on the byblos script

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UGARIT-FORSCHUNGEN

Internationales Jahrbuch für die

Altertumskunde Syrien-Palästinas

Herausgegeben vonManfried Dietrich • Oswald Loretz

Band 39 2007

In memoriam Kurt Bergerhof

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Inhalt

Kurt Bergerhof (♦ 7. Mai 1922 - f 3. Juni 2008)............................................... ix

Artikelal-Shorman, Abdullah / al-Saead, Ziad / Lamprichs, Roland

Stable Carbon and Oxygen Isotopes of the Animal Tooth Enamel from the Late Iron Age Farmstead of Tell Johfiyeh in North Jordan.A Paleoclimate Study

Balza, Maria ElenaSaggar-abu, an official of Karkamis at Emar?........................................... ...19

Bojowald, StefanBemerkungen zu nhs „Schlange64 als mögliches semitisches Fremdwortim Ägyptischen (mit einem kleinen Beitrag zur Genese der Hyksos).......... 33

Cochavi-Rainey, Zipora / Rainey, Anson F.Finite Verbal Usage in the Jerusalem Amama Letters

Corfu, Nicolas A. I Mathys, Hans-PeterEine neue Bauinschrift Tukulti-Ninurtas I 57

De Backer, Fahrice Some Basic Tactics of Neo-Assyrian Warfare........ ............... 69

Dietrich, ManfriedDer Einbau einer Öffnung in den Palast Baals. Bemerkungen zuRS 94.2953 undKTU 1.4 VII 14-28......................... 117

Dijkstra, Meindert IdE.A-GAL = iytlm (Eya-talmi*).............................................................135

Faist, Betina I. / Justel, Josue-Javier / Vita, Juan-Pablo Bibliografia de los estudios de Emar (3)......................... 141

Fink, Amir Sumaka’iWhere Was the Statue of Idrimi Actually Found? The Later Temples of Tell Atchana (Alalakh) Revisited.............................161

Finkelstein, Israel / Piasetzky, EliazerRadiocarbon Dating and the Late-Iron I in Northern Canaan.A New Proposal............. ...... ................. ........247

iv Inhalt Uh’39

Finkelstein, Israel / Piasetzky, EliazerRadiocarbon, Iron Ila Destructions and the Israel - Aram DamascusConflicts in the 9th Century BCE......... ........................................................ 261

Gromova, DariaHittite Role in Political History of Syria in the Amama Age Reconsidered..... .........................................................................................277

Guillaume, PhilippeMore Bull-Leapers, Some Bouncing Kids and Less Scorpions...................311

Halayqa, Issam K. H.Swadesh List (Basic Vocabulary List) for Ugaritic, Phoenician, BiblicalHebrew, Syriac and Classical Arabic...........................................................319

Heffelfinger, Katie M.Like the Sitting of a Mountain. The Significance of Metaphor in KTU 1.1 Ol’s (recto) Description of Bacal...............................................381

Heide, MartinEin 27-zeiliges Listenostrakon aus der Sammlung Shlomo Moussaieff ....399

Herleş, MichaelAssyrische Präsenz an Euphrat und Balîh. Grenzkontrolle gegen Feinde des Reiches und nomadische Gruppierungen......................... 413

Hindawi, Abdel NasserThe Iron Age of the Northern Jordanian Plateau. A History of Research ...451

Kienast, BurkhartAufgaben der Semitistik............................................. 481

Lehmann, GunnarDecorated Pottery Styles in the Northern Levant during the Early Iron Age and their Relationship with Cyprus and the Aegean.................... 487

Loretz, OswaldDas Wort cdn „Wonne“ als Metonym für „Schnee“ und „Regen“ in KTU 1.4 V 6-9 und Psalm 36,9.............................................................. 551

Nys, Nadine / Bretschneider, JoachimResearch on the Iconography of the Leopard........................... 555

Park, Grace JeongyeonEl’s Member in KTU 1.23 617

Tsumura, David T.Revisiting the “seven” Good Gods of fertility in Ugarit.Is Albright’s emendation of KTU 1.23,64 correct?..................................... 629

Vita, Juan-PabloLes scribes des textes rituels d’Ougarit

2007] Inhalt v

Watson, Wilfred G. E.A Formulaic Curse in Ugaritic

Watson, Wilfred G. EMaking Sense of Ugaritic anhb and glp

Watson, Wilfred G. E.Bathing in the Briny. Notes on KTU 1.4 ii 3-7

665

669

673

Watson, Wilfred G. E.Syntax and the Meaning of Ugaritic tmdl....................................................683

Woudhuizen, Fred C.On the Byblos Script.................................................. 689

Wyatt, N.Making Sense of the Senseless. Correcting Scribal Errors in Ugaritic .......757

Xella, Paolo I Zamora, Jose A.The Phoenician Data Bank. The International Project Corpus Inscriptionum Phoenicarum necnon Punicarum..........................................773

Yamada, MasamichiWas Zu-Bacla, Son of Sursi, a Diviner of the Gods of Emar?.................... 791

RezensionsartikelFischer, Erika

Der so genannte Internationale Stil der Späten Bronzezeit.Kritische Anmerkungen zu einem kunsthistorischen Phantom................... 803

Mazzini, GiovanniA recent Italian translation of KRT and AQHT and some current issues of Ugaritic studies................. 887

Buchbesprechungen und BuchanzeigenKjell AARTUN: Studien zur ugaritischen Lexikographie mit kultur- und

religionsgeschichtlichen Parallelen. Teil II: Beamte, Götternamen, Götterepitheta, Kultbegriffe, Metalle, Tiere, Verbalbegriffe. Neue vergleichbare Inschriften (M. Dietrich).......................... 903

Sang Youl CHO: Lesser Deities in the Ugaritic Texts and the Hebrew Bible.A Comparative Study of Their Nature and Roles (O. Loretz)....................909

S. W. CRAWFORD et al. (Hrsg.): “Up to the Gates of Ekron Essays on the Archaeology and History of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin (W. Zwickel)................... ..909

vi Inhalt [UF 39

L. d’Alfonso / Y. Cohen / D. Sürenhagen (Hrsg.): The City of Emar among the Late Bronze Age Empires. History, Landscape, and Society. Proceedings of the Konstanz Emar Conference, 25.-26.04. 2006 (M. Dietrich)............................................................................................911

Erika FISCHER: Ägyptische und ägyptisierende Elfenbeine aus Megiddo und Lachisch. Inschriftenfunde, Flaschen, Löffel (W. Zwickel)........... 913

Mariana GlOVINO: The Assyrian Sacred Tree. A History of Interpretations (M. Herleş)....................................... 915

I. K. H. HALAYQA: A Comparative Lexicon ofUgaritic and Canaanite (M. Dietrich)...........................................................................................922

Richard S. HESS: Israelite Religions. An Archaeological and Biblical Survey (W. Zwickel)..........................................................................................924

Y. HlRSCHFELD: En-Gedi Excavations IL Final Report (1996-2002) (W. Zwickel)........................................................................................926

I. Kottsieper / R. Schmitt / J. Wöhrle (Hrsg.): Berührungspunkte.Studien zur Sozial- und Religionsgeschichte Israels und seiner Umwelt. Festschrift für Rainer Albertz zu seinem 65. Geburtstag (M. Dietrich)........928

Dagmar KÜHN: Totengedenken bei den Nabatäern und im Alten Testament.Eine religionsgeschichtliche und exegetische Studie (R. Schmitt).............930

Juliane Kutter : nür ill. Die Sonnengottheiten in den nordwestsemitischen Religionen von der Spätbronzezeit bis zur vorrömischen Zeit (O. Loretz) 932

Roland LAMPRICHS: Teil Johfiyeh. Ein archäologischer Fundplatz und seine Umgebung in Nordjordanien. Materialien zu einer Regionalstudie (W. Zwickel)...........................................................................................933

K. LAWSON Younger Jr. (Hrsg.): Ugarit at Seventy-Five (O. Loretz)...........934A. Mazar/R. Mullins (Hrsg.): Excavations at Tel Beth-Shean 1989-1996.

Volume II. The Middle and Late Bronze Age Strata in Area R (W. Zwickel)................................................................................................ 935

Kevin M. McGEOUGH: Exchange Relationships at Ugarit (O. Loretz)..........938Tryggve N. D. METTINGER: the Eden Narrative. A Literary and

Religio-historical Study of Genesis 2-3 (M. Dietrich).............................938Daniele MORANDI BONACOSSI (Hrsg.): Urban and Natural Landscape of

the Ancient Syrian Capital. Settlement and Envirment at Tell Mishrifeh / Qatna and Central- Western Syria. Proceedings of the International Conference held in Udine, 9-11 December 2004 (E. Rehm)................ 940

Aicha Rahmouni : Divine Epithets in the Ugaritic Alphabetic Texts (O. Loretz)...................................................................................................941

William H. SCHNIEDEWIND/ Joel H. HUNT: A Primer on Ugaritic. Language, Culture, and Literature (O. Loretz)...................................... 942

Mark S. SMITH: The Rituals and Myths of the Feast of the Goodly Gods of KTU/CTA 1.23. Royal Constructions of Opposition, Intersection, Integration, and Domination (O. Loretz)............................................... 942

Daniel SCHWEMER: Abwehrzauber und Behexung. Studien zum Schadenzauberglauben im alten Mesopotamien (R. Schmitt)............... 943

Josef TROPPER: Kleines Wörterbuch des Ugaritischen (M. Dietrich)...............945

2007] Inhalt vii

Steve A. WIGGINS: A Reassessment of Asherah. With Further Considerations of the Goddess (O. Loretz)............................................947

Nicolas WYATT: Word of Tree and Whisper of Stone. And Other Papers on Ugaritian Thought (O. Loretz).......................................................... 947

Paolo XELLA: Religione e religioni in Siria-Palestina. DalPAntico Bronzo alTepoca romana (O. Loretz)............................................................... 947

Nele ZIEGLER: Les Musiciens et la musique d’apres les archives de Mari (O. Loretz)...............................................................................................948

Abkiirzungsverzeichnis....................................................949

IndizesA Stellen..........................................................................................................957B Wörter..........................................................................................................959C Namen......................................................................................................... 962D Sachen..........................................................................................................966

Anschriften der Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter................................... 969

On the Byblos Script

*Fred C. Woudhuizen, Heiloo

Part One: Preliminary Investigations............................................................................ 690I Introduction........................................................................................................... 690II Archaeological Find-Context...............................................................................694III Survey of the Development of Literacy in Byblos........................................... 695

III . 1 Egyptian Hieroglyphic............................................................................ 696II I. 2 Akkadian Cuneiform...............................................................................698I II.3 Pseudo-Hieroglyphic or Byblos Script..................................................698II I.4 Phoenician Alphabet............................................................... 698

IV Internal and External Evidence.......................................................................... 699IV. 1 Methodological Remarks........................................................................ 699IV.2 Nature of the Script and Punctuation....................................................700IV. 3 Doublets and Triplets..............................................................................701IV.4 Writing Variants...................................................................................... 702IV.5 Doublets and Triplets in Variant Writing..............................................705IV.6 Prefixed and Suffixed Combinations..................................................... 705IV.7 Conjunctions.............................................................................................707

*My work at the Byblos script started in June 2007 as a corollary to my partaking in the

Alvema Research Group, which had chosen the topic as a working project for the season, as well as in preparation of a conference on the theme on the occasion of the resignation of professor Manfred Kropp from his position as director of the German Orient-Institute at Beirut, planned for November to take place in Byblos itself, and it occupied me for some three months, having been able to round off my efforts at the beginning of September of the same year. My special thanks are due to Kees Enzler of the ARG for his preparation of the figures 1 and 3-7, the latter ones of which were adapted to include suggestions to their improvement by Jan Best. All figures are based on the drawings of the signs as presented in the relevant literature, which means Dunand 1945 for the Byblos script, Gardiner 1994 for Egyptian hieroglyphic, Evans 1909 and Olivier/Godart 1996 for Cretan hieroglyphic, Meijer 1982 for Linear A, and Ventris/Chadwick 1973 for Linear B. Only in the case of the provincial variant of Egyptian hieroglyphic U6 from the seal of the Byblian king Hasrurum I have added to its drawing by Montet 1928a, 62, fig. 20 the two leftward extensions at its lower side which, in my opinion, are visible in the best photograph of the seal’s impression presented by Goedicke 1963, Tafel I. I am further much obliged to Jan de Boer, who kindly drew my attention to Bunnens 2006 presenting some material which to my view is of relevance to the topic. It goes without saying, finally, that I could not have accomplished the task I set for myself without the excellent facility offered by the library of the Netherlands Institute for the Near East or, in Dutch abbreviation, NINO at the University of Leiden.

