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April 12, 2008
Could He Have Been All That Certain?
I've been working on RS 1975.2, the last of the "lost" Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets. Michael Astour had responsibility for the publication of this large fragment of a letter written in Akkadian. The way I normally work on such things is to study the best representation of the tablet I can find and try to figure it out on my own. In this case, I have a very good cast and a good set of photographs. I was doing more or less okay until I reached line 5 and then things seemed to disintegrate. I was quite sure that the first sign was LÚ and despite the rather strange hole in the tablet, the second sign was very likely URU (the determinative for the name of a city). So I knew a place name almost certainly followed. Now take a look at this line from the photograph.
The picture is about two times scale. The cast, which naturally is the same size as tablet, has much better resolution. I will point out that the text of the tablet is quite readable from the picture in many other places. I'll let you see the whole tablet in a couple of days.
Can anyone make out the place name? By the way, I was fairly sure the last sign was a NA but, truthfully, several other possibilities came to mind. So I decided to cheat and see how Astour read the line. Here is his reading, LÚ URUDu-˹un˺-na, "man of the city of Dunna." Only the UN sign gave him any trouble at all. And here is what he said about this place, "A city called Dunna is so far unattested in Syria." He did mention that "toponyms composed with Dunnu are known in Mesopotamia" and that there is a "homonymous Anatolian city on the northern slope of the Taurus, near the Cilician gates, later known as Tuna or Tunni to the Assyrians." To be sure he didn't commit himself to any known location and we certainly don't know all the names of every city in Bronze Age Syria. But I must say, I find this reading more than a little hard to support on the basis of what I can see on the cast or the photograph and Astour's drawing of the line doesn't inspire much confidence either.
I admit that Astour's drawing tends to support his reading but I can't see that the cast or the photograph support his drawing exactly, at least with regard to the third and fourth signs. Possibility the actual tablet was more readable than the cast; but it was not much more readable. The cast is extremely good.
I have another idea of how to read this line. My reading is also extremely problematic but at least it reflects an otherwise known city in Syria, a city that is also associated, by way of another tablet, with someone called Agi-Teššub. The tablet that I'm working on, RS 1975.2, reads in lines 4 and 5, "Now, Agi-Teššub, my messenger, a man of (the name of some almost impossible to read city)." That other text, RS 19.78:11-12, reads, Agi-Teššub LÚ URUar-ma-na, "Agi-Teššub a man of Armana." Guess what I think line 5 of RS 1975.2 reads. Now, Astour knew about RS 19.78. He even mentioned it in connection with Agi-Teššub's name. Because of this, I'm still trying to convince myself that the partially readable signs in line 5 of RS 1975.2 are at least consistent with a reading of Armana and its not so clear that they are. Reading ÁR rather than AR helps some but this use of the ÁR (UB if you prefer) sign is not common and RS 19.78 does not use it. Likewise, MÁ might be a closer match than MA but this reading suffers even more from the same problems as reading ÁR. The risk of eisegesis is very high here. Personal names and place names do often show uncommon ways of writing. Note the use of MÁ, and a somewhat unusual form of MÁ at that, in the spelling of King Niqmaddu's name on one of his seals and the disputed use of ÁR for /ar/ in RS 20.176:27. But two strange signs in a single name? One other thing, I also disagree with Astour's reading of what I translate "my messenger" but that really doesn't impact the reading of the place name in any substantive way. And I think I'm on far safer ground in the case of "my messenger."
Now, I'm not picking of Astour. Well, maybe a little. Aside from a couple of small differences, I think he did a remarkable job on this very difficult tablet. I'm just wondering at the source of his confidence in reading line 5 the way he did. Perhaps he wasn't all that confident.
I'll post the full text, translation and notes on this text in a few days. I'll give references then also. This post is more of a rant than a serious attempt to understand the text.
Posted by Duane Smith at April 12, 2008 3:31 PM | Read more on Akkadian |
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