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November 15, 2008
Friday Loanword (On Saturday): šaršerru
Akkadian šaršerru has a range of meanings all revolving around a red clay or paste and the color there of. In many contexts, it stands for a pigment or paint that is used on a person's face or the face of a figurine. It can also be a pharmaceutical ingredient and ingredient in glass making. See CAD Š2, 124. The origin of the Akkadian word is unknown.
Now look at the word שָׁשַֽׁר in Jeremiah 22:14 and Ezekiel 23:14. I follow the NRSV with an obvious twist.
Jeremiah 22:14: . . . who says, "I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms" and who cut out windows for it and paneling it with cedar, and painting it in/with/by שָׁשַׁר.
Ezekiel 23:14-15: But she carried her whoring further; she saw male figures carved on the wall, images of the Chaldeans portrayed in/with/by שָׁשַׁר, with belts around their waists, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them looking like officers - a picture of Babylonians whose native land is Chaldea.
שָׁשַׁר is almost certainly a loanword from Akkadian šaršerru but can we identify the dialect.
Neo-Assyrian usually writes the word šaššerru following a common assimilation of liquids. But Mankowski, 149, suggests, correctly I think, that the actual borrowing into Biblical Hebrew came from Babylonian. He cites the reference to the Babylonians in Ezekiel 23:14 and the use of שּׁ for Akkadian š. If šaršerru had a Semitic origin (its not at all certain that it does) and the ProtoSemitic consonant(s) was(were) ś (and there's not real reason to think that), then we would expect š to become שׂ on Hebrew if it were a loan from Assyrian. This second argument is weaker but still valid if all the ifs come true. Mankowski, 149, n. 554, is correct that the Northwest Semitic resistance to the qvttvll- formation influenced the Hebrew reflex strongly.
So what does the word mean in Hebrew. As Mankowski, 149, says,
But neither the biblical contexts (in either case, the painting or the decorating of the interior surface) nor the versional equivalents (for Jeremiah, בַּשָּׁשַׁר = LXX εν μίλτω, Vulg. sinopide; for Ezekiel, εν γραφίδι, Vulg. coloribus) make it clear whether the word represented a color, a coloring agent, or a technique of decoration characteristic of a particular agent.
The question, "Does it mean the color (NRSV, "vermilion") or the red clay itself or 'to color red'?" reminds open.
References:
Posted by Duane Smith at November 15, 2008 1:18 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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