690 F. C. Woudhuizen [UF39

IV.8 Subsidiary External Evidence................................................................ 707V Primary Linguistic Results.................................................................................711

Part Two : Texts in Transliteration and Interpretation................................................718I Tablete...................................................................................................................718II Tablet d..................................................................................................................719III Spatula b................................................................................................................722

Part Thr ee: Key Elements of the Interpretation..........................................................722I Onomastic Evidence............................................................................................. 722II Vocabulary............................................................................................................ 727III Grammar............................................................................................................... 728

III. A Nominal Declension................................................................................ 728III.B Enclitic Pronouns.....................................................................................728IILC Demonstrative Pronouns......................................................................... 729TIED Prepositions............................................................................................. 730III.E Conjunctions............................................................................................ 731III.F Introductory Particles.............................................................................. 732IILG Verb..........................................................................................................732

Comparative Data......................................................................................................732A Nominal Declension.................................................................................... 732B Enclitic Pronouns......................................................................................... 732C Demonstrative Pronouns..............................................................................733D Prepositions.................................................................................................. 733E Conjunctions.................................................................................................733F Introductory Particles...................................................................................734G Verb...............................................................................................................734

Bibliography.....................................................................................................................735Illustrations.......................................................................................................................741

Part One: Preliminary Investigations I

I IntroductionIn the course of the excavations at Gebeil, ancient Byblos, in present-day Lebanon by the French archaeologist Maurice Dunand, which were started in 1926, inscriptions have come to light in a local, so-called pseudo-hieroglyphic script, which, for the sake of convenience is addressed here as the Byblos script. After some preliminary publications in 1930 and 1935 (Dunand 1930; cf. Sznycer 1994, 167, who mistakenly refers to an article by Dunand of 1929), most of the objects with a text in this script have been duly published in Dunand’s monumental series Fouilles de Byblos, two (to which should be added the spatula reused for a Phoenician alphabetic inscription) already being incorporated in the first volume of this series, which appeared in 1937 (Atlas) and 1939 (Texte), whereas the remainder can be found in the second volume of 1954 (Texte II, 1) and 1958a-b (Texte II, 2 and Atlas). In the period of about two decades between the appearance of these two volumes, Dunand devoted a separate publication to epigraphic finds of non-Egyptian type, which means mainly those exemplifying the Byblian pseudo-hieroglyphic script, whereas also some texts in the Phoeni

2007] On the Byblos Script 691

cian alphabet were included, which appeared in 1945 and is entitled Byblia Grammata (for the part devoted to the Byblos script, see chapitre IV, pp. 71- 138). Owing to the inclusion of one text which did not receive mention in the excavation report and accordingly lacks an inventory number, the total of pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions incorporated in this latter publication amounts to 10, which are specified by a letter, running from a to j, and expertly edited with a full set of drawings and photographs. The objects in question entail three stone stelai and one stone block, more or less fragmentarily preserved, two bronze tablets of various dimensions, and four bronze spatulae, also of various seizes, the latter classes of documents being most well preserved. In a later publication, which appeared in the Bulletin du Musee de Beyrouth 30 of 1978, Dunand extended the corpus with four more, formerly unpublished fragmentarily preserved stone blocks, labeled by the letters k-n, bearing testimony of the Byblos script, which, apart from some isolated signs and the no longer readable legend on the aforesaid spatula later reused for a Phoenician alphabetic inscription, brings the amount of texts involved to the total of 14.

In his publication on the topic, Dunand analyzed the signary of the Byblos script, resulting in the distinction of some 114 individual signs numbered according to their attribution to distinct categories, running from the representation of animals to that of mere geometric figures and, mostly for being damaged, uncertain instances, marked by the letters A-I preceding the allocated number (Dunand 1945, 177, fig. 2); for the sake of convenience, this system of numbering is adhered to in the present study. In addition, he prospected the possibilities of correlating the individual signs of the Byblos script to counterparts in either better known or more prolifically exemplified scripts on the basis of a formal resemblance—a comparative approach defined here as “external evidence”. In so doing, he suggested as much as three distinct categories of possible comparisons, one formed by the Egyptian hieroglyphic script, another entailing Cretan Linear, and the third consisting of the Phoenician alphabet. An overview of possible correspondences with Egyptian hieroglyphic is illustrated in his fig. 42 of pp. 122-123, whereas evidence for possible comparisons to Cretan Linear and the Phoenician alphabet is grouped together in his fig. 43 of p. 125. Of these three comparative categories, the one provided by Cretan Linear was least informative at the time, because, pending the decipherment of its two types distinguished, the value of the signs still remained unknown. As opposed to this, comparisons with Egyptian hieroglyphic, otherwise current in Byblos from the Early Bronze Age up to the Early Iron Age as we will see in section III below, might then already have come into consideration as highly valuable aids in the process of determining the value of a sign if only the original Egyptian one could be shown to have been preserved in the process of adoption, whereas, against the backdrop of information on the archaeological find-context as specified in the following section II, a relationship of signs to counterparts in the later Phoenician alphabet, in view of the latter’s antecedents in the Middle Bronze

692 F. C. Woudhuizen [UF 39

Age Proto-Sinaitic, could reasonably not be excluded out of hand.In the wake of the publications on the Byblos script, attempts have been

made at its elucidation. The first attempt recorded in the relevant literature was made by the Czech expert epigraphist Bedrich Hrozny, who had already earned his reputation in the discipline by his successful decipherment of Hittite cuneiform in 1915 and by his substantial contribution to the decipherment of Luwian hieroglyphic as accomplished by four scholars in sum in the early 1930s. In two articles on the topic of 1945 and 1946, he claimed on the basis of the only inscribed stone stele available to him (= stele d) that the key to our understanding of the Byblos script was provided by the formal relationship of its signs to Luwian hieroglyphic counterparts (Hrozny 1945; Hrozny 1946). In the article first mentioned, the author does indeed suggest, alongside numerous correspondences with a variety of other supposedly related scripts, including the Indus script, a few comparisons to Luwian hieroglyphic, but on the main, if allowance be made for some notable exceptions (see further below), the presumed genetic relationship between the signary of the Byblos script and that of Luwian hieroglyphic appears to be illusionary.

After Hrozny’s attempt followed the ones by the French Semitist Edouard Dhorme in the years 1946-1948, the American epigraphist George Mendenhall in the year 1985, and the Polish expert in heuristics Benon Szalek in 2001, which are all characterized by a common point of departure, the similarity in form of the pseudo-hieroglyphic sign D2 to the second letter of the Phoenician alphabet, 6, irrespective of the fact whether this was taken to represent a consonantal value, b, as in case of Dhorme, or a syllabic one, ba, as in case of Mendenhall and Szaiek, which, after all, theoretically may both come into consideration as various stages in the development of the value of the glyph depicting the ground plan of a house from its original logographic value *bayt in Semitic to its syllabic and consonantal residues, respectively, according to the acrophonic principle, although it must be stipulated that the ancestral Proto-Sinaitic happens to be consonantal from the start (Dhorme 1946; Dhorme 1946-1948; Mendenhall 1985; Szaiek 2001). In doing so, Dhorme presents no further epigraphic elaboration of his assignment of values to other signs, only the linguistically inspired argument that the sequence in line 15 of tablet c, likely to be analyzed as a combination of four phonetic signs followed by the number 7, might be interpreted as a dating formula possibly reading, under the condition that D2 = b, b-snt “in the year”. To this comes that the historical context of his subsequent translations, partly based on inferior drawings (especially so in case of stele g), remains elusive.

As opposed to this, Mendenhall alongside the identification of D2 as ba on the basis of its formal resemblance to Phoenician alphabetic b suggests a number of further correspondences in form of signs from the Byblos script with counterparts in the Phoenician alphabet and, to a lesser extent, in Egyptian hieroglyphic, under the condition that the latter render a syllabic value as aero-


phonically derived from the logographic value the glyph in question might be assumed to render when its meaning has been translated in Semitic in like manner as in his opinion this is the case for the counterparts of the Phoenician alphabet letters. The resulting readings lead him to the identification of an otherwise unparalleled Byblian royal name Huru-Ba ilu, which he allocates to the final stage of the Early Bronze Age (Mendenhall 1985, 35-36) and in which he, with some chronological laxity, is followed by others, like a. o. Hamblin (2006, note 48 to Chapter Nine; it is not my intention herewith to discredit Hamblin’s highly informative work, which I used to fruition), and further induce him, notwithstanding his autopsy of the tablets, to emend the final line of tablet d substantially while this is clearly characterized by a vacat before and after the sequence of four signs it contains.

Of the attempts ultimately based on the formal resemblance of D2 to the second letter of the Phoenician alphabet, b, the third one by Szalek distinguishes itself from the aforesaid two by the fact that the author pays some attention to internal evidence in the form of recurrent combinations. However, his subsequent underpinning of the value of other signs on the basis of comparisons in not only the alphabet, but also Egyptian hieroglyphic, Linear B, the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet, and even the Cypriote Syllabary, although not to be discarded as a matter of principle, lacks any correlation to the given internal evidence and can only be considered as highly eclective, up to the point that these become instrumental in enabling him to read the sequence of four signs in line 15 of tablet c on which, as we have just seen, also Dhorme focused his attention, as ba-si-le-wo, a reflex of the Greek titular expression basileus originating from Mycenaean qa-si-re-u which during the Dark Ages at the outset of the Early Iron Age became subject to labialization of the initial labiovelar (gw > b) and was upgraded to a designation for a king. As a corollary of all this, the Byblos texts are argued to be conducted in the Greek language, and to have a bearing on the period of the Sea Peoples at the end of the Bronze Age.

A final attempt at breaking the code of the Byblos script to be mentioned here is the one by the Dutch specialist in Cretan Linear A, Jan Best, who, in my opinion at least, may justifiably be credited with such fundamental results in the process of the decipherment of Linear A, the text of the Phaistos disc, and Cypro-Minoan as to allow him to lay a claim to the title of decipherer in all these three instances. Now, his approach as embarked upon in a section of our common publication on Mediterranean scripts of 1989, which perhaps appeared too late to be included in Sznycer’s informative survey published in 1994 but presented in 1990, differs from the three aforegoing ones by the fact that he does not take the Phoenician alphabet as a starting point for his comparative evidence, but the combination of Egyptian hieroglyphic and Cretan Linear A (Best in Best/Woudhuizen 1989, 35-49). To some extent, moreover, this alternative comparative approach is correlated to internal evidence in the form of recurrent combinations with alternating endings and, to name a fundamental topic virtu


ally neglected by his predecessors or competitors, special attention to the use of punctuation, which, in combination with the aforesaid external evidence, enabled him to distinguish coordinative conjunctions of Old Phoenician type no doubt marking on occasion the beginning of separate entities like clauses or phrases. On account of general considerations elaborated on in the following survey of the relevant evidence, the approach by Best seems more promising than the ones discussed in the preceding. At any event, his identification of the personal names Yarimlim and Ammitaku seems to be chronologically more adequate than anything suggested thus far. As I will argue at length below, in my opinion his determination of the value of signs can be demonstrated to be valid in 25 instances if the entire syllable is concerned and in 11 more cases if only the initial consonant or approximation of this is taken into consideration, whereas that of 22 signs turns out to be either unsufficiently based or even entirely unfounded. Accordingly, he can be credited with the identification of, apart from the aforesaid conjunctions and personal names, three more well-documented personal names, 13 vocabulary words, and one instance of a preposition. However, the category of signs of which the value in my opinion is insufficiently based or even entirely unfounded bugged him to the extent that he was unable to identify further prepositions and the rare instances of a verb, so that, beyond the level of isolated elements, a coherent interpretation of larger units in the texts of tablets c and d. not to mention their entirety, must still be considered a desideratum.

