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December 5, 2006

lb‛lt in the Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions

The other day I mentioned that I was looking at instances of the phrase lb‛lt in the Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions. At that time, I said there were seven examples. On further study, I now think there are only four possible examples and here they are.

Sinai 345 reads:

Right side of sphinx base: m’hb‛l[t]
"Beloved of Ba‛alat"

Left side of sphinx base: n(?)d(?)b(?)ħ(?)lb‛lt
"We sacrifice(?) to Ba‛alat"
(Note: I use ħ for het)

I follow Sass, 14, who supports a pre-Albrightian interpretation, for the right side of the sphinx. Sass', 15, reading of the left side follows Albright, 16, from whom I adopted, with modification, the translation. The use of the l in this text is not really quite the same as its use in ownership or transfer contexts except that there is some sense that a sacrifice is literally given to the goddess. See the left hand line of Sinai 346 below.

Sinai 346 left hand horizontal line is one of three lines on a statuette. It reads:

‛ln[‛m]x(x?)mtlb‛lt
"on behalf of Nu‛mu, a ??? for Ba‛alat"

The restoration of n‛m is all but assured by the same phrase beginning the vertical column on the right of the statuette. Albright, 17, reads mt(n), "gift," where Sass, 14, reads x(x?)mt. Sass does not offer a translation. Several possibilities, none of them very compelling, for resorting the word ending(?) in mt present themselves. bhmt is some kind of cattle. ħmt are bottles. rrmt is an Egyptian loanword in Ugaritic for some kind of small fruit. ‛lmt, eternity just doesn't make any sense in this context. šmt is some kind of stone. Like ‛lmt, thmt, "deeps," doesn't make any sense. dmt may be some kind of building. The word can be seen in Ugaritic text KTU 2.31:46. The broken line reads ħln . d b dmt . um . ilm, "a window that is in the dmt of the mother of the gods." The only thing that recommends this understanding is the association with the mother of the gods. Is Hathor/Ba‛alat the "mother" of the gods at Serabit el-Khadem? Another option might be to read ksmt and understand it as some kind of grain offering. Again, I turn to an Ugaritic texts, this time KTU 1.17: I 31; II 4 and II 21 from the Aqhat legend. The first of these reads, [k]šb‛ . yn . spu . ksmh . bt . b‛l, "When he was drunk (with) wine, he ate his ksm of (in/for?) the house of Ba'al." The other cited passages all reference ksmh/k/y bt b‛l. KTY 1.17: II 4 may be in the imperative. In all three passages ksmx bt b‛l is in parallel with mntx bt il, "(his/your/my) portion(?) of the house of El. Notice that although many translators assume it, the preposition b, "in," is missing before bt b‛l and bt il which raises the question of exactly what the genitive(?) implies. One might think in terms of assimilation but the preposition b does not appear to assimilate into any following letter, including the letter b. On the spelling ksmt see Hebrew כסמת "smelt." Nothing is certain although I think the readable signs do not support Albright's reading. So what do I think the reading with the highest probability of being correct is? The highest probability reading is something else. What? I do not know. Oh yeah, as Sass, 15, notes, "Nu‛mu" may not be a proper name.

Sinai 347 and 347a are inscriptions found on two busts found in the Hathor temple. 345 reads tnt and 347a reads lb[ which is usually restored lb[‛lt]. Sass, 15, following Albright, 17, prefers to read them together as "gift / to Ba‛alat. Cross, 12, n. 27, thinks this reading unlikely because he believes that the n would be assimilated into the t and that "gift" is mtn in Sinai 346 and 363. In both of these cases, mtn is a reconstruction by Albright that are far from certain and in the case of 346, likely wrong. The example of assimilation of the n in 353 is doubtful because of the difficulty of the reading and Sass, 16, n. 16, points to two (349 and 357) and possibly three (374) occasions where it does not assimilate into the following t.

Sinai 349 is a rock inscription of some seven lines of which only the first three are readable by any definition. Albright, 18, restored these three lines and translated them as follows:

’nt dt‛
Thou, O offerer,

rb nqbnm t[‛]
(or) chief miner, an offering

‛rkm lb[‛lt]
prepare for Ba'alat.

Of this Sass, 18, says, "Albright's decipherment is possible for most of lines 1-3." Albright took ‛rkm to be a verb in the imperative with enclitic m. While I have nothing better to suggest, I would note that in the Ba'al cycle from Ugaritic (KTU 1.4 IV:11), nqbnm is in parallel with gpnm where both seem to be some kind of gold and silver trappings for an ass. Compare nqbny in KTU 1:19 II:5 (Aqhat). Albright, of course, sees the root of the Hebrew verb נקב, "pierce," reflected in this word. The physical context is also supportive of this word meaning "miner" or the like. If Albright is correct, this usage is closer to that seen in Sinai 345 than in the other examples.

If, and this is a big if, the interpretations given above are accepted, none of the examples of lb‛lt are really close parallels to what I have called elsewhere the preposition of ownership or transfer. However, it seems to me that, in an offering, there is a kind of transfer of ownership of the sacrifice from "offerer" to the god(ess). From a grammatical point of view, this seems true whether the predicate is a verbal phrase (Sinai 345 and 349) or a nominal expression (Sinai 346 and 347/347a).

A question: I have seen several references to a book by Biggs and Dijkstra apparently entitled Corpus of Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions. It was promised in the 1989 timeframe but I cannot find any reference to it or any library or bookstore that has a copy. Any ideas?

Update: December 6, 2006
Fixed stupid errors

References:

Posted by Duane Smith at December 5, 2006 7:53 PM | Read more on Archaeology |

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