Volume 46, Issue 1

This article provides an up-to-date overview of the collection of toponyms in the Hittite corpus. It discusses the general features of the inventory of place names and their distribution according to various criteria, including dating, language and specific context. Particular attention is paid to the geographic typology of toponyms applied by the Hittite scribes (from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives). It is hoped such a general sketch could offer comparative material for broader, more inclusive studies on the geographical concepts in the Ancient Near East.

Scholars have debated the meaning of both RS 94.2523 and 94.2530, two letters from Hatti to Ugarit at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Settling the meaning of the Sumerogram pad (Akkadian, kurummatu ) as either a reference to metal ingots or a type of food-provision has persistently caused interpretative trouble. The present article reassesses Singer’s arguments for reading pad as metal ingots, and it finds his arguments unsupported by the philological evidence. In addition, this article offers a new observation about famine language in RS 94.2530 that suggests pad does indeed refer to food-provisions in both letters as originally proposed by Lackenbacher/Malbran-Labat.

This paper presents a textual analysis of CTH 751 called a Palaic ritual with bread offerings . Due to new joins made by the author, it is now possible to attribute several Palaic fragments placed under CTH 754 to CTH 751. This contributes to a better contextual understanding of the largest Palaic text. The focus of this paper will be the semantic analysis of the Palaic verb takkuwa ( g ) a- (di) , whose elucidation has been facilitated by the new joins. This verb is equated etymologically with Hittite dakkudakuwā ( i ) - (mi) and takku- (mi) , both of debated semantics. In light of the new analysis of the Palaic verb, the two Hittite cognates will be reanalyzed contextually.

This paper will focus on the individuals attested to in the 15 texts from Azû, with the objective of sketching the inner chronology of the corpus. The published studies on the Ekalte and Emar generations are also used to establish a chronological link between the three Syrian archives. In addition, data from the administrative apparatus of the city (institutions, professions, scribes) will be gathered for the sake of narrowing down the social and cultural contexts of the three Syrian archives from the Middle Euphrates before the Hittites assumed control of the area.

This paper addresses the cognitive models that frame our understanding of what is traditionally called “metaphoric polysemy”, a well-established principle at work when it comes to naming the animals around us. In particular, taking the Roman nomenclature of aquatic animals as a case study, polysemy is redefined according to some basic cognitive principles of ethnobiological classification such as analogical similarity, biological essentialism and the role of simultaneous metaphoric and metonymic associations to the perceptual/cultural constraints targeted on the biological referent for naming it – the result is at least two kinds of metaphoric polysemy, to be called “external” (or exo-polysemy ) and “internal” (or endo-polysemy ), respectively. The idea is that the naming patterns that emerge from the ethnozoological nomenclature under examination may not only provide a better understanding of an ancient people’s zooanthropology but a paradigm for analysing descriptive ethnobiological naming in general.

The topic of this article are terms for animals in the Old Aramaic inscriptions. The corpus is quite rich (ca. 50 terms), including both terms for particular mammals reconstructed for Proto-Semitic, and terms that are rarely attested in other Semitic languages. Two peculiar Aramaic forms are already evidenced in Old Aramaic: the word for “cow” created through morphological rather than semantic opposition to the word “bull”, and the word for “serpent” derived from the verb “to live”. The attestation of some terms in Old Aramaic that do not occur in later Aramaic dialects is possibly due, at least in some cases, to external influences (for example, Akkadian in the inscription of Sfiré). Other terms are known later in a slightly different form, maybe due to tabooisation processes. However, the stability of the lexicon in general is quite remarkable. As is usual in ethnobiological classification, the most common taxa by far are generic species.

This paper deals with the methodological issues involved in reconstructing Mesopotamian zoological knowledge, and also with the difficult task of identifying species from the information provided by the cuneiform sources. Through the case study of the animal designated by the sumerogram ur.ki, for which the dictionaries suggest various identifications – dog, badger, or even worm – we explore the Mesopotamian vision of fauna, which already seems to attest to an organized conceptual system elaborated by Mesopotamian scholars concerning their natural environment. We also examine the manipulation of the lexical documentation related to zoological « taxonomy », and lexical matters, which though broadly used, requires extreme caution. ur.ki provides a perfect case study, since it is already attested in the Old Babylonian forerunner to the lexical list ur 5 .ra = ḫubullu , and remains documented in the later version of this list , but also in some scholarly texts. It allows a chronological survey that aims at retracing the understanding of a sumerogramm and considering the question of the evolution of zoological knowledge in Mesopotamia.

This article explores the role of donkeys in ancient Egypt through a lexicographical lens. It presents the terminology used for the animal in religious texts focusing on three case studies. Firstly, the most common word used for donkey aA, which appears in economic, literary and religious texts, will be examined. The second section will look into the entity hiw opening to a world of fantastic beings and hybrid creatures. And finally we will see that the number of signs associated to donkeys multiplied in the Ptolemaic period and are generally connected with the god Seth. With these three short investigations, different facets of the donkey are explored, revealing an animal that can be both an evil being and a threatening tool.