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December 12, 2008
Friday Culture Word: reed > canon
This post relies on a post I wrote last year on etymology of the word "canon." That post was a reaction to something Claude Mariottini said.
qn(h) is the common Semitic word/root for "reed." It not only appears in Biblical Hebrew as קנה but also in Ugaritic (qn), Akkadian (qunû), Aramaic (קנה), Ethiopic and Arabic (قنا). It is likely a loanword into the Semitic family from Sumerian GI.NA, "reeds." But in both Hebrew and Akkadian it could also stand for a measuring instrument and an exact measure.
The most common meaning of Hebrew קנה is "reed" but in Ezekiel 40:5, for example, it clearly means a unit of measure, six cubits (~2.5 m) to be exact. One of the more humorous examples of this usage of Akkadian qunû, is qa-na-am [mindassu] ul idēma, "I took a measuring rod, but I did not know its length (Sumer 7, 39 No. 7:2; See CAD Q, 89-90, for this and other examples.)." But, like the Hebrew equivalent, in both Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian it could be an exact, known, measurement, generally six cubits. GI also meant both "reed" and 6 cubits in Sumerian.
If this were all there was to it, one would likely think that Semitic qn(h) was a cognate word/root with a likely Sumerian origin. One might wonder about the rather specific meaning of 6 cubits in both Hebrew and Akkadian but one could, and perhaps should, understand this meaning in Hebrew as a borrowing from Akkadian usage to Hebrew usage. But there are two additional factors that indicate that we are likely dealing with a rather wide spread culture word.
First, Greek has a word of similar pronunciation and meaning and not in just any old Greek, Homer's Ionic Greek. That word is imbedded in the following from the Iliad 13:407, δύω κανόνεσσ' αραρυιαν, "fitted with two staves," parts of Idomeneus' shield. And see also κάνeoν, meaning a basket of reed or cane, in, for example, Iliad 9:217. On this usage compare Akkadian ša GI.NUN.ME.TAD iššûnim, "who brought reeds for weaving grain baskets (CAD Q, 88)." The Greek form closest to the Semitic forms is κάννα meaning "reed" and sometimes "reed mat." We'll see this second meaning later in yet another language. In certain derived Greek forms, it can also have metaphorical uses like those that we see in some Semitic instantiations. Euripides, Hecuba, 602, uses the Greek word κανών metaphorically to mean "rule, standard" and Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, 1105a3, uses κανονίας, to mean "standards" that guide our lives.
Second, as Loren Fisher noted in a comment to my earlier post, there is Egyptian, ḳn meaning "reed mat." Remember Greek κάννα meaning "reed mat."
We have here a set of words with overlapping usages that spans not only many ancient Semitic languages but includes obviously related Greek and Egyptian words. While Sumerian origin is hard to deny, it is hard to define etymological pathways to every linguistic corner of this set of words. But it is also hard to deny that each word in the set has an interrelated heritage with the others.
Of course, our modern European languages are part of that continuing heritage: the canon, le canon, der Kanon. But these modern instantiations most certainly came to us by way of Greek κανών.
Posted by Duane Smith at December 12, 2008 8:27 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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Comments
I wrote about "canon" and its relation to Hebrew here:
Posted by: Dave (Balashon) at December 13, 2008 9:15 AM
Dave,
Thanks for letting me know about your abnormally interesting post. Somehow it fell through the many cracks. While you indicated that you were uncertain, I consider it very unlikely that κάννα came into Greek from Hebrew. There are just too many other pathways, several better aligned with the earliest attestations of the word in Greek.
Posted by: Duane at December 13, 2008 11:48 AM
Oh what the hell. Let me have a shot at this caper. One possibility I can think of, tentative as it is, is an Etrusco-Cypriot source. So let's say that Sumerian was the source of this common Semitic root. Well, from there, it could be borrowed from Ugaritic qn into Etrusco-Cypriot as *kana. It then would push westwards into Minoan, whencefrom adopted into Greek as κάννα. There's no proof of this, of course, but it's fun to construct new hypotheses for idle kicks.