II Archaeological Find-ContextIn sofar as details about the archaeological find-context of inscriptions in the local Byblian script are specified, these may be summarized as follows:

1. spatula z (no. 18680) was found in a layer after the destruction of c. 2300 BC thin association with 12 dynasty pins (Dunand 1945, 82; cf. Dunand 1958a,

1023);2. spatula b (no. 2334) and tablets c (no. 8917) and d (no. 8918) were discov

ered together directly below the Hellenistic layer in a location where build- ♦ * • th thing activities had taken place in the period of the 12 and 13 dynasty, so

that they may safely be assigned to the latest phase of the Middle Bronze Age on the spot (Dunand 1945, 78; cf. Dunand 1939, 158; Dunand 1937, pls. XXXII and CXLI (before cleaning); Dunand 1954, 227-228 with fig.; 228-229 with fig.; Dunand 1958b, pls. CXLVII and CLVI);

3. spatula e (no. 9942) was dug up in remains of the temple of the obelisks in a layer variously attributed to the Hyksos period or the 14th century BC (Dunand 1945, 78; 134; cf. Dunand 1954, 327-328; Dunand 1958b, pl. CXLVII);

4. block k, which had originally been situated in a stair, was reused in an architectural construction important enough to suggest it having then received its


inscription, possibly the nearby temple of the obelisks (Dunand 1978, 52); th5. spatula KAI no. 3 (no. 1125), which was reused during the 10 century BC

in order to be newly inscribed with a message in the Phoenician alphabet, came to light in a location belonging to the terrain of the temple of Ba'alat (Dunand 1945, 135; cf. Dunand 1937, pl. XXXII; for the dating of the Phoenician text, see discussion of KAI no. 3);

6. block / was reused for the construction of an Early Iron Age wall (Dunand 1978,53).

Under consideration of the fact that no details are presented about the find-context of as much as 7 remaining texts in the local script of Byblos (block a (no. 1140; Dunand 1930; Dunand 1939, 30; Dunand 1937, pl. XXXI: 1), spatula/ (no. 6894; Dunand 1954, 21; Dunand 1958b, pl. CXLVII), block g (no. 13844; Dunand 1958a, 629; Dunand 1958b, pl. CXLV), fragment h (no. 11688; Dunand 1954, 468-469 with fig. 504), and blocks / m and n), so that, if this would eventually turn up, the picture might perhaps be altered, it seems deducible from the aforegoing data that the actual use of the pseudo-hieroglyphic script is confined to the Middle Bronze Age period, in particular its later stage, because the inscriptions associated with a find-context of a later date, especially the ones postdating the Hyksos period (which actually includes the earliest phase of the

thLate Bronze Age up to the first half of the 16 century BC), clearly did so as a result of secondary interventions during their reuse, which does not imply, even in the case of spatula KAI no. 3 being recycled for a similar purpose, that knowledge of the Byblos script was still current at the time in question. Secondly, in sofar as location is concerned, it deserves our attention that spatula e and possibly block k as well are directly associated with the temple of the obelisks, whereas the association of spatula KAI no. 3 with the other major temple, that of Ba'alat, may well have been caused by its secondary use. By means of conclusion, then, the foregoing discussion on the archaeological find-contexts seems to indicate that the extant inscriptions of the Byblos script, at least in part, had a bearing on dedications to the temple of the obelisks during an advanced stage of the Middle Bronze Age (which does not exclude, of course, the possibility of an actual wider use of this script during the period in question on more perishable writing materials than stone and bronze).

Ill Survey of the Development of Literacy in ByblosIn sum, there is evidence of as much as four different writing systems having been in use in Byblos or, more in specific, by its rulers during the period from the Early Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, namely: (1) Egyptian hieroglyphic, (2) Akkadian cuneiform, (3) the local pseudo-hieroglyphic, and (4) the Phoenician alphabet. Now, a survey of the relevant epigraphic data reveals the following pattern.


III.l Egyptian Hieroglyphic(A) During the Old Kingdom period inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphic found in Byblos in the overall majority of the cases concern dedications of precious objects like faience or alabaster vases and offering plates by pharaohs from as early as the 2nd up to the 6th dynasty to the oldest temple in the town, that of Ba- calat (Montet 1928b, 83-90; Montet 1962, 83-89; Jidejian 1968, 17-19; cf. the overview in Helck/Otto 1975, columns 889-891, s. v. Byblos, for a ground plan of the Byblos excavations, see Wein/Opificius 1963, 8-9); note, however, that in exceptional cases such a dedication may also be made by a lower Egyptian functionary, like a scribe (Montet 1928b, 84-85; Dunand 1939, 306, no. 5366).

(B) During the Middle Kingdom period inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphic are also written by, or in consignment of, local Byblian rulers; among this category of documents, we can distinguish, apart from the possible exception formed by a fragmentarily preserved relief apparently for public purposes by Yantin'ammu reported to have been found in a wall below building I in between the temples of Ba'alat and Resef (Montet 1928b, 90-93; Dunand 1939, 197— 198, no. 3065), two sets as far as their context or contents is concerned, namely: (Bl) grave gifts, and (B2) temple dedications.

(Bl) The Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions on objects from graves entail the Byblian rulers from Abisemu I, a contemporary of Amenemhat III (1820- 1795 BC), to Abisemu II, who is likely to be synchronized with Nehesy (c. 1710 BC) of the 14th dynasty (Montet 1928a, 174, 196-199, 121-123, 285-286 (overview); Albright 1964, 38-44; Jidejian 1968, 209-210; cf. Helck/Westendorf 1982, column 392, s. v. Nehesi).

(B2) The temple dedications in Egyptian hieroglyphic are made, in sofar as it can be determined (in at least one case, assigned by Montet to the Old Kingdom period on account of the variant writing kbn h*st of "The land of Byblos”, which, however, also typifies the legend of the decidedly Middle Bronze Age seal of Hasrurum (see further below), the name of the dedicator is lost (Montet 1964, 65-66, fig. 3)), by Abisemu II and his sons and successors, Yapa'semuabi (Montet 1964, 66-68, fig. 4) and cEgel or cEgliya, ruling during the late 18th and

th * •early 17 century BC, i. e. the later phase of the Middle Bronze Age. It is worth noting in this connection that the dedication of Abisemu II concerns one of the eight small obelisks actually found in the temple of the obelisks (Dunand 1958a, 878, no. 16980; Dunand 1958b, pl. XXXII:2; Montet 1962, 89-90, 96, fig. 5), whereas the ones by cEgel or cEgliya are specified as offerings to the goddess Nut, who is identified with Hathor or the Mistress of Byblos, Bacalat, so that these texts, notwithstanding the fact that the stelai on which they are written were reused in a construction dating from the final stage of the Late Bronze Age, may reasonably be argued to have once belonged to the inventory of the temple of Ba'alat (Dunand 1958a, 888, nos. 17079 and 17080; Montet 1964, 62-65, figs. 1-2), though it must be admitted that the aforesaid fragmentarily preserved stele of which the name of the dedicator is lost commemorates—alongside the


setting up of monuments and building of temples in general—reconstruction work to the temple of Hathor or the Mistress of Byblos more in specific while at the same time it has actually been found in an annex to the temple of the obelisks facilitating the cult of the war- or stormgod Resef (Dunand 1958a, 650; Montet 1964, 65-66; on Resef, see further below). In regard to our reconstruction of the development of Egyptian hieroglyphic in the region of Byblos we can even go one step further than the aforesaid distinction of two sets of texts and note that a turning point in the use of Egyptian hieroglyphic by local Byblian rulers is marked by the scarab of Ilimayapi, son of the Byblian ruler Yan- tincammu (Montet 1928a, 197-199, fig. 88a-b; Albright 1964, 40—41), probably originating from tomb IV of the royal necropolis, and the cylinder seal of Hasrurum, son of Rum (Montet 1928a, 62-68, fig. 20, pl. XXXIX, no. 42; Bon- grani 1963, 181; pl. XXXVII, 8; Goedicke 1963; Albright 1964, 44-46; Goe- dicke 1965), for the patronym, cf. the Byblian royal name Ahîröm from the Early Iron Age) found in the foundation of the temple of Bacalat (Jidejian 1968, 18), the latter (according to Albright’s reading as followed by Kitchen 1967) being a ruler of the non-urban hinterland of Byblos at the time of Sihathor (1730-1729 BC) who apparently usurped power over the town of Byblos at the expense of the (in terms of a kinship relation) legitimate Ilimayapi in the wake of the upheavals caused by invading gangs of Indo-European chariot fighters that ultimately culminated into the Hyksos takeover of control in Egypt, both inscriptions being singled out by their “barbarian” or, in less judgmental terms, provincial style of writing. As it seems, the loss of regular direct contacts with thEgypt after the fall of the 13 dynasty resulted in a vacancy of professional Egyptian scribes, which was filled by less experienced local or otherwise nonEgyptian substitutes responsible for the provincial style1, which in turn generated scribal variants crucial, as I hope to demonstrate in the following, to our understanding of the linearized Byblian pseudo-hieroglyphic on the one hand and the related Cretan Linear A on the other hand.

Note in this connection that the name Kukun of the royal seal-bearer of Abisemu II, likely to be responsible for the inscription on the latter’s obelisk, is definitely of nonEgyptian background, irrespective of the question whether the reading of his patronym as s' rwqq “son of the Lycian” (cf. Ugaritic bn Iky, denoting an official representative of the Lycians) or 5 ’ rwtt “son of Rutata”, depending on the identification of the last two signs as either N29 q (so Albright 1964, 42-43, nt. 17, and Albright 1959, 33-34, with reference to the Wilusian or Trojan royal name Kukkunis and its Lycian equivalent, reading Khukhune (D sg.)) or XI t (so Montet 1962, 89-90, which, however, in view of his own drawing, ibid. p. 96, fig. 5, seems less likely), is correct.

(C) During the New Kingdom period inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphic have, just like in the Old Kingdom period, a bearing on dedications by or activities of the Egyptian pharaoh, like, for example, the rebuilding of the Ba'alat temple by Tuthmosis III, reported to have been executed at the spot by his building master Minmosis and of which a memorial stone with the cartouche of


the pharaoh in question has actually been surfaced in situ (Woolley 1921, 200— 201 with illustration; Helck/Otto 1975, columns 889-891, s. v. Byblos}.

III.2 Akkadian CuneiformThe earliest evidence for the use of the Akkadian cuneiform at Byblos is provided by a tablet for educational purposes dating from the Ur III period (c. 2135-2027 BC), which proves that this script was locally taught and therefore current to some extent during the final stage of the 3ld millennium BC (Durand 1958a, 657, no. 14023; Durand 1958b, pl. CXLV).

Furthermore, on the cylinder seal of Yakinilu, acquired in the 19 century AD by the Earl of Camavon for his collection, the name of the owner is written in Akkadian cuneiform, while that of his superior, Sehetepibre, occurs in Egyptian hieroglyphic (Pinches/Newberry 1921, 196-199, pl. XXXII). It is interesting to note in this connection that the son of this particular ruler of Byblos according to an inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphic on a fragmentarily preserved relief apparently for public purposes referred to in the above, Yantin, is known from the Mari archives as Yantnfammu (Albright 1964, 41; Kitchen 1967, 40), and hence to have maintained contacts with Zimrilim, no doubt while making use of the Akkadian cuneiform as a vehicle for communication.

