Astour, Michael C., "Les Frontières et les Districts du Royaume d'Ugarit," Ugarit Forschungen 13, Münster: Verlag Butzon and Bercher Keverlaer, 1981, 1-12

Posted by Duane Smith at October 9, 2006 12:11 PM | Read more on Ugarit |

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