schrift und sprache der 4. dynastieby simon d. schweitzer

Schrift und Sprache der 4. Dynastie by Simon D. SchweitzerReview by: Alexandra von LievenJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 127, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 2007), pp. 226-227Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20297268 .

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226 Journal of the American Oriental Society 127.2 (2007)

the honor?e's) scholarship, and should be a must for all

scholars interested in the study of biblical wisdom.

Gerald A. Klingbeil

Adventist International Institute

of Advanced Studies

Silang, Cavit?, Philippines

mill. This work joins the serious works on Achaemenid

history that scholars must consult.

Matthew Waters

University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire

Schrift und Sprache der 4. Dynastie. By Simon D.

Schweitzer. MENES: Studien zur Kultur und

Sprache der ?gyptischen Fr?zeit und des Alten

Reiches, vol. 3. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Ver

lag, 2005. Pp. xi + 650. 128.

While studies on all aspects of Middle Egyptian

grammar are legion and often become quite redundant, other phases of Egyptian language, including Old Egyp tian, are less well represented. Even sparser are studies

on texts from a particular well-defined time frame. After

all, one must take into account that the phase commonly labeled as Old Egyptian comprises a period of at least

half a millennium, even if the language of the first three

dynasties is set aside under its own heading of Early

Egyptian. The book under review is the first attempt at a mono

graphic study of the language and writing system of a

single dynasty, namely the fourth (approximately 2575

2467 b.c.e.). It is the published version of the author's

Ph.D. thesis completed in 2003 in Munster. In fact, the

book is mainly concerned with the writing system. Of

the 650 pages, only pages 99-194,197-99 and 605-35,

i.e., less than 130 pages, deal with grammar, while the

rest of the book is devoted to lengthy discussions of

hieroglyphs and their use. More than two-thirds of the

book consists of appendices listing every attested hiero

glyph in every attested usage. For example, the list of

words containing m runs over five pages. There may

eventually be a use for this. But is it really such a sur

prise that it occurs in nine different titles all beginning with imi-r' "overseer of . . ."?

One of the underlying theoretical problems is the

question of how written and spoken language are re

lated to one another. In this, the author follows Kammer

zeil, who has proposed differentiating two distinct sets,

namely Graphemsprache and Phonemsprache. This

model he calls "Humboldtian," while the traditional

view that the writings have a direct link to the linguistic

reality behind it is called "Aristotelian."

While in theoretical issues the author tries to be

innovative, in other fields he clings to traditional con

cepts. For U23 he partially accepts the new reading mhr

but nevertheless still wants to retain the traditional

reading mr as well (pp. 74, 437-38). However, that

both should be right seems extremely unlikely. As evi

dence, Schweitzer adduces two divine names where

there is supposedly an interchange between U23 and

another two-consonantal mr, as well as an Old Coptic

The Greek Wars: The Failure of Persia. By George

Cawkwell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. viii + 316. $115.

Cawkwell ' s book is another welcome addition to the

Persian perspective on the Greek source material for

Achaemenid Persian history. In ten chapters, Cawkwell

tracks Persian interaction with the Greeks from Cyrus

through Alexander the Great. Nine appendices cover in

more detail various problems within this interaction, and

Cawkwell offers detailed perspectives on the Persian

army and navy and the so-called Peace of Callias, among other topics. The book, as Cawkwell himself implies

(Preface, p. v) is not an easy read. The non-specialist in

Greek history and historiography may have trouble fol

lowing the intricacies of Cawkwell's obvious command

(manifest in his own voluminous works over the years) of the Greek sources and the interplay within them. This

is not a criticism. In fact, it is a virtue for the intended

audience of Classical historians, many of whom will be

well served by a thorough reassessment of traditionally held beliefs about Greek-Persian relations.

Cawkwell seems apprised of Near Eastern sources?

both their possibilities and their shortcomings?as well as modern scholarship thereon. But non-Greek primary sources are not cited with much frequency, and when

they are, the citations themselves present their own

foibles. For example, the citations for DPe, DNa, and

DB on p. 53 nn. 1-2 are represented as "D Pe," "D Na," and "D B," respectively. The former, without interven

ing spaces, is the accepted nomenclature in Achaemenid

epigraphical citations.