III.3 Pseudo-Hieroglyphic or Byblos ScriptAs noted in the foregoing section, the archaeological find-contexts of inscriptions conducted in the local Byblos script, as far as our information about this topic goes, indicate that the actual use of this script was confined to a later stage of the Middle Bronze Age, and that the extant texts presumably had a bearing on dedications to the temple of the obelisks. When correlating these inferences to the results of our survey of the developments in the local use of Egyptian hieroglyphic, it so happens that the chronological and spatial findings concerning the Byblos script are most closely matched by the Egyptian hieroglyphic data from the period of Abisemu II to 'Egel or 'Egliya, likewise situated in a later stage of the Middle Bronze Age, likewise concerning temple dedications, and likewise of a local, provincial, nature. Accordingly, the contents of the pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions may reasonably be expected to be of similar nature as their Egyptian hieroglyphic counterparts.

III.4 Phoenician AlphabetInscriptions in the Phoenician alphabet are attested for Byblos only from c. 1000 BC onwards, the one by Ahırâm or Ahıröm on his stone sarcophagus generally considered to be the earliest, whereas the first chronological pegs are provided by the inscriptions added by Abibaal and his successor Elibaal to statues of the


likewise successive Egyptian pharaohs Sheshonq I (945-924 BC) and Osorkon I (924-889 BC), respectively. Notwithstanding the lack of epigraphic evidence before this date, it needs to be realized that the use of writing for administrative purposes is already recorded for Byblos during the reign of Zakarbaal in the first thquarter of the 11 century BC thanks to the Egyptian Wenamon story as preserved on the Golenischeff papyrus. And, what is of primary concern to us here, considering the, admittedly scarce, evidence for alphabetic writing at the time in the Levant more in general, it stands to reason to assume that the Byblian administrative documents in question were indeed conducted in the Phoenician alphabet. However this may be, the example of Wenamon’s eyewitness account of the practice of writing on perishable materials at Byblos in the early 11th century BC should once more make us aware of the truism that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

IV Internal and External Evidence

IV. 1 Methodological RemarksBreaking the code of an as yet undeciphered script in effect boils down to a hunt for sound values. Previous successful attempts at decipherment have shown that there are various methods or working tools at hand to establish reliable sound values for signs. One of the best known among these is the bilingual method, but in the case of the Byblos script bilingual texts are thus far entirely lacking. Another approach, which payed off in connection with the Ugaritic alphabet, is formed by the sophisticated guess, like the assumption that for example the legend on an inscribed axe may contain the word for axe. Under the condition that the language encoded in the script may be considered as known, which applies in the case of Ugaritic, one may select the expected word for axe and try to find a fitting combination within the sequence of signs forming the legend and attribute the corresponding values to them. A similar technique was also adapted in the course of the decipherment of Luwian hieroglyphic, be it that here the focus has been on place, divine, and royal names being marked as such by determinatives: if one can be reasonably sure which name is actually written down, owing to the find-context of the inscription or its dating to the reign of a known ruler, values can accordingly be attributed to the signs in question. This particular approach may play a role in connection with the Byblos script, as I will try to show below, but only secondarily so and not as a means to break open the code. A third and final technique to be mentioned here is the comparative method: if the signs of the script are related to those of an already deciphered and fairly well-known writing system, the values of these signs may be recovered from oblivion on the basis of the principle that identity or relationship in form = identity or relationship in value, which, especially if the scripts in question are synchronous or merely synchronous, applies in the overall majority of the cases. In view of complicating factors, however, like a substantial chrono


logical distance between the comparanda, which seriously undermined the use of the Cypriote Syllabary in the process of the decipherment of Linear B, or the fact that a script may be composed of signs originating from two or more writing systems, like the aforesaid Ugaritic alphabet (Dietrich/Loretz 1988, 121), which transforms the comparative method into an act of juggling with two or more variables, or, in case of pictograms or hieroglyphs, the possibility that the value of the sign may be adapted to the language of the receiving scribe, it is absolutely necessary to verify the comparative method by means of internal evidence. On the basis of the distinction of identical roots with alternating endings, which in the field of Linear B are commonly addressed as Kober’s doublets and triplets, and writing variants, namely, it is possible to deduce a set of predictions about the nature of the value of the signs in question, which can be graphically expressed in a rudimentary grid and to which possible comparative evidence must comply. In this manner, at least, Michael Ventris succeeded in establishing the values of the Linear B counterparts of the Cypriote Syllabic signs for ti and to. figuring so prominently in the Kober triplets and as such predicted to render a syllabic value of the same consonant with alternating vowel, already at an early stage of his decipherment attempt as illustrated in his first provisional grid of January 28, 1951.2

On the various decipherments, see Pope 1999; most recently on those of Luwian hieroglyphic and Linear B, see Woudhuizen 2005, 101-110, and Woudhuizen 2006a, 15-28, respectively.

IV.2 Nature of the Scrint and PunctuationBefore going into the details of the relevant internal and external evidence, some observations of a more general nature need to be made. In the first place, as has been duly noted by others in the past, the number of individual signs of the Byblos script amounting, however one may judge the situation with respect to possible writing variants, at least over 60 (cf. fig. 1), by far exceeds the limits set for an alphabet, which usually consists of some 20 to 30 individual signs, but certainly not more than about 40, so that it is absolutely clear that we are dealing with a syllabary, possibly supplemented by logograms and/or involving homophones (Sznycer 1994, 168, 175). Secondly, a mere glance at the lay-out of the texts suffices to realize that in the main these are conducted in horizontal lines starting at the top and running in retrograde direction of writing, with the exception of stele g. which is conducted in vertical lines starting at the right and running from top to bottom, and lines 3 on the front and back side of spatula b as well as the entire back side of spatula f. which are written in left-to-right direction of writing. Thirdly, in regard to the bronze tablets c and d it deserves our attention that the lay-out of the text shows indention as a means to distinguish contextual units like our paragraphs, namely in lines 1,13, and possibly 15 of


tablet c and in the final line 41 of tablet d. Finally, it is, of course, a prerequisite of any further internal analysis to determine whether use is made of punctuation to distinguish individual words or elements or otherwise combinations of such entities grouped together in this manner. Previous to the involvement of Jan Best, this topic has been either neglected (one cannot help to wander how George Mendenhall carried out his statistical analysis distinguishing between signs occurring in front, middle, and final position on which he claims his attempt at decipherment is based without even raising the question of punctuation) or only summarily touched upon by the recognition of a short vertical stroke in the texts of spatulae b and i as a word-divider corresponding to the one used in later Phoenician alphabetic texts (Sznycer 1994, 171). As just hinted at, however, we owe it to the merit of Best that we are presently in the position to distinguish at least three different means of punctuation in the texts of tablets c and d, namely: (1) the circle or dot, the use of which especially in line 41 of tablet d reminds one of our present full stop, (2) the curved bar, which on tablet c sometimes occurs at the end of a line, in one instance while being doubled as occasionally happens to be the case elsewhere in the texts of tablets c and d, and which in form of a straight horizontal or vertical line of division (with a hook to the left at its lower side in the latter instance) or a curved bar, indeed, is paralleled for provincial Egyptian hieroglyphic texts either positively dating to the later phase of the Middle Bronze Age, like the seal of Hasrurum, or likely to be assigned to this particular period, like Byblos stamp seal no. 6593, and which formally reminds one of our present comma, and (3) the sign resembling a variant of our modem A rounded at the top, which in the text of tablet c displays a marked tendency to feature at the end of a line, as in case of lines 1, 2, 5, 6, and 10, and which, as will be argued below, in form is most closely related to a writing variant of D3 as attested for spatulae b and e, the latter (i. e. D3), as will be further elaborated later on, sometimes expressing a coordinative conjunction effectively functioning as our punctuation mark (Best in Best/Woudhuizen 1989, 39-40, fig. 3; cf. our fig. 2).

IV.3 Doublets and TripletsNow, if we next turn to the relevant internal evidence, it deserves our attention that there can be distinguished a number of recurrent combinations characterized by alternation of signs in final position in like manner as the Kober doublets and triplets of Linear B. In actual fact, in the texts of tablets c and d we appear to be confronted with as much as 5 doublets, 1 triplet, and, if evidence from stele a be included, even 1 quadruplet (see fig. 3). On account of the fact that alternating signs in final position of otherwise identical combinations may be indicative of nominal declension which in syllabic writing can only find expression by signs rendering one and the same consonant but of which the vowel differs, the alternating root-final signs of the doublets, triplet, and quadruplet can be arranged in


a rudimentary grid (see fig. 8a). With this limited set of predictions about the value of the signs involved we are subsequently in the position to verify possible external evidence as provided by a formal resemblence to counterparts in possibly related scripts, like Egyptian hieroglyphic and Cretan Linear A. In doing so, it immediately becomes clear that the possible relationship in form of G17 with Linear A L22 lu and that of E12 with the Cretan hieroglyphic determinative of personal name El4, which, considering its correspondence to Sumerian LÛ of the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, may reasonably be suggested to render the value /w, too (see fig. 10), receives welcome confirmation from the fact that in accordance with the prediction from internal evidence these signs indeed happen to render syllabic values characterized by one and the same consonant, i. c. I. In like manner, the relationship of E10 to Cretan Linear LI03 ki. especially its variant writing as attested for the inscription from Monte Morrone in southern Italy dated to c, 1800-1600 BC (Best/Woudhuizen 1988, 111-113; see further Woudhuizen forthc. 2), and that of DI to Egyptian hieroglyphic 038 kb nt (see fig. 9) fairly well meet the requirement that the consonant of these two signs must be the same, and hence the validity of the given parallels may be considered to have received internal verification. On the other hand, in the light of the relevant external evidence, which will be further elaborated below, the featuring of Al 6 and F5 in doublet 5 appears to be phonetically irrelevant but rather to be based on a similarity in content.

IV.4 Writing VariantsAnother facet of internal analysis is formed by the detection of writing variants of one and the same combination resulting from the alternative use by the scribe or scribes of signs expressing either the same or a very similar value. One of the most obvious cases in point is formed by the root of doublet 1 and quadruplet 1, which is variously written with Bll and G1 in second position, the first variant being confined to the text of tablet c, whereas the second typifies that of tablet d as well as stele a (variant writing 1). Another type of graphic variation consists of root-lengthening by the addition of semi-vowels. Such a procedure may well be exemplified by the root of doublet 2, which sometimes is extended by the addition of F1 before the root-final consonant or, in a writing variant substituting Al2 for B5 regularly occurring in second position which in the same manner is extended in the penultimate syllable, the addition of E8 in between the first two syllables (variant writing 2). Obviously, the identification of graphic variants is more secure in the case of the longer roots, comprising a sequence of 4 signs or more (cf. writing variant 8), than that of the shorter roots involving the combination of only 2 signs. Yet, there is a significant amount of evidence suggesting that A6-8 interchanges with G6, as it is the case in the longer otherwise identical repetition of stele g, lines 4 and 5 (variant writing 10), also in two-syllable words, further involving interchange between G6 and D4, which can be en-


hanccd by identical contexts, and of the aforesaid with E23 (writing variants 5 and 7). As a matter of fact, it seems not unreasonable to suggest that in case of E23, D4, and G6 we are actually dealing with rounded and angular variants of one and the same sign. Whatever the extent of the latter inference, the alternative possibility of interchange between D4 and G6 on the one hand and B5 on the other as suggested by writing variant 6 remains isolated and should therefore better be discarded. Another bi-syllabic root possibly subject to graphic variation may concern the combination of D3 and E8, which, as duly noted by Best, just like that of G4 with E8, shows a marked tendency to occur after instances of the various punctuation marks (c. 1; 9; d. 3) or at the beginning of a new line after a vacat in the previous one (c. 8; d. 18), and hence may well come into consideration as a conjunction (Best in Best/Woudhuizen 1989, 39-40). In any case, one cannot help to observe that the possible writing variant of D3 in combination with A3 in three highly repetitive sequences likely performs the function of a coordinative conjunction (c. 6; 10; d. 15-16; see further variant writing/doublet 5 below), and that those of D3 with F5 and G4 with D5 turn up at the beginning of a new line (d. 5; a. 6; 8) (cf. variant writing 4). As a result of the given evidence for graphic variation (see fig. 4), we are in the position to predict of yet some more signs that these render one and the same or a similar consonantal value or, in two instances, are likely to concern semi-vowels (see fig. 8b).

