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June 22, 2009
The Idiot's Guide To KAL DILI
Our word "idiot" derives from the Greek ἰδιώτης, meaning something in the range of private citizen, individual or someone with no professional training.
With that in mind, let me tell how I spent part of my morning and most of my afternoon. I was trying to clear up an issue that I had set aside a few weeks ago. And if you are willing, I am now going to burden you with my idiot problem. How does one make sense of the two consecutive signs KAL DILI in a (mostly) Akkadian text? What is so frustrating about these two signs is that I have no doubt concerning their approximate semantic range. If one just reads them as if the were Sumerian, they mean something like dear or valuable individual. They're not exactly symposiums with ἰδιώτης but perhaps in an overlapping semantic range. But try as I might, I can't convince myself of their Akkadian equivalents. Knowing the Akkadian equivalents would help narrow the semantic range in their Akkadian context. The rational choices for KAL, as a Sumerogram, are not so great. The most likely option is aqru, meaning "rare," "precious," "dear," "singular" or the like. But there are quite a few options for DILI. The most reasonable ones are, amīlu "man," zikaru "male," gitmalu "ideal", ēdu "single", even, ištēn "one" and perhaps not as likely aḫu (brother). Lexical texts are the only support for many of these choices. While I have my preferences from among this list, I can nonetheless tell myself a supportive story for every option. By the way, it's even possible that KAL DILI was pronounced kal dili as a loan phrase or word in Akkadian. The context, in partial translation, is "To (the) KAL DILI, you provide a companion." Translators tend to render the expression "lonely man." The "you" refers to the god Shamash. Oh yeah, one tablet with this text has only KAL and if the others didn't have KAL DILI, I'd have settled on aqru by noon and been on to something else that I still haven't resolved.
What really bothers me about this is that I will likely feel like an idiot when finally I figure it out or when one of you points me in the right direction.
Posted by Duane Smith at June 22, 2009 8:13 PM | Read more on Akkadian |
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Comments
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Posted by: April at June 23, 2009 5:56 PM
A comparison of aqru with biblical Hebrew יחיד is interesting: as far as I can tell, the Akkadian word’s semantic range seems to expand from etymological “precious/dear” into the logical extension “rare > unique, singular/one.” The biblical Hebrew word does more or less the opposite, assuming its etymological relation to the numeral “one” and its semantic expansion into “precious.” Both moves are logical enough.
On the tablet that has only KAL: maybe read as GURUŠ=KAL eṭlum “young man, youth” (and, by implication, unattached). I know that an eṭlum isn’t necessarily unmarried, but… (trails off with an idiotic and uncertain shrug.)
Posted by: Brooke at June 25, 2009 8:34 AM
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