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December 7, 2006

Ša in Labels, One More Time

The other day I wrote a post that discussed a couple of labels in Akkadian from Ugarit. I noted that some of them used "ša" meaning "of" or "from" and others simply used the genitive. I speculated that the two usages meant different things. Well, while looking for something else (how often this happens), I ran across a paper by Sass on one of his abnormal interests, inscribed arrowheads. He looks at twelve such arrowheads with Akkadian inscriptions and compares them with roughly contemporaneous inscribed Phoenician arrowhead.

A typical example of arrowhead with an Akkadian inscription reads,

ša kaššu-nādin-ahhē šar kiššati
"belonging to Kashshu-nakin-ahhe, king of the world"

I use Sass's translation but, as will be seen, it may not be exactly right.

but a few other inscriptions simply read

rīmūt-ili / apil šarri
"Rimut-ili, son of the king"

Sass, 354, notes that Calmeyer makes a distinction between these two types of arrowhead inscriptions, those that begin with ša and those that don't. Calmeyer claimed that those without the ša indicate ownership and those with the ša are "dedicatory." Sass says, "As for the function of the inscribed arrowheads, he (Calmeyer) suggested that they were presented to Iranian notables by Babylonian emissaries, usually in the name of the king." Sass goes on to say, "There is no doubt that inscriptions with the names of Babylonian kings on objects that were found in western Iran do not signify ownership."

While I haven't had a chance to look at Calmeyer's book, what Sass tells us about his view may apply to the much earlier labels from Ugarit. In my previous post I wrote,

Notice that RS 15.154 uses ša in a similar way as seen in RS 17.545 and RS 19.75. But the meaning is now more "which belongs to." But RS 22.31 uses the genitive without any preposition or other particle. Does this mean something different? Perhaps the case with the relative pronoun means ownership of something that can be given to someone else, while the case with the proposition means new ownership, something just acquired.

In the light of Calmeyer's work, perhaps this should be refined. In the cases of Akkadian labels from Ugarit that use ša, we should likely read "from." Those that only use the genitive likely indicate ownership.

References:

Posted by Duane Smith at December 7, 2006 2:55 PM | Read more on Ugarit |

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