Turning once more to the correlation of predictions from internal evidence with comparative data provided by the possibly related scripts, it deserves our attention that the formal resemblance of A10 to Egyptian hieroglyphic 110 d (under consideration of the fact that 112 “cobra”, which provides the closest formal match, appears to have influenced its ductus) and that of D9 to Cretan Linear A LI03 de receives welcome confirmation from their interchange. Similarly, the relationship in form of A6-7 to Egyptian hieroglyphic L2 bit “bee” and of G2 to Cretan Linear A L56 pi which originates from Cretan hieroglyphic CHIC021 depicting a bee from the top instead of the side is likewise enhanced by their interchange. In like manner, the similarity of B5 to Cretan Linear L54 re, especially the variant attested for the Monte Morrone inscription mentioned earlier with its tail bending (this time to the right, not to the left) as happens to be the case with its second occurrence in this text, and the near identity of A12 to Egyptian hieroglyphic D4 irt “eye” may well be considered compatible with their interchange under the condition that the medial liquid of irt can be hold responsible for the ultimate consonantal value of A12 (as an alternative option, the rV-value of the Byblian “eye” sign may be assumed to have resulted from its mixing-up locally with Egyptian hieroglyphic D21 r or n “mouth”, which after all is of similar form and comparable frequency as the Egyptian “eye” sign).

In regard to the semi-vowels, it is noteworthy that in the case of F1 the given internal evidence coincides with its formal resemblance to Linear A L81 a ye, especially its variant as attested for the Monte Morrone inscription, again, with


two “flags” at the top instead of the lower side. Next, the correspondence of D5 to on the one hand Egyptian hieroglyphic 031 c’ “door” and on the other Cretan Linear A L32 ya originating from Cretan hieroglyphic E44 for the same value (my thanks are due to Jan Best for communicating this observation to me during our meetings of the Alvama Research Group, but note that, as far as the Byblos script is concerned, the equation already features in Dunand 1945, 122-123, fig. 42) is in conformity with its noted interchangeability with the semi-vowel E8. To this comes that two more signs from the series of semi-vowels, G2 and F5, are so closely related in form that they may well come into consideration as graphic variants of one and the same sign, of which the origin can be positively traced back to Egyptian hieroglyphic S34 cnh “sandal-strap”—actually appearing once in its original form as F2 in the text of tablet c—against the background of the formal development of the latter sign in the Levant, North Syria, Crete, and Anatolia during the Middle Bronze Age, and of which the phonetic representation as ya coincides with the transformation of Egyptian c- into Byblian y- already encountered in connection with the aforegoing door-sign (see fig. 11, reproduced from Woudhuizen 2006b, 3, fig. 1). Finally, the relationship in form of D3 and G4 to Cretan Linear A L75 wa and L97 u, respectively, enables us to identify their combination with the semi-vowel E8 as the Old Phoenician coordinative conjunctions waya and uya analyzable as compounds of Akkadian cuneiform wa and u or Ugaritic w and u “and” in combination with the Ugaritic emphatic particle y, actually recorded in Linear A in form of wa-ya and u-ya and for a Phoenician inscription from Lapethos in Cyprus dated to 275 BC in form of wy (Best/Woudhuizen 1989, 39; KAI no. 43, line 9). Owing to their frequency, especially if their various writing forms are taken into consideration, the identification of these conjunctions, in combination with that of the punctuation marks, enables us to unravel the structure of the texts of tablets c and d to a great deal and to break it up into separate entities like phrases or clauses. Note, furthermore, that the inclusion of A3 in the series of writing variants for the semivowel ya (or ye) indicates its identification with Egyptian hieroglyphic G25 > “crested ibis” rather than G39 (or z>) “pintail duck” as proposed by Best on the basis of the, for its lack of support from the Byblian king-list (cf. Jidejian 1968, 209-212), highly unlikely identification of a Byblian royal name Ezekiel (Best in Best/Woudhuizen 1989, 42; this name, of Hebrew background, is, as far as the evidence goes, recorded only for the 6th century BC onwards, see Met- zer/Coogan 1993, 217, s. v. Ezekiel; Freedman 1992, 711, s. v. Ezekiel), whereas the semi-vowel nature of A3 may further be underlined by the fact that the variant writing of E8 ya attested for line 1 of tablet c with an extra horizontal stroke at its lower side may reasonably be suggested to consist of a linearized variant of A3, being reduced to its outline (it should be realized in this connection that the occurrence of a linearized variant of a sign alongside the original hieroglyphic one is paralleled for the arm-sign as exemplified by writing variant 3, according to which Al3, corresponding to Egyptian hieroglyphic D36


“arm”, alternates with Al8, strikingly recalling the later Phoenician alphabetic yod—both variants to all probability representing the syllabic value ya as acrophonically derived from the Semitic equivalent of the Egyptian word for arm, yad, in like manner as this is the case with the relevant Proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician alphabetic counterparts, of which the values, of course, are further reduced to consonantal y, and, if so, thus providing us, after the door- and ankh- sign, with a third instance of the transformation of Egyptian c- into Byblian y-).

IV<5 Doublets and Triplets in Variant WritingIf we subsequently apply our evidence for writing variants also to combinations characterized by alternating signs in final position, this enables us to distinguish three more doublets (doublets 6-8), yet another triplet (triplet 2), and even a second quadruplet (see fig. 5). As a result of this further evidence for inflection, it can be deduced from doublet 6 that B2-3 and D9 are likely to render the same consonant, and from doublet 8 that the same holds good for B3 and B8 (see fig. 8c). Now, we have already seen in the above that D9 renders the value de, so that we are likely to be dealing here with a dental series. This prediction can be further underlined by the relevant comparative evidence, since B3, especially in its hieroglyphic variant B2 as attested for stele a, bears a striking formal resemblance to Egyptian hieroglyphic Rl 1 dd “^’ed-column”, whereas its linearized variant is in fact identical to Linear A L39 tu. Similarly, the closest comparable evidence for B8 is provided by the Cretan hieroglyphic “hand that takes”, E10, with corresponding value tâ, from which it evidently follows that the unvoiced or tenuis application of the 4/W-column as encountered in the Cretan milieu also applies to the Byblos script and that its correlation with D9 de in doublet 5 results from interchange between voiced [d] and unvoiced [t].

IV.6 Prefixed and Suffixed CombinationsYet another type of internal evidence consists of the distinction of possibly prefixed and suffixed combinations. In the texts of tablets c and d, we appear to be confronted with one instance of a further identical prefixed combination, and three more of such combinations if graphic variants are included, whereas only one further identical combination comes into consideration as being suffixed (see fig. 6). If we relate these findings to what we know about the value of the signs thus far and further relevant comparative evidence, it turns out that some of the seemingly prefixed combinations are rather to be classified as writing variants, namely: prefixed combination 2, according to which D3 wa alternates with El, which on the basis of its relationship in form to Cretan Linear A L52 a may reasonably be assumed to represent the vowel a, so that we thus arrive at graphic variants with or without initial w of the type (w)äbdu(m), (w)aklu(m), etc., and two of the instances of prefixed combination 3, according to which El


a alternates with A15, which on the basis of its identification as a linearized rendering of Egyptian hieroglyphic N25 fust “foreign land” arguably may be suggested to render the syllabic value ha according to the acrophonic principle, so that we appear to be actually dealing with two writing variants of the place name Aleppo, with or without initial h, as only to be expected in the light of the latter’s recorded alternative spellings as Halpa or Halab—which, by the way, in Luwian hieroglyphic is written with a rounded variant of our present W-shaped sign, LH *199, for the syllabic value ha (Woudhuizen 2004a, 9-14, fig. 1; for the numbering of Luwian hieroglyphic signs, see Laroche I960)! Similarly, considering the formal resemblance of the final El5 to Cretan Linear A L26 na, the only seemingly suffixed combination appears to be nothing but a full writing of the noun bit hiläni otherwise occurring in shorthand variant characterized by the omission of root-final n. In the remaining cases, however, the analysis of a prefix seems to be well-founded, thus presenting us with the element n- in the case of prefixed combinations 1 and 4 (for the identification of E6 as nu, which unfortunately cannot be substantiated by external evidence, see below) and that of t- in the remaining instances of prefixed combination 3, which, as we will argue below, are likely to receive meaningful explanation as pre- (or postpositions. If indeed we are right in our analysis of the combination in d. 9 as a prefixed variant of quadruplet 2, it necessarily follows that E14 is interchangeable with D1 ke, so that it should accordingly be assigned to the ^-series, which coincides with its relationship in form to Egyptian hieroglyphic D29, a combination of D28 k> “soul” with the standard for carrying religious symbols R12 rendering the same phonetic value but being reserved for divine souls only (cf. fig. 8d).

3Note that the syllabic value ha of the polyphone LH * 199 tarhunt, hâ (if it does not

originate from hatali- “to smite” as might be suggested for that of the related *196 hati, hâ as well) sofar goes unaccounted for within the frame of the current explanation of the sign as a symbol of lightning, even though from its earliest attestation during the Middle Bronze Age onwards it already appears in Anatolia (in contrast to the situation in the related Cretan hieroglyphic, see Woudhuizen 2006a, 90, table IV; 106, # 128) without a handle serving as a grip (Alp 1968, 214-215, nos. 191-192, 196, fig. 155-156, 158). It is, therefore, conceivable that two similar, but originally distinct signs, the symbol of lightning for the logographic value TARHUNT on the one hand and the Egyptian hieroglyphic N25 in its linearized, provincial W-shaped variant for the syllabic value hâ as acrophonically derived from h>st on the other hand, in the course of time have coalesced into one and the same glyph, facilitated by the loss of the handle of the symbol of lightning in the Anatolian context already, as we have just noted, during the Middle Bronze Age. If so, this merger is likely to have taken place in the region of Aleppo, as the use of the rounded variant of the W-shaped sign for the syllabic value hâ is typical and of a longstanding tradition for the writing of the toponym in question and its derivations in Luwian hieroglyphic.


IV.7 ConjunctionsIn the preceding we have already noted that the combination of D3 wa with A3 ya likely functions as a coordinative conjunction, corresponding to Cretan Linear A wa-ya and later Phoenician wy “and” in three highly repetitive sequences as attested for lines 6 and 10 of tablet c and lines 15-16 of tablet d. Now, one of the constituent elements of these sequences, our writing variant 1, also features in as much as three of a total of four other highly repetitive sequences which are likely to be interpreted as coordinated couples, be it in a declined variant figuring in doublet 1 and quadruplet 1, but always in the same position at the end of the sequence (see fig. 7). In the four sequences in question, however, the combination of D3 wa with A3 ya is substituted by A21, so that it lies at hand to assume that this likewise functions as a coordinative conjunction. Now, if we realize that A21 may reasonably be suggested to render the value ma on account of its similarity in form to Cretan Linear L95 ma, ultimately originating from the Cretan hieroglyphic cat-sign E74-5 for the same value, the latter inference appears to be largely validated by the etymological relationship of the assumed coordinative ma to Akkadian -ma and Ugaritic -m, with the noted restriction that against the backdrop of this comparison we would have expected it to be enclitic which is patently not the case (Tropper 2000, 831).4 Under due consideration of writing variants we have come across earlier (to which should be added that A4 on the basis of its alignment with A14 ya in the present sequence is likely to be identified as a mere writing variant of A3 yd), yet another instance of substitution of a conjunction, this time the variant combination of G4 u with E8 ya, by another one, this time in form of El7, may be provided by the sequence at the beginning of line 17 of tablet d if compared to similar sequences in lines 3, 23- 24, and 26 of the same tablet (see fig. 7). Given the fact that E17 is identical to Cretan Linear A L2 pa, which, through the intermediary form (with a circular attachment as a fossilized reminder to the original heads of the cunei) as attested for Byblos stamp seal no. 6593, can be shown to ultimately originate from the Akkadian cuneiform (Best in Best/Woudhuizen 1988, 9, fig. 9, 13, figs. 16-17), interpretation in line with Ugaritic p- or âp (Segert 1984, 103) and Phoenician 3p or 'ap “and also” (Krahmalkov 2001, 270), at least in my opinion, lies at hand (cf. fig. 8e).