Posted by: Glen Gordon at December 14, 2008 8:31 PM
Glen,
Interesting suggestion. I see nothing wrong with the trajectory you outlined. Ugaritic is but the best documented of what was likely a dialectical continuum of closely elated late Bronze Age Semitic languages in Syria and southern Turkey. So, I might not be as specific as saying "Ugaritic" when discussing the path. But Ugarit's geographical proximity to Cyprus and strong evidence of trade do make it a reasonable candidate.
I speculated that the pathway was something like this: the lexeme entered Lydian as a loan from either a northern dialect of Middle Assyrian or some Ugaritic like language, and then passed to Ionian Greek, again as a loan, and then to Attic Greek etc.
How did the lexeme show up in Middle Egyptian with a close parallel to a Homeric Greek usage (reed mat)? Does this shared meaning and geographical separation imply an Akkadian mediation for the specific meaning if not for the lexeme itself? An example with this meaning in any Northwest Semitic language would reduce the likelihood of an affirmative answer to the last question. For now, there isn't a known example with the meaning "reed mat" in Northwest Semitic.
Posted by: Duane at December 15, 2008 8:24 AM
Apologies for the delay in my response. Christmas got in the way, as usual.
Duane: "How did the lexeme show up in Middle Egyptian with a close parallel to a Homeric Greek usage (reed mat)?"
Well... Couldn't this be solved as per my above suggestion via Minoan and/or Etrusco-Cypriot *kana? I know that Minoan remains an annoying mystery but we know that Keftiu was important to Egyptian trade (coincidentally just at the right time for this loan to wander).
So perhaps within an Aegean language like Minoan and/or Eteo-Cypriot, this specialized meaning of "reedmat" developed and then spread to both Egyptian *qānə(w) (?) (although note some arguments against this translation) and Greek kanna.
Posted by: Glen Gordon at December 28, 2008 1:20 PM
Glen,
Let me address the issue of the determinative first. But before I do, let me say that at best I only dabble in Egyptian. So you should take what follows with an extra grain of salt. If I understand correctly the determinative in R1, 2 of "Duties of the Vizier" is strange in its own right. I think it is closest to Garner's sign N31. And in the context of "Duties," van den Boorn's concern is well taken. However, I believe that ḳn is more commonly determined by the hobble (V19). This determinative too has its problems. But for, as far as I know, unknown reasons, the hobble determines tm3 and variants regularly meaning mat. So we should understand the most common writing as "reed" + "mat."
On the question of Minoan and/or Eteo-Cypriot mediation, I have no real beef. I have only a minor concern that new evidence could destroy in a second and this concern applies in a somewhat different way to my own suggestion also. Without evidence of the lexeme in Minoan and/or Eteo-Cypriot and meaning reed mat at that, any such path is purely speculative, not bad speculation but only speculation. If Ugaritic, or any other NW Semitic language, showed reed mat as a meaning I would jump at your suggestion. But currently lacking that, I think my suggestion reduces the amount of speculation by one step because SW Semitic mediation is not needed in both directions. But who knows? It is fun to think about, that's for sure.
Posted by: Duane at December 30, 2008 9:04 AM
This word is even more widely distributed in the Mediterranean - it's among the Punic loans into Berber, yielding a-ghanim "reeds" (Berber gh = q, and the -im is presumed to reflect the Punic plural; cf. Vycichl's posthumous book). A reflex of this word was even borrowed from Berber into the basically Songhay language of Tabelbala that I'm working on.
Posted by: Lameen at January 23, 2009 4:32 PM
Lameen,
Thanks for the comment. I need to check out Vycichl's suggestion. I can't find a Punic reflex but that doesn't mean there wasn't one.
By the way, I substituted = for the derived from sign (left angle bracket) you used. For some reason, movable type does like the derived from sign. I think it looks for a closing of the sign.
Posted by: Duane at January 23, 2009 8:16 PM
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