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November 21, 2008
Friday Loanword: šulmānu
Normally I start these posts with an exciting definition of some Akkadian word. But today, I thought I'd start with a few lines from the Tale of the Poor Man of Nippur. The story is about Gimil-Ninurta, a poor and humble citizen of Nippur. I follow Gurney's, 151 - 153, translation of lines 23-40 with a few modifications of my own..
23) Gimil-Ninurta took hold of the neck of the goat,
24) and to the gate of the Mayor of Nippur he [proceeded].
25) To Tukulti-Enlil, the gatekeeper, he addressed these words:
26) "Say I wish to enter and see the Mayor."
27) The porter to his master addressed these words,
28) "Master, a citizen of Nippur is waiting at your gate
29) and as a plaintive gift (šulmānu) he has brought you a goat."
30) The Mayor was angry, (saying to) Tukulti-Enlil,
31) "Seize him, the citizen of Nippur, [and bring him inside] the gate."
32) The gatekeeper . . . . .
33) and Gimil-Ninurta in gladness of heart [entered the presence] of the Mayor.
34) When Gimil-Ninurta entered the presence of the Mayor
35) [in] his left hand he grasped the neck of his goat,
36) while with his right hand he greeted the Mayor.
37) "May Enlil and the city of Nippur bless the Mayor.
38) May Adad and Nusku cause him to prosper greatly."
39) The Mayor spoke thus to the citizen of Nippur:
40) "What do you mean by this outrage, that you are bring me a bribe?"
I may post on the whole story sometime. It is a wonderful story. Its use and reuse in schools along with the colophon on the most complete tablet speak quite directly to issues of scribal training and, when taken with many other such texts, it informs the question of the origin of such stories. But for now, let's take a closer look at a couple of things in the excerpt. Line 29 reads in Akkadian,
ù(?) ki šul-man ṣa[ḫri] ú-bil-ka enza
and as a plaintive gift (šulmānu) he has brought you a goat
Gurney, 158, tells us, "šulmānu is the regular term for a gift offered to a person in high position for the purpose of soliciting his favour. The practice was common, and the porter immediately assumes that this is the purpose of Gimil-Ninurta's visit. [references omitted]" The mayor also understands the reason for the gift and replies using the Akkadian kadrû. kadrû is itself a loanword from Sumerian. It can mean "gift," "offering" and here as in a great many contexts "bribe." See CAD K, 32.
But šulmānu need not be a bribe. It is morally ambiguous. See CAD Š3, 244. At Ugarit and Amarna, šulmānu even means "health" although, at least at Ugarit, it can also mean "gift," its most common meaning elsewhere. And I imagine that the underlying connotation of the word is that thing which makes one complete. In our context the expression šulmān ṣaḫri, that I translate "plaintive gift," tends to give šulmānu a somewhat, if not completely, negative connotation which the mayor understands as a bribe, a kadrû.
Mankowski, 145, notes the moral ambiguity between gift and bribe, an ambiguity that he sees reflected in Hebrew, שַׁלְמֹן also.
With this background, let's turn to the only place in the Hebrew Bible where שַׁלְמֹן occurs, Isaiah 1:23a.
Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves.
Everyone loves a bribe and chases after gifts (שַׁלְמֹנִים).
The root of both Akkadian šulmānu and Hebrew שַׁלְמֹן is, of course, √šml, meaning "be well" or the like. Both Akkadian and Hebrew (and other Semitic languages) have many cognates on this root. But there is little question that שַׁלְמֹן is a loan into Hebrew from the Akkadian rather than simply a cognate word.
Mankowski, 145-146, explains the Hebrew form as follows,
The sibilant correspondence Akk. š ~ BH š points to a borrowing from Babylonian rather than Assyrian, indicating multiple sources of Mesopotamian influence during the period. The pataḥ corresponding to Akk. u in a closed unstressed syllable is paralleled in BH ṭapsar (< ṭupšarru) and ṣabbim (<ṣubbu). The ō is possibly the result of assimilation to BH nouns in ון. [references omitted]
References
Mankowski, Paul V., Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew, Harvard Semitic Studies, 47, Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2000
Posted by Duane Smith at November 21, 2008 2:33 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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