4 The coordinative conjunction -ma is not enclitic in the sense of Indo-European *-kwe (X Y-kwe “x and y”), but, as to be expected, in that of Akkadian -ma (X-ma Y “x and y”).

IV.8 Subsidiary External EvidenceIn the aforegoing, we have discussed more than 25 cases in which the value of a sign could be determined on the basis of the interplay between internal and external evidence. As far as external evidence is concerned, in 10 of these instances the relevant comparative evidence is provided by Egyptian hieroglyphic,


whereas in 16 instances the nearest parallels are rather found in predominantly Cretan Linear A and subsidiarily its hieroglyphic forerunner, though, considering the fact that a substantial component of the signary of Linear A and, to a lesser extent, its local Cretan hieroglyphic forerunner originates from Egyptian hieroglyphic, the distinction is sometimes difficult to make. As illustrated in our figures 9 and 10, however, there are a lot more signs of the Byblos script related in form to a counterpart in either Egyptian hieroglyphic or Cretan Linear A and its hieroglyphic forerunner, the total of Egyptian correspondences amounting 22 and that of Cretan ones 21, with a partial overlap between both categories.

In regard to the Egyptian component, it deserves our attention that 15, i. e. more than 2/srd of the suggested comparanda can actually be shown to have been current in Byblos owing to their attestation in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions found in this place. From these 15 Egyptian comparanda demonstrably current at Byblos, moreover, all but one can be traced in inscriptions dating from the Middle Bronze Age (viz.: D4, D28 (representing D29), D36, G1 (representing G25), 110, L2, M13, M17, N25, 01, 06, R8, Rll, S34, and S40), the only exception being formed by 04, which may well come into consideration as the model of Byblian D2 and which is attested only for an Early Bronze Age inscription, where it figures in a titular expression of a scribal functionary, and, as scribal schools are to be expected in the towns, hence more likely refers to an urban entity than the rural one as suggested by the identification of the sign as a reed shelter in the fields; but note that in my list I have preferred 06, which occurs twice in the legend of the seal of the Byblian Middle Bronze Age king Hasrurum, as a comparison for the Byblian sign in question—a suggestion which may well receive further emphasis from the fact that hwt actually renders the meaning of ‘"town” or “city” in Hwt-k*-Pth “Soul-house of Ptah (= Memphis)” (cf. Haider 1988, 212-213, nt. 244). What is even more revealing in the present context, is the fact that in a number of instances the “barbarian” or provincial variants of Egyptian hieroglyphic signs as recorded for inscriptions dating from the reigns of Hasrurum to cEgel or cEgliya during the final stage of the Middle Bronze Age, to which, as we have noted before, Byblos stamp seal no. 6593 may safely be assigned as well, provide us with the closest comparative evidence for signs of the Byblos script and their counterparts in Linear A. In view of the fact that in one case such a comparison is found in an inscription from the reign of Tuthmosis III, this local, provincial touch in Egyptian writing may well be assumed to have been continued into the Late Bronze Age. Whatever the extent of the latter remark, the most striking examples of provincial variants of Egyptian signs having sparked off in the local Byblos script and the related Cretan Linear A are the variant of U6 mr (as used in the word mri “beloved (person)”) and those of M17 i “reed” from the seal of Hasrurum, of R8 ntr “god” and W9 hnm (type of vase) from Byblos stamp seal no. 6593, and of T25 db= (reed-floats) from an inscription with the cartouche of Tuthmosis III found in situ in the temple of Ba'alat (see fig. 12), thus providing us with intermediary


forms İn the development of the linear counterparts El3, E20, F3, E10, and D9, respectively, and, in sofar as it applies, their Cretan offshoots (but note that the tendency toward a triangular shape of E10 and its Cretan Linear A counterpart LI03, which does not yet typify the latter’s Cretan hieroglyphic forerunner E47, may well be induced by a typical Minoan type of libation vase, the kyliks). As far as local adaptations of the meaning of Egyptian signs is concerned, it is of relevance to note in this connection that 01 pr “house” is used in one of the two inscriptions by cEgel or cEgliya and in the partly preserved one from the temple of the obelisks of which, as we have noted earlier, the name of the dedicator has been lost, but which for stylistic considerations may safely be assigned to about the same period, for “temple” in exactly the same way as its counterpart Ell of the Byblos script—which, by the way, in line with the Demotic (pi ntr “temple”, place name Pi Ramesses “house of Ramesses”) and Hebrew (as in the toponym Pîtöm or Pithöm “temple of Atum”) reflection of pr, may reasonably be suggested to render the logographic value 77 (cf. Bernal 2006, 185, 239).

Concerning the Cretan component, on the other hand—for which, by the way, a conditio sine qua non is provided by Egyptian evidence on relationships between Kpny “Byblos” or the region of Rtnw hr.t “Upper Retenu” more in general with Kftiw or Mnnws or both as variant references to Crete from the latest phase of the Early Bronze Age, c. 2250-2000 BC, and the earliest one of the Middle Bronze Age (the story of Sinuhe from the early 20th century BC) up to the reign of Amenhotep II, 1427-1400 BC5—it is worth noting, that, with the exception of the correspondence of B8 ta to the Cretan hieroglyphic “hand that grabs” E10 tâ, there are no signs among the suggested comparanda originating from a Luwian hieroglyphic background, whereas such signs, with a total of 76 in sum (Woudhuizen 2006a, 87-91, table IV, supplemented by Woudhuizen forthc. 1), constituted a major part of the Cretan hieroglyphic signary and, though less abundently, even a substantial one of that of Linear A. As it seems highly unlikely to assume that the scribes responsible for the creation of the Byblos script purposely selected signs from Cretan hieroglyphic and Linear A of an

6

5 Vercoutter 1956, 38-87, 160-163; note that in texts from the latter half of the reign of Tuthmosis III, 1479-1427 BC, i. e. after the for Minoan Crete disastrous Santorini eruption of c. 1450 BC, a change sets in and Kftiw and Mnnws rather become associated with 3Isy “Asia” or Hittite Assuwa in western Anatolia and Tin’yw “Danaoi” or the Mycenaean Greeks, at first while preserving the old connection with Byblos and Retenu, but later, from the times of Amenhotep III, 1390-1352 BC (list of Aegean place names on one of the inscribed statue bases of his temple tomb at Kom el-Hetan, see most recently Edel/Görg 2005, 161-191), to that of Ramesses III, 1184-1153 BC, exclusively so.

Cf. Woudhuizen 2006a, 92-95, tables V-VI; note that the 14 instances of a Cretan sign originating from Egyptian hieroglyphic thanks to our work at the Byblos script can be supplemented with 5 extra cases, so that this component amounts to 19 in sum if, at least, we do not take into account further Egyptian additions to exclusively Linear A.

Egyptian background to the exclusion of those from a Luwian hieroglyphic


origin, it can only be surmised that the signs of the Byblos script in question radiated to Crete and not vice versa. Considering the crucial role played by the local provincial Egyptian hieroglyphic in the development of a number of these signs, we may even go one step further and deduce that the formation of Linear A under the stimulus of the Byblian tendency to linearization is likely to be dated from c. 1730 BC onwards, which, by and large, coincides with the end of Middle Minoan II, c. 1700 BC, as a terminus ante quem for the earliest datable Linear A inscriptions (note that the provincial variant of Egyptian hieroglyphic X8 di as attested for Byblos stamp seal no. 6593, which in form of the so-called “trowel” (El8) already turns up in Cretan glyptic from c, 2000 BC onwards, for its mere hieroglyphic nature and lack of a linear descendant strictly speaking has no bearing on the genesis of Linear A, but nevertheless this example indicates that provincial writing variants of Egyptian hieroglyphic signs may already have been extant prior to c. 1730 BC). In the process of radiation, the Egyptian influence diminished, both in terms of number of signs as well as in that of preservation of their original value. It should be stipulated in this connection, however, that the marked differences in ductus between signs from the Byblos script on the one hand and their Linear A counterparts on the other indicate the development of a local style in the regions in question, which in effect means that the Byblos script must be assumed to already have been in use for some time before its actual attestation and hence to have been current on perishable writing material. In connection with the process of adoption of Egyptian signs in the Byblos script and its Cretan relatives, it deserves our attention, finally, that, as far as their value is concerned, this is, if related to the original one and if the latter happens to be either logographic or consonantal, in the majority of the cases transformed into a syllabic value of CV type, whereas, in the case that the hieroglyphic form is preserved, contrary to the principles of Egyptian hieroglyphic orthography according to which the sign regularly faces the beginning of the text, this may alternatively be looking in the direction of the writing (as such, the Byblos script, in which the glyphs’ looking into the direction of the writing has in fact become their regular stance, underlines the validity of my analysis of the Cretan hieroglyphic inscription on the Malia altar stone in sofar as this aspect is concerned, see Woudhuizen 2006a, 107-113).

It must be admitted, of course, that, even with the inclusion of the comparative data lacking internal verification, we are not in the position to account for the determination of the value of every sign from the entire signary as presented in fig. 13. To some extent, however, this shortcoming can be repaired by the distinction of variant writings, an overview of which is given in fig. 14. Guiding principles in the distinction of writing variants are, apart from variation in depiction either from the side or from the top as in case with the bee-sign (A5/6/7/8-G2): angular versus rounded (A13-A18, C4-E23, E4-A17, E10-G15, D3-G25), 90° turning (A20-C2, G17-H6, A14-A18), hieroglyphic versus linearized (A3/4-E8, A5-A6/7/8, A13-A18, B2-B3), and mirroring (Fl, G6, A18-


G9). Under consideration of the fact that 4 more signs arc to be eliminated from the signary proper owing to their identification as numbers (El9, E3, H4, and H5) as already established for the two first mentioned ones by Best, this leaves us with the residual of 8 signs in total (B4, B7, D2, E5, E6, E26, G7, and H2) of which the value is still in need of some sort of underpinning.

V Primary Linguistic ResultsIt goes without saying that the values of the signs, however soundly based these may be, are still in need of linguistic verification in the sense that the resulting readings are plausible within the given context and lead up to a coherent text displaying regularities which preferably should be in accordance to the rules of grammar and syntax of the expected local vernacular, a Northwest Semitic dialect ancestral to the later Phoenician.