Cawkwell does not shy away from interpretive assessment of the historical problems involved with our

understanding?and, for that matter, the ancient Greeks'

understanding?of the Persians. In sum, there are a

number of controversial (in the positive sense) conten

tions herein, and on the whole this is an insightful work. That a Classicist of Cawkwell's stature has not

only taken the time to consider thoroughly this period from a Persian perspective, but has also taken the trouble

to broach numerous problematic elements of Greek his

toriography of Persia on such a scale, is remarkable in

its own right. For example, the contrarian perspective

(see chapter 5 and especially p. 91) that Xerxes' failed

invasion of Greece is attributable more to Persian mis

takes than to Greek facility offers much grist for the

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Brief Reviews 227

form in pBM 10808. Now, as for the instance LGG III

326 s.v. mrt-nsrt, the example in question is so faulty that it seems a bit daring to build any argument on it. In

the case of LGG III 326 s.v. Mrhw the likely explanation is metathesis between mrh and mhr. Of course, nothing

speaks against the normal form mrh being written with

a sign to be read mr. Finally, the idea that Old Coptic mour could be m(h)r was derived from the traditional

reading without h. Before accepting this as counter

evidence, one should first check whether this is the only

possible explanation for the Old Coptic word; otherwise one will fall prey to a circular argument. One should

also not build any argument on the etymological specu lations of Wilson, as those themselves often have no

solid basis.

Corrected readings also affect the discussion in ?87. The head [Dl] is not a good example for the author's

case, since it originally did not have the value tp, but cp\ see C. Peust, GM 208 (2006): 7-8.

Of special interest is, of course, the short chapter on

grammar. For adherents of the Historical-Linguistic

Dating Method like the present reviewer, the possibility of one day being able to differentiate not only between

the larger linguistic blocks of Old Egyptian, Middle

Egyptian, and so on, but also between the language of

particular dynasties, is a very seductive one. Unfortu

nately, the number of securely dated texts severely limits

the possibilities of success. For example, the genres of

texts attested for a given period might limit the range of

verbal forms employed, while other forms might have

already existed, but be absent from the preserved record. Indeed, the author himself is painfully aware of

this problem. While one can thus disagree over some of the details,

on the whole the author is to be commended for his

close study of such a clear-cut corpus of early texts.

The book will undoubtedly be of interest to all spe cialists in Egyptian language and Hieroglyphic orthog raphy as well as to scholars specializing in Afroasiatic

languages in general.

Alexandra von Lieven

Berlin

Sumerian Lexicon: A Dictionary Guide to the Ancient

Sumerian Language. By John Alan Halloran.

Los Angeles: Logogram Publishing, 2006. Pp. xiv

+ 318. $110 (cloth); $79 (paper). [Distrib. by David

Brown Book Co., Oakville, Ct.]

The author admits that this work has three short

comings: It has no examples of usage for words, it pro vides no periods of usage for the words, and it gives no

reference to allow one to look up the citations. He argues that a dictionary that does do those three things would

be great, but that it is years in the future. And yet the

Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary does exactly those

things for words beginning with a couple of letters.

Certainly there is a use for a short dictionary for

student use based on available sources, but with elec

tronic technology the exact references would be easy to

give, as would the periods of usage; examples might be left to larger compendia. I note that the Concise Dic

tionary of Akkadian (2000) gives both periods and ref

erences, and A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian

(1999) gives references from which periods can usually be deduced.

In dipping into Halloran's work I found some ques tionable etymologies, but is this book going to be useful

to students? Only time will tell, but with references it

could have immediately been more useful. One final

problem: the bibliography is presented in order of ex

ploitation by the author, not in alphabetical order, so it

is quite difficult to see if Halloran has or has not found

any relevant study among his ninety-six items over ten

pages. Oddly, Falkenstein's Neusumerische Gerichts

urkunden is near the end of the list, but it was the

very beginning of modern systematic lexicography of

Sumerian.

Daniel C. Snell

University of Oklahoma

Studien zur ugaritischen Lexikographie, mit kultur

und religionsgeschichtlichen Parallelen: Beamte,

G?tternamen, G?tterepitheta, Kultbegriffe, Metalle,

Tiere, Verbalbegriffe. Neue vergleichbare In

schriften. By Kjell Aartun. Teil II, A-B. 2 vols.

Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006. Pp. xiii

+ 1297, plates. 198.

In these two volumes, Aartun continues his indi

vidualistic approach to Ugaritic lexicography, to "die

?ltere Runenschrift'V'Runensprache" (a.k.a. Trojan) and

Etruskan, and to what he terms "inscriptions in multiple Semitic languages" (the first of these, for example, is

presented as consisting of a true mixture of "Minoan

Hieroglyphs," Etruscan, "Runic," and Linear A). Only the first 252 pages are devoted to Ugaritic matters, the

rest being devoted to the topics just mentioned (pp. 253

336: "Neue semitische Schrift- und Sprachsysteme"; pp. 336-1122: "Ausgew?hlte mehrsprachige semitische

Inschriften"), to various indices (pp. 1123-1297), and

to illustrations (pp. 1299-1409). Before plunging into

this world, the prospective user could with profit read

D. Clemens' judiciously stated review of Aartun's first

volume of Ugaritic studies in JNES 55 (1996): 205-8.

One finds in these new studies no awareness of the

methodological criticisms expressed in this review, as

in others.

Dennis Pardee

University of Chicago

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