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August 1, 2007

Back With My Sick Horse

Below is the next section of KTU 1.85, the veterinary text I've been playing with. My translation and notes reflect the "new interpretation" that I referred to in a previous post. If you are wondering where to find this "new interpretation" look at the Ugaritic word qṭ in the transliteration and the word "cut" in my translation.

18) w . k .yraš . śśw . št . bln . qṭ
19) ydk . w . yṣ[q]. b . aph

And when a horse gets mange (?), one crushes a measure of cut (?) mandrgora (?), and pours it into its nose.

Again in this section, we are faced with more major problems at crucial places. Not the least of these problems is the symptom: yraš. Want can it mean? Pardee, 62-63, sees yraš as a verb based on riš, "head." He suggests two possibilities: a problem of movement of the head, head thrashing, or a malady of the head itself. Citing classical hippiatric texts, he favors the latter. Cohen and Sivan, 32-33, associate the verb with Akkadian rāšānu, a skin disease, perhaps mange (CAD, B, 314). See AHw 960, "eine Hautkrankheit (a skin illness)". But in their formal translation, they, 10, leave the word untranslated. The most common way of writing rāšānu syllabically is ra-šá-nu or ra-šá- a- nu but one medical text (see CAD, B, 314) reads, šumma amēlu qaqqassu ra-'- šá-nu [DIB]-it, "if rāšānu takes hold of a man's head . . ." For the uninitiated, qaqqassu in this passage means "his head or upper body." This "spelling" supports an aleph as the second consonant in the noun rāšānu and the context supports the word as naming some ailment of the head. I wonder if rāšānu the ailment is a derivative from rēšu meaning head. If "acquire mange" is the correct meaning of yraš the disease, when present in humans, a similar condition, demodicidosis, is often seen on the face. As is usually the case with this text, one cannot be dogmatic.

The medications and preparation parts tell us to crush a measure of bln . qṭ. Perhaps you are interested in what that might be. So am I! In keeping with the common scheme of this text, bln is most likely some kind of plant and qṭ modifies it in some way. Both Cohen and Sivan, 33-34 and Pardee, 63-64, follow Dietrich, Loretz and Sanmartin, 39, in associating bln with Akkadian pillû/billû. Cohen and Sivan note the form ^GIŠpil/bil-la-nu (apud AHw, 863) in a neo-Babylonian medical text. Akkadian texts prescribe "male" pillu root for everything from toothache to a sore anis (CAD P, 377). It is not clear what the word means but Mandragora officinarum, (Mandrake) is among the more common suggestions. "Eggplant" is among the not so common suggestions.

So all that remains is to deal with qṭ. Pardee, 64, tentatively suggests that it is a place name, the place where this kind of bln is to be found. Cohen and Sivan, 34-35, discuss various possibilities but leave the issue open other than suggesting that it defines the quality of the bln. Aistleitner, 274, suggests that qṭ is from the root *qṭṭ and translates it "zerkleinern (pulverize)." As Cohen and Sivan, 34, point out, this translation is semantically impossible. The word must be a noun or an adjective. But the etymology is possible. Aistleitner himself cites Aramaic קטט, "to cut or diminish" and Arabic قطط. But see also قط "cut" (Lane, I, 1539ff) where the word is used in contexts like getting a haircut. I see qṭ in KTU 1.85:18 as a adjective build on a so far unattested Ugaritic verb or as a loan from some other Northwest Semitic language. Of course, we are left with the problem of understanding the expression bln . qṭ even if we now have a better understanding of the individual words. What exactly is "cut mandrgora?" I'm not sure. Perhaps it means the foliage as opposed to the root. Akkadian uses artu (PA) which means "cutting" for the branches and foliage. Note the phrase, "foliage (PA) of a 'male (NITÁ)' pillû (GIŠ.NAM.TAR) [PA GIŠ.NAM.TAR.NITÁ] (CAD P, 377)". I had hoped to find additional evidence to support reading qṭ in KTU 1.85:18 as "cut." If it is out there, I didn't find it. I do hope that the cognate, particularly Arabic, usages and the Akkadian use of artu at least makes my suggestion a plausible candidate for understanding this word.

Two other occurrences of something that looks like our qṭ might be instructive if they didn't have their own set of problems. First, the letter string qṭ also appears in KTU 4.166:4-5. While there are problems with the reading, ḫmš . midpt . qṭ is most likely. KTU 4.166 is some kind of an administrative text. So what does it mean? Simply saying, "5 midpt . qṭ" doesn't seem too helpful. But I can't figure out what midpt means, (even if broken into two words) and it's not clear that qṭ matches number and gender in the way one would expect of an adjective. So here, we may be dealing with a place name in this case just as Pardee suggested for qṭ in KTU 1.85:18. Second, one might want to compare our qṭ with קָט in Ezekiel 16:47. Yesterday I asked for help with this word as it is found in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. Jim West (thanks!) took a shot at it. And Chris Heard looked at it closely and through in the towel. The two-word expression reads, כִּמְעַט קָט and it is usually "corrected" in one of two ways: 1) קָט is emended to read קטן or the like or 2) קָט is ignored as an example of a common scribal error (dittography). Either way, it is taken, correctly I think, to mean something like, "within little (time)" if קָט is ignored or "within a very little (time)" if it is emended to קטן or the like. I take little stock in the fact that there does not appear to be a direct translation of קָט in the LXX. It is possible that we should take the text as is and understand קָט to mean "cut short" in a temporal sense modifying מעט and meaning something like "within a short little (time.)" On the one hand, this has the merit of saving the text. Something I was taught to try to do. On the other hand, it may be forcing the text beyond reasonable limits. Something I was taught to avoid. Chris Heard does make an important point when he says, "Not so sure why you're against emendation, since the verse is textually messy in other respects."

My suggestion for Exekiel 16:47 is only that. I'm not sure I'd assign a probability of even 25% to it. I might go as high as 49.99999999% probability for my understanding of qṭ in KTU 1.85:18.

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Posted by Duane Smith at August 1, 2007 7:04 PM | Read more on Ugarit |

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