Now, the first readings we are confronted with, in addition to the conjunctions already mentioned in the foregoing, are ti-sa-da-lu, etc. of doublet 1 and ti- sai-da-lu, etc. of quadruplet 1, which on the basis of their correspondence to the Hurritic personal name Tisatal (see further below) are likely to be interpreted accordingly. Next, triplet 1 confronts us with the sequence wa-ka-ya-lu, etc., which bears a striking resemblance to the Akkadian titular expression (w)aklu(m) “overseer”. Furthermore, doublets 3 and 4 read as pi]-ta-ki-lu, etc., and i- le-ki, etc., respectively, which, especially with a view to the former’s full form being pii-ta-ki-la~na, allows for their identification with Akkadian bit hiläni, a typically Syrian two columned portico entrance (Akkermans Schwartz 2003, 334—335, first attested in corpore in the ground plan of Alalakh IV), and ilku(m) “due” (for the Akkadian forms cited here and in the following, see AHw). In order to be able to tackle our doublet 2, however, we need to address the identification of the first combination of the texts of both tablet c and d, of which only the value of the sign in the middle is known, thus presenting us with the sequence D2-ta-E6. Honesty compels us to admit that the only way to continue at this point is formed by the sophisticated guess and assume that we might be dealing here with the geographical name Rtnw or Retenu functioning as a heading, which results in the identification of D2 as ra and of E6 as nu. The plausibility of this guess may further be underlined by the fact that in the text of tablet c the assumed geographic name precedes the combinations ya-ya-ka-le and lu-H2-lu. the latter of which strikingly recalls the Sumerian titular expression LUGAL “king” as known from the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, from which identification it evidently follows that H2 renders the value kai, whereas in case of the former we are obviously dealing with the Byblian royal name 'Egel or 'Egliya (see further below). Thanks to the new values gained in this manner, we are subsequently in the position to read doublet 2 as nu-re-ya-la, etc., which, on account of its correspondence to Semitic personal names of the type Nurili(a) (see further below), appears to confront us with yet another per-


sonal name.If we next turn to the writing variants, it may reasonably be suggested that

with tu-pi, etc. (no. 5), the root of which corresponds to Akkadian t/tuppu(m) ‘"tablet”, we actually have a direct reference to the object on which the text (at least in the case of tablets c and d) is written itself. Yet another writing variant concerns pirpii, etc. (no. 7), which comes into consideration as bibil, a form of Akkadian biblu(m) “gift, offering” also attested in Cretan Linear A administrative texts, where it functions as the equivalent of Linear B do-so-mo Idosmöil “as a gift”. The third writing variant deserving our attention in this connection is a-ma-ra-tu, etc. (no. 8), recalling Akkadian amertidjri) “inspection”. The revalue of G7 resulting from this variant writing may subsequently help us out in connection with the final combination of tablet d, reading as far as it can be established at the moment ya-rV-lV, which, of course, reminds one of the Aleppian royal name Yarimlim (see further below), who in that case, by undersigning the tablet, reveals himself as the principal of its text (note in this connection that also in the dedicatory inscriptions of cEgel or cEgliya the name of the king responsible for the dedications is revealed at the end of the text!). Moreover, if this identification indeed applies, it appears to be suggestive of a closed CVC- type of syllabic value for C2 and G7, namely lim and rim, respectively. In the case of C2 this inference subsequently allows for the identification of the form wa-ka-ya-lim as an oblique plural (masculine) in dm of (yv)aklu(m) “overseer” corresponding to Ugaritic -ima for the same function, but in the case of G7 it should be stipulated that this sign can only function as an open syllable, i. c. ri, in our writing variant 8. If we include here also writing variants of doublets, we may add the identification of writing variant/doublet 6 ke-li-tu or ke-lii-de as variant forms of the personal name Kieltie or Kilidu of ultimate Hurritic background in like manner as Tisatal (see further below) and that of writing variant/doublet 8 pirtu or pii-ta as declined variants representing the nominative and accusative singular, respectively, of Akkadian bîtu(m) “house”.

Addressing the reading of prefixed and suffixed combinations, finally, we will leave the level of isolated identifications and ascend to the one involving larger grammatical entities like clauses and phrases. As far as it can be established at the moment, the prefixed combination 1, which we have already noted in the above to have a bearing on a prefixed element n- likely to be taken for a pre- (or postposition, variously reads a-E26-ta-ki or na-E26-ta-ki, the first variant of which is, given the fact that we have already been confronted with the Aleppian royal name Yarimlim, highly suggestive of the royal name Ammi- taku(m) (see further below) as attested for the seat of the Aleppian sekundogenitur, Alalakh, from which it evidently follows that the value of E26 is mi. Now, the prefixed instance of the royal name Ammitaku(m) of line 11 of tablet c features in an environment of which some elements have been treated in the above, namely those forming the sequence a-ma-ra-tu tu-pi, likely to be interpreted as the nominative singular in -u of amertu(m) “inspection” in combina


tion with the genitive singular in -i of t/tuppu(m) “tablet”, hence rendering the meaning “inspection of the tablet”. If we add to this the interpretation of u-ra-ka at the beginning of the line as the accusative singular in -a of Akkadian (w)ar- hum or urhu(m) “month” and of lu-ma at its end as the accusative singular in -a of lü(m) “bull” as preluded upon by Best, it may reasonably be suggested that we are actually dealing with some sort of dating formula and that the prefixed element n- functions as a shorthand of the Akkadian preposition ana for the meaning “in” as recorded for peripheral cuneiform inscriptions (Friedrich 1946, 112, Wörterverzeichnisse, III. Akkadische Wörter, s. v. ana; note that the final vowel of the previous word and the initial vowel of the following word is a), so that we arrive at the following interpretation of the line in its entirety:

“inspection of the tablet from the side of Ammitaku(m) in the month (of the) Bull”.

Also the at first sight seemingly suffixed combination pii-ta-ki-la-na, which we have been able to identify as a full rendering of the Akkadian bit hilâni (apparently characterized by the accusative singular ending in -a) otherwise occurring in shorthand variants omitting the final consonant n, features in line 8 of tablet c in an environment with some familiar elements, like the conjunction u- ya “and” at its start and the variant writing pii-pii of Akkadian bibil “as a present, offering” in penultimate position. In the given context, then, it seems not farfetched to suggest the identification of the combination ya2-ta-wa, which in

rdturn precedes the forms pii-pii and pirta-ki-la-na, as the 3 person singular or dual of the past tense of the verbal root tn, regularly prefixed by ya- and, under due consideration of interchange between wa and u, characterized by the ending -u, so that in phonetic terms it obviously must be assumed to represent lyatanwal as corresponding to Ugaritic ytn or lyatenul (Tropper 2000, 458, 635; cf. Segert 1984, 45, 71). If we further realize that lu corresponds to the Sumerian titular expression LÛ “man” as known from the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform and the residual element -ya in its various writing forms may, under due consideration of the fact the Aleppian great king Yarimlim on account of his undersigning of the text of tablet d is likely to be identified as the principal of the text of tablet c as well, receive meaningful explanation as the enclitic personal or possessive pronoun of the first person singular corresponding to Paleo-Syrian -z or -ya, Ugaritic -y, and Phoenician -y for the same function (Lipinski 2001, 314- 315), we obviously arrive at the following interpretation of the entire line:

“and (on behalf of) me my man/men [dual] has/have given as an offering the bit hilani”.

In this manner, we have been able to translate a single phrase in its entirety, with subject, verb, and object duly marked as such according to the rules of grammar for Northwest Semitic, which according to some serves as a criterion for a decipherment, though in actual practice this may remain subject to debate. Note in this connection that, as we will further adstruct below, from the context it is ab-


solutely clear that the subject LÛ represents the dual, which coincides with the fact that the Ugaritic counterpart of the verbal form yâ2-ta-wa or lyatanwal. ytn. in two of its recorded occurrences indeed happens to render the dual (Tropper 2000, 635; note that this observation also applies to the recurrence of the verbal form in question in the otherwise highly similar context of line 16 on tablet d). On the other hand, it must be admitted that, as expressed in the translation, the otherwise frequent preposition le “on behalf of’ (cf. Tropper 2000, 758-760 (form), 766-768 (meaning)) appears to be omitted.

Two supplementary observations are of importance to our understanding of the text on tablet c and, to a lesser extent, that on tablet d. In the first place, we have already noted that the personal name Tisadal figures as much as 5 times as final element of a combination characterized by the coordinative conjunctions wa-yâ and ma with, alternatively, a-ke -yâ] (c.3; 14), ke-li-tu or ke-lii-de (c.6; 10; d. 15-16), and a-pii-le or \a\-pi]-le (d.21-22; 27), whereas in one instance the titular expression wa-ka-li -ya? is substituted for personal name Tisadal (c.14). Now, it seems reasonable to infer from this recurrent pattern, that, on the one hand, Tisadal is to be identified with the functionary addressed as “my overseer” (cf Akkadian (w)aklu{m) “overseer”) and, on the other hand, the entities chaperoning him in fact have a bearing on one and the same person variously referred to by either his personal name Kelidu, or the kinship based form of address “my brother” (cf. Akkadian ahu(m) “brother”), or the titular expression “envoy, ambassador” (cf. Akkadian (yv)abilu{m) “envoy, ambassador (i. e.: person being sent)”). The plausibility of this inference is strengthened to a great deal by the fact that the first mention of the couple Kelidu and Tisadal in line 6 of tablet c is preceded by the element a, clearly a distinct entity in view of its being singled out as such between punctuation marks in the otherwise identical sequence of line 10 of the same tablet, which on the basis of its correspondence to the later Phoenician article A-, originating from the Canaanite demonstrative han- (Krahmalkov 2001, 85-88; Lipinski 2001, 324-325), can only come into consideration as an anaphoric referring back to the aforegoing couple of a-ke -yâ] “my brother” and Tisadal in line 3, so that it is absolutely clear that Kelidu is none other than the brother of the principal of the text, great king Yarimlim of Aleppo. And, by means of deduction, it can only be these two persons who are referred to by the combination lu -yÜ2 “my men (dual)” functioning as the subject of the verb yâ2-ta-wa or lyatanwal in line 8 of the same tablet! It is interesting to note in this connection that an Aleppian functionary addressed as

thapilu(m) features in the Mari texts dated to the early 18 century BC as a spokesman of the Aleppian stormgod Haddu or Adad, with, to say the least, a highly political message, namely that the support of his god, and by implication, that of the Aleppian great king Sumuepuh, to the ruler of Mari at the time, Yahdunlim, has been withdrawn, with all its practical consequences like the loss of previously granted territorial supervision, and alternatively been allocated to the latter’s rival, the Assyrian monarch Samsiadad (Durand 1993, 43 with refer-


ence to Mari A. 1968, lines 1 f£). Against the backdrop of this textual evidence, it needs no special pleading to argue that the persons eligible for such a mission in view of its confidential nature are likely to be drawn from the inner circles of the court, including, no doubt, the brother of the great king himself.

Secondly, in the section of the text of tablet c running from line 4 to line 10 we are evidently confronted with a for interpretative purposes revealing chiasm, since the combinations wa-sa and E5 ra at its start later on return in reversed order preceded by the preposition a-le (viz. a-le E5 ra in line 5 and a-le wa-sa in line 9), corresponding to the Semitic preposition reconstructed as **aley “to” (cf. Tropper 2000, 758-760 (meaning), 766-768 (form)) attested for Cretan Linear A in form of a-re, characterized by the interchange of [1] and [r] current in the region of the Levant at least from the times of the Ebla archive during the later Early Bronze Age onwards. Evidently, the offerings in question have actually been handed over to entities which are most plausibly be interpreted not as personal names or the names of deities but as constituent elements of the temple involved, which, on the basis of the relevant archaeological evidence, is no doubt to be identified as the temple of the obelisks dedicated to the local stormgod Resef (see further below). On account of the fact that it figures prominently among the indications of offerings, involving architectural features like a bit hiläni (in syllabic rendering) or hall of columns (in logographic rendering) and a house, E5 is likely to be identified as a logographic rendering of some type of offering, the nature of which may well be revealed by its form suggestive of a homed altar stand of similar type as that represented by the so-called sacred tree or standard, a current motif in the glyptic art of Alalakh VII (Collon 1975, nos. 28, 31, 71, 85, 112, etc.), or, as duly noted by Hrozny (1944, 150), more in general that of Luwian hieroglyphic *265 (= homed altar or lunar crescent or standard on a socle in the form of a bull’s “head en face”, occurring in Karkamis A23, § 17 as a determinative of the titulary expression mi-i-na-la-, corresponding to Hittite ^minalli- of definitely religious nature, cf. Laroche 1960, *265, rTischler HEG, s. v. ]Aiminalli-, and Woudhuizen 2004b, 60), hence our transliteration ARA. The meaning of the element ra associated with it in this particular section, finally, can be faithfully established with the help of its recurrence in one of the two titular expressions associated with the Aleppian dignitary Nure- yala in the text of tablet d, where, apart from wa-ka-ya-lim le lim “from among the overseers (overseer) of the assembly” in line 4 (cf. Akkadian akil li-im as attested for Alalakh (tablet no. 222, line 25; tablet no. 172, line 38, see Wiseman 1953, 159 and cf. AHw, s. v. lim)), the latter is specified as lu ra “mayor (of)

7Note in this connection that the titular expression hmu or limmu for the eponymous

functionary for one year as attested for Assyrian texts from the Kültepe / Kanesh period during the Middle Bronze Age is suggested by Krebemik (1987-1990, 25-27) to be related to or derived from lim, in which case it lies at hand to suggest that we are dealing here with the yearly-rotating president of the lim “thousand”, likely, in view of Ugaritic Rm and Hebrew leöm “people” (del Olmo Lete Sanmartin 2003, s. v. lim), to be taken


the city” (cf. Phoenician car ‘‘citadel” or the Canaanite TN Ramah “citadel, high place” < rwm “to elevate, put up” comparable to Greek TNs based on the element akro- “high”, see Hoftijzer/Jongeling 1995, s. v. car and rmh; cf. Bernal 2006, 181), i. e. of Aleppo, in the preceding line 2, which leads us to the interpretation of the combination ARA ra as a reference to a, or the, municipal (this time of Byblos) altar precinct, suggestive of an adjectival instead of nominal use of ra in this particular case.

