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November 24, 2006
Filling in the Blanks
I continue to work my way through texts that contain the preposition l in formulae having the general form of a noun (sometimes implied) plus the preposition l plus a proper name or title. Aside for some cleanup, I've completed the texts from Ugarit and am now working on early Phoenician, Hebrew and Aramaic examples. I hope to post a link to a PDF file that summarizes this work some time next week.
One Ugaritic text that is as interesting for what it doesn't say as for what it does is KTU 4.216. This text has 12 lines each of which is missing one or more letters on the left side of the tablet. The first line reads
1) šb‛ . yn . l. [ ] Seven of wine to [?????]
Here is a sample of a few of the lines that follow:
2) tlt . l . ħr[šm ] Three to the Ħr[šm ](I use ħ for het)
(lines 2, 3, 4, and 8 have this form with differing numbers and names.)
5) kd . l . mlm[ ] A pitch to the Mlm[ ]
(lines 5, 6, 7, 11, and 12, have this form)
9) kdm . l . hty . [ ] Two pitchers to Hty [ ]
(lines 9, 11 and 12 have this form, the duel of the line 5 example)
What is interesting about all this is that each of these is an abbreviation for something that has the form of a number (omitted in the case of 1 or 2 [where the duel was used]) + kd[m] (sometimes singular, sometimes dual, sometimes plural) + yn + l + a proper name + whatever is broken off.
So, in translation, and using arbitrary numbers and names, the underlying form of these lines would be, "Seven pitchers of wine for the craftsmen (Ħršm)." But not a single line actually has that form. Every line is abbreviated in some way. It is clear enough from the context that each line refers to pitchers of wine but not a single line actually says this.
By the way, most, if not all, of the proper names in this text are professional guilds or, in a few cases, perhaps shrines.
How often when we look at an ancient text is there something missing and we just don't know enough to figure it out? Are some seeming ambiguities the result of missing virtual context? By "virtual context," I mean background knowledge that would be known to any native speaker at the time the text was written but is unknown to us. There is of course a danger in these kinds of questions. That danger is that a positive answer to either of them may give license to arbitrarily supply the missing "context." This temptation needs to be resisted.
Posted by Duane Smith at November 24, 2006 5:58 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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