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June 10, 2007
The Scribe that Perhaps Could Add After All
But what was he adding?
The other day Pavel Čech of Charles University in Prague somehow stumbled upon my post "A Little A and the Scribe that Couldn't Add." I wrote the post in response to one by Simon Holloway at דבר אכד. Pavel was kind enough to send me the email reproduced below.
Dear Duane,I just came across your catchy webpage with the "Scribe that Couldn't Add". My suggestion is that we count only the first seven hsnm, not the other in lines 6 and 8. Then we shall get the correct number. I do not think that KTU 1.14 is a scribal exercise. At least, it was written by the great Ilimilku! Sometimes he got tired and jumped to other line. Looking at the photo of KTU 1.14 IV 50, it seems to me that he mistakenly began to write line 51, after four letters or so recognized his mistake and tried to do the best of it. It is not very probable that there is any "A".
Yours
Pavel Cech, Prague
I've taken a closer look at KTU 4.173, the subject of the beginning of Pavel's note and my earlier post. Pavel's suggestion is mathematically correct. He means that we should only count the 7 hsnm mentioned in line l and not those mentioned in lines 6 and 8. But what are we to make of the second half of line 6? I guess we could take the whole line as reading "10 mrum along with 7 hsnm." But the w doesn't appear to mean this in line 1. Lines 7 and 8 are not separated from each other as are the other lines in the rest of this text (excepting of course the last two lines, the total). So, perhaps lines 7 and 8 should be taken as a single unit. But, how are they related?
7) 90 mḏrģlm
8) 24 ḫsnm
[If you see squares, rectangles or something else that is incorrect please install the Charis SIL font.]
Perhaps we are to understand this as 90 mḏrģlm along with 24 ḫsnm and only count the 90 mḏrģlm. Or perhaps our scribe simply skipped the end of line 6 and line 8 when he calculated his total? As I said in the previous post and still believe, "Administrative texts in particular often rely on various short cuts and abbreviated expressions that make them hard to understand."
As to Pavel's point that the Keret text, KTU 1.14, is not a training exercise: The comment to which he was reacting was speculative at best. I will note that while Ilimilku was indeed a great and famous scribe, he was a student at some time. I don't think I used KTU 1.14 as an example of a training exercise in my more formal discussions of scribal schools. I believe Pavel is correct in his understand of KTU 1.14 IV:50.
In a second email giving me permission to use the email quoted above, Pavel said, "Of course you can post my mail - I just though the discussion on your blog about this theme was over." To which I reply, "The discussion of Ugaritic texts is never over!" In his second email, he also suggested I look at the work of Marjo Korpel on Ilimilku. I may comment on Korpel's work in a latter post (after I read it). At least one of Korpel's papers on Ilimilku is in Intertextuality in Ugarit and Israel edited by Johannes C. de Moor. Why don't I own this book? Brill. Need I say more?
Posted by Duane Smith at June 10, 2007 6:17 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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