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March 17, 2008
What Is Going On Here?
KTU 6.62, an inscription on a broken lion head mug from Ugarit, reads,
bn agpṯr
pn arw d šʿly nrn l ršp gn
Son of Agapsharri
Head (face) of a lion that Nūrānu lifted up for Rashaph Guni (of the garden?)
[If you see squares, rectangles or something else that doesn't look right, please install the Charis SIL font.]
But I think (and so do a few others) that it should have read,
pn arw d šʿly nrn bn agpṯr l ršp gn
Head of a lion that Nūrānu son of Agapsharri lifted up for Rashaph Guni
There was certainly more than one person called Nūrānu at Ugarit. KTU 4.753:3, 20 lists two different people by that name. This name also occurs several times in the Akkadian texts from Ugarit. That's how we know how to vocalize it. The administrative text KTU 4.714:2 lists a certain bn agpṯr. Agapsharri is a Hurrian name. As far as I can find, a nrn bn agpṯr is otherwise unknown. At least that "full name" is unknown. Two Mycenaenan rhyta were also found in the same "house" at Ugarit.
Did whoever inscribed the mug before it was fired make a mistake and correct it by adding bn agpṯr above the main part of the inscription? Why didn't he or she just rub it out and rewrite the whole thing? A careful look at a picture shows a scribe line above the main part of the inscription on which bn agpṯr seems to sort of rest. What is this? (I haven't included the picture in this post because I'm somewhat concerned about copyright issues and just posting some small section of it wouldn't be very helpful. The best picture I know of can be found on Bordreuil and Pardee's CD Rom) Is bn agpṯr in a different hand than the rest of the inscription? There doesn't appear to be any reason to think so; the a, n and r, the only letters that the two lines share, are very similar.
Now here is my real question: Did Nūrānu son of Agapsharri or just Nūrānu write this inscription himself? On the assumption that at least in later times a person making a vow wrote that vow in his or her own hand, then an "amateur" may have written these words. Is this possible as early as the 13th or14th century BCE at Ugarit? While I am far from an expert, I see nothing in the morphology of the letters to makes me think that anyone other than a professional scribe inscribed them. On the other hand, the line of the main text is not smooth and even as it works its way round the curvature of the mug. This line is offset upwards about a third of a character height after d and before the š in šʿly. Hmmm.
Reference
Posted by Duane Smith at March 17, 2008 8:15 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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Comments
"I haven't included the picture in this post because I'm somewhat concerned about copyright issues and just posting some small section of it wouldn't be very helpful."
[Start of angry social commentary.] Thanks for confirming how copyright stands in the way of the public learning about their own history ;) I can rest easy tonight knowing that the copyright of some stuffy academic somewhere is maintained at the expense of the people's inherent right to knowledge. Grumble, grumble! [End of angry social commentary.]
As for unevenness, I don't know much about Ugaritic inscriptions but I notice that Etruscan inscriptions are often uneven, often jarringly so to my eyes. Perhaps I should start boning up on the extent of Etruscan literacy and its implications. Hmmm.
Posted by: Glen Gordon at March 18, 2008 10:48 PM
Many Etruscan inscriptions are funerary or votive; hence, not by professional scribes. And, yes, they are usually uneven... particularly on stone. The writing surface can make someone quite literate, but unused to writing on stone, appear to be a semi-literate.
On the other hand, the Pyrgi lamellae were written by a professional scribe and carved by a professional leaf carver, so was the Tabula Cortonensis. Very even writing. Likewise some really beautifully executed inscriptions that follow curves on bowls and on draping on statuary and on the backs of intricately chased mirrors are clearly by professinals.
So, we are once again back to the differences between the writing of a professional and the writing of literate and perhaps semi-literates.
Actually, we can see these differences in every language and script system... even Runic.
Rochelle
Posted by: rochelle altman at March 19, 2008 12:56 AM
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