Finally, the nature of the part of the temple indicated by the combination wa- sa may perhaps be clarified by the realization that we are likely to be dealing here with a phonetic rendering of the Egyptian notion of “dominion, lordship”, which already features in the texts of tablets c and d in logographic form as a result of our identification of A16 as a local provincial writing variant of Egyptian hieroglyphic S40 w’^-scepter. As stipulated by Alan Gardiner (1994, 559), this notion is closely linked up that of cnh “life” (S34) and dd “djed-column” (R11) denoting “stability” in standard expressions, as it is indeed the case with the legend on a gold diadem decorated with an uraeus from tomb II of the royal necropolis at Byblos, belonging to Yapisemuabi, the son of Abisemu I, in which the ankh- and J/W-signs occur flanked by pairs of antithetically placed w*s-scepters (see Jidejian 1968, fig. (or pl.) 57). Now, the gold diadem in ques-

for a collective in the sense of a people’s assembly (without suggesting any democratic overtures) or council of elders serving as an advisory commission for the king in like manner as the Hittite panku- (< PIE *penkke- “5” ~ “entire hand” = “total” = “assembly”). Along this line of reasoning, Tisadal, who according to the text of tablet c is a mere waklu(m) “overseer”, may reasonably be surmised to be a subordinate of the wa- ka-ya-lim le Um “amongst the overseers (overseer) of the assembly” and mayor of Aleppo, Nureyala, who in turn is absent in the text of the smaller tablet c but figures prominently in that of the larger tablet d. Now, if we allow for the, in the light of the historical parallels, plausible suggestion that the Um or advisory council of the king may have been represented by an executive board of uw£/w(m)’s or overseers in daily matters, which in turn may have been presided by a president who also no doubt headed the meetings of the council, designated as wa-ka-ya-lim le lim, it stands to reason to assume that with the association of waklu(m) with the number 7 in line 15 of tablet c it is expressed that Tisadal has accomplished his mission in Byblos also on behalf of his colleagues of the executive board, including its president Nureyala, which, if all this is correct, consisted of 7 members in sum, the residual 5 of which are not specified by name and hence remain anonymous. For Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age evidence on the council of elders or assembly in the nearby Phoenician region, see Aubet 2001, 144 ff. (is the Akkadian sîbûtu(m) as attested for the Amama texts in connection with official representatives of the North Syrian town of Irqata (Moran 1992, 172-3, note 1 ad EA 100), translated as “elders” in line with sibu(m), etc., “elder, witness”, perhaps linguistically affiliated with the numeral sebet(tum) or sibittu which in turn strikingly recalls PIE *septm~, so that, against the backdrop of the Byblian evidence, it would appear that the term does not refer to the assembly in toto but its executive board as a pars pro totoT), and for the panku- of the Old Hittite period (c. 1680-1500 BC), see Bryce 1998, 116-168.


tion is, of course, part and parcel of the royal insignia, and it symbolizes royal power as bestowed upon the king by the state god or gods, thus effectively expressing its religious legitimization. As a matter of fact, this very same notion is expressed in Luwian hieroglyphic by the word w arpa-, which in logographic variant is rendered by LH *273, clearly a local offshoot of the Egyptian cobra (112), i. e. the uraeus of the crowns. In the Neo-Hittite North Syrian context, then, the warpa- involved temple functionaries (Karkamis A2/3, § 16) and religious buildings erected by either the king himself (Körkün, §§ 4-5) or one of his subordinates (Maraş 14, §§ 2-4) to facilitate the cultic aspects of royal authority (cf. Hawkins 2000, 109-111, 172, 266 under due consideration of the adjustment of the interpretation of the word warpa- as elaborated in Woudhuizen 2004a (esp. pp. 36-37) and Woudhuizen 2004b; cf. also the personal name

thWarpalawas of the late 8 century BC ruler in the region of Tyana and loyal vassal, after the defeat of the Luwian great king Wasusarmas by the Assyrians under Tiglathpileser III, of the Phrygian king Midas, exemplifying the combination of the notions of warpa- as religiously based royal authority and of lawa- [a loan from Phrygian lava- “people, host”] as the people or its institutional representation). With the help of this background information, we are subsequently in the position to understand why so much emphasis is laid by the principal of the texts of tablets c and d, the Aleppian great king Yarimlim, on the dedication of w’x -ya “my wos-scepter” (c.4; cf. d.6) to wa-sa -ya or wa-sa i -ydi “my royal (treasury)” (c.9; cf. d.39) presumably situated, as we will try to show in the following, in the temple of the local equivalent of his protective deity Adad, the stormgod Resef: it actually signifies his sovereignty over the region of Byblos in Upper Retenu!

Considering the fact that there are no more than two verbal forms traceable in the texts of tablets c and d, and we appear to be actually dealing with a language dominated by prepositional phrases and clauses, it is, of course, of prime importance to our attempts at unraveling their contents to distinguish the prepositions, which, in my opinion, can be achieved for the elements a-le, le, pi, ka, t-, n-, and sa on the basis of the analogy provided by Phoenician 7, b, k, and 7, if only supplemented by Akkadian ana and sa.


Part Two: Texts in Transliteration and Interpretationi

I Tablete1. [vacat] ra-ta-nu 11 ya-yd-ka-le

lu-kai-lu / wa-ya lu f2. wa-ka-ya-le lu -nu lu TU /

ti-sa-da-lu J [vacat]3. le -yâı le X -ye / a-ke -yâ/ ma

ti-sa-da-le [vacat]4. wa-sa ARA ra w\v w’s -ya

pij ti-sa-da-le wa-sa pij -ke

5. u 1 pii wa-ka-li -yd 2 ARA pi] -ya a-le ARA ra f

6. ye lu TU -yd a / ke-li-tu wa-yd ti-sa-da-lu J [vacat]

7. pi}-ta-ki i-le-ki 1 Xie lapij-tu piı-ta-ki-le II

8. u-ya -yd I lu -yd2 yd2-ta-wa pirpii pij-ta-ki-le-na [vacat]

9. wa-ya a-le wa-sa -yawa 21 YAi -yd le -ya 1 ARA I

10. le / a I ke-li-tu wa-yd ti-sq-dq-lu f [vacat]

11. u-ra-ka / na-mi-ta-ki a-ma-ra-tutu-pi lu-ma [vacat]

12. a-le-pi lehrst -ki AES w ’s ka [w’s] pli -yâi wa ARA lei ~he [vacat]

13. [vacat] 'nh • lu\ lepirpii le -ydika ntr -ya ARA d’dwuka

“Retenu(:) "Egliya, king, and the man, overseer, our man, the man (of) the tablet, Tisadal.”“On behalf of me, on behalf of my councillors: my brother and Tisadal.” “(To) the royal (treasury and) altar (precinct of) the city(:) the was- scepter, my wav-sccptcr, by Tisadal, (to) the royal (treasury) by them (both), (thus): one (offering) by my overseer, (and subsidiarily) an altar by me, to the altar (precinct of) the city, so verily my men (of) the tablet, the aforesaid Kelidu and Tisadal(:) from the building due(s:) 1 (bit hiläni), (on behalf of) the councillors to facilitate these (offerings:) a house in addition to the bit hiläni;and (on behalf of) me my men have given as an offering the bit hiläni. And (subsidiarily) to my royal (treasury thus): two (offerings) (on behalf of) my (realm) Yamkhad, on behalf of me, (and) an altar on behalf of the aforesaid (councillors); (in this manner have acted) Kelidu and Tisadal.”“Inspection of the tablet from the side of Ammitaku in the month (of the) Bull.”“From the side of Aleppo on behalf of his (own) country (:) bronze (and) a wav-scepter in like manner as the wav-scepter on behalf of me; (and also) an altar on behalf of him.” “Hail (to) the men responsible for the offering on behalf of me, because my god (received) altar(s) (and) a hall of columns, (that is to say): because


14. la ka -ki q-ke -yd] ma wa-kq-li -ya2 [vacat]

15. [vacat?] wa-ka-ya-lu 1111111 [vacat]

these (offerings were given) thanks to them, my brother and my overseer!” “(The executive board of) 7 overseer(s).”

II Tablet d1. ra-ta-nu rim -yd wa PI ntr -yd ]

YA] lu de

2. tq-le-pi] -ya nu-re-ya-la lu raPI ra re-

3. rei a ra PI -nu ARA ! u-ya tu-pi] -yâ I

4. wa-ka-ya-lim nu~re-yarla le Um

5. wa-yd] wa-pi-le • lu la wa-pi-le

6. -nu ydj-ka-li7 la ra lu -ni sa]w’s -ya pi]

7. \ti\-sa]-da-le wa de // pi] u ti-sa]-

8. \da\-la lu -ni sa] w's rim d>dw ha-le-pi]

9. [wa]-ya pi] ti-sarda-lenu-ke-la ra

10. \lu\ rim -yd wa PI ntr ARA\pi]\-pi]ARA -ki le]

11. ka [pi]]-pi] ARA] • ARA pi7 -ya la YÂ7 ARA -nu ra re

“Retenu(:) my people(’s assembly): (to) the temple of my god.” “(At) Yam- khad the men (have decreed) this(:)” “At my (city of) Aleppo, Nureyala, the mayor (of) the city, (gives as an offering to) the temple (of) the city here, (to) our temple (in) the aforesaid city: an altar and my tablet, (so did) Nureyala, from among the overseers (overseer) of the people(’s assembly) and (in cooperation) with the ambassador.” “The mayor (accomplished) these (offerings), together with our ambassador (in the realm) of cEgliya, (and) our men of my wav-scepter (accomplished) these (offerings) (on behalf of) the city through the intermediary of Tisadal: (thus) this (as follows): through the intermediary of Tisadal then our men of the was- scepter (on behalf of) the people(’s assembly) (:) a hall of columns (from the side) of Aleppo, and through the intermediary of Tisadal in the name of the overseer (of) the city (and)the men (of) my people(’s assembly): (to) the temple (of) the god an altar as an offering, their altar on behalf of (the city),(and) in like manner as an offering (type of offering).” “(Concerning) the altar by me (and) these Yamkhad (offerings) (to) our altar (precinct) (in) the city [of Byblos] on behalf


12. Um de u-ya TU re YÂ -yd]ARA -yâ i Um -ke ntr ka

13. TU le lim w>s rej Um -yd PI •ARA pii -ya

14. la YÂ] ARA nu-ya-rei-ye-la -nu pi ntr lim la

15. AES hist da le -yd] ke-lipdewa-yd ti-sap

16. da-lu PI lu -ni saj YÂj -ya2 yd2~ta~wa pippi]

17. pa tu-pii -yd2 YA] lapipta-ki-lu / la

18. wa-ya la lu sa wa Um lim da lu PI

19. [ti]-sapde-lu rim -yd wa PI ntr -ydi de

20. wa-ya la YÂ / de M2 re1 / la ra

21. [w] ra PI lim -yd a-pipie ma

22. [ti\-sa pda-le pipta Hi -kej a •ARA

23. [nu]-re-ya-ye-la lu ra PIYA i -ki u-ya

24. tu-pli -yd / de la pi ppi ] nu-re-ya-le

25. [pîı]-pîı Y -ya d>dw pi] lu PI nu-re-ya-le

of the pcoplc(’s assembly) this: the tablet on behalf of my (realm of) Yamkhad (to) my altar (precinct) (and on behalf of) its peoplefