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January 10, 2007

Send Them Tomorrow

Tanaach letter TT 5 ends with these words:

13) uš-še-ra-šu ˹nu˺             Send them (all) to me
14) u4-mi ma-ḫa-ri              tomorrow
15) a-na URU ma-gi-id-/da   to Megiddo.

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The body of the letter is little more than a list of requests for chariots, horses, captives and tribute that a certain Amanhatpa wants sent from Tanaach to Megiddo. Two things in line 14 struck me. First, the word maḫari is not an Akkadian word but more likely a 15th century BCE Canaanite (West Semitic) word. I think the most common expression for "tomorrow" in Akkadian is urri (See AHw, 1432). However, urru can simply mean day as in the common Amarna expression "day and night." One can see maḫari reflected in the Biblical Hebrew word מחר, "tomorrow."

Second, but more than the word, the expression ûmi maḫari can be seen in the Hebrew expression יום מחר that also means "tomorrow." See Genesis 30:33, Proverbs 27:1 and Isaiah 56:12. Many English translations translate the expression "later" or "in time to come" in Genesis 30:33. The -i endings in both ûmi and maḫari is likely adverbial rather than genitive. See Rainey, III, 8. Interestingly, Halloran's 1999 Sumerian Lexicon has the following entry: u4-ì-li, meaning "tomorrow." of which he says, "'day' + Akkadian elûm, 'to come up' and eli, 'above, beyond'." Note the u4 is the first sign in u4-mi in TT 5:14 and is a common ideogram for Akkadian ûmu, "day." In fact I am tempted to see the MI sign as a phonetic determinative following U4 (i.e. U4mi). Of course, it would still likely be read ûmi in Akkadian but with the West Semitic word for "yesterday" one wonders if it was read yōmi or the like. Perhaps ûmi maḫari and יום מחר are both the (separate?) result of false analogy with Akkadian ûmi eli.

Why do these kinds of parallels so often occur in relatively late texts in the Hebrew Bible? Sure, I'm not certain that Genesis 30:33 is late but I am fairly certain that the other two examples are. There could be several reasons for parallels between Bronze age Akkadian and exilic/post exilic Hebrew texts. The analogy I mentioned above is one such possibility. But one should never forget what Daniel Dennett might call a "good trick." If something works well in one historical context, it is likely to be reinvented in another and no direct relationship need be posited.

Update: January 11, 2007
Changed "yesterday" to "tomorrow" at end of the paragraph beginning, "The body of the letter . . ."

References:

Halloran, John A. Sumerian Lexicon, Version 3.0, Online, Los Angeles, California, 1999

Rainey, Anson F., Canaanite in the Amarna Tablets: A Linguistic Analysis of the Mixed Dialect Used by the Scribe from Canaan, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996 (4 volumes)

von Soden, Wolfram, Akkadishes Handwörterbuch, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1965

Posted by Duane Smith at January 10, 2007 10:35 AM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |

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Comments

where does machar mean yesterday?

Posted by: david at January 11, 2007 7:11 PM

David,

Oops! It doesn't mean "yesterday" anywhere that I know of. I've fixed it in the body of the post. Thanks.

Posted by: Duane at January 11, 2007 7:22 PM

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