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September 5, 2008
Friday Loanword: malāḫu
Akkadian malāḫu is a well attested word meaning "sailor" or "boatman" It is itself a loan into Akkadian from Sumerian MÁ-LAḪ4, "boat-bringers(?)." The Akkadian word is used to mean "sailor" from the Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian times on. The Akkadian from Ugarit (RS 20.212:22') even uses it. Although I hasten to add that, that fact has no direct bearing on the discussion that follows.
Biblical Hebrew employs this word as a loan four times: once in Jonah and three times in Ezekiel.
Jonah 1:5a
Then the sailors were afraid, and each cried to his god.
Ezek 27:9
The elders of Gebal and its artisans were within you, chalking your seams. All ships of the sea with their sailors were within you to barter for your wares.
Ezek 27:27
Your riches, your wares, your merchandise, your sailors, and your pilots, your caulkers, your dealers in merchandise, and all your soldiers within you, sink into the heart of the seas on the day of your ruin.
Ezek 27:29
And down from their ships come all that handle the oar. The sailors and all the pilots of the sea stand on the shore . . .
While there can be little doubt that מַלָּח is a loanword from Akkadian malāḫu. But there are some issues. Is this a direct loan from Akkadian or is there an Aramaic intermediary? And how does one explain the gemination of the lamed? Here's what Mankowski, 93 tells us,
While the gemination of the second root corresponding to a single second root consonant in Akkadian is an indication of Aramaicization, it is also explicable as an assimilation to the common NWS qattal noun pattern (with secondary tonic lengthening, >qattāl) used for professionals. Accordingly מַלָּח can be regarded as an independent Hebrew borrowing. [references omitted]
On this understanding, Aramaic מַלָּח would be an independent borrowing. I'm not sure I find the explanation completely satisfying. Perhaps the most important word in the above quotation from Mankowski is can; not that I think his suggestion necessarily wrong. Rather, I think it adds an additional complexity that is not necessary. Wagner, 76, thought that the word came into Hebrew from Akkadian via Aramaic.
By the way, both the Sumerian original and the Akkadian spelling renders the old idea that both the Akkadian and the Hebrew came from proto-Semitic root *mlḥ, "salt," very unlikely. Perhaps this idea came from the Arabic spelling, مللح, but the Arabic spelling with the double lām is certainly the result of مللح being itself a loanword from Hebrew or Aramaic. Fraenkel, 221, thought the Arabic is from Aramaic and, for what it is worth, so do I.
References:
Mankowski, Paul V., Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew, Harvard Semitic Studies, 47, Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2000
Wagner, Max., Die lexikalischen und grammatikalischen Aramaismen im alttestamentlichen Hebräisch, Berlin: Töpelmann, 1966
Posted by Duane Smith at September 5, 2008 7:34 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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Comments
Isn't it more likely that Hebrew would borrow a word relating to the sea from a local coastal dialect such as Phoenecian then from Akkadian or even Aramaic (whatever the ultimate source might be?)Is the word attested in Phoenecian?
Posted by: david at September 8, 2008 10:28 AM
As far as I know, the root מלח is unattested in Phoenician or Punic with the meaning sailor or the like. It does mean "salt" in Phoenician and Punic as well as many other Semitic languages. The actual Phoenician and Punic corpus is rather small and somewhat specialized, and, while there is no doubt that they were sailors, I can't find an equivalent word for sailor. Perhaps I need to look harder. (If anyone knows what it was, I'd like to know.) They certainly had one, but due to the contingencies of discovery, I'm not sure anyone knows what it was. I'd would be very careful with any etymology for "sailor" based on "salt." It should be remembered that the Mesopotamians sailed not only the Tigris and the Euphrates but also the Persian Gulf and likely well beyond. The nearly certain Sumerian origin of the word leaves little doubt that it came into Hebrew, directly or indirectly, by way of Akkadian. Whether the Akkadian channel was Babylonian or Assyrian is impossible to tell in the case of this loanword. The rather late nature of the Hebrew texts where the word appears certainly provides opportunity of a loan from either neo-Babylonian or neo-Assyrian. But, I should noted that one nearly certain Akkadian loanword occurs in pre-exilic epigraphic Hebrew (’škr). If there is one, more than one is likely. I plan a post on this in the next couple of weeks.
Posted by: Duane at September 8, 2008 4:34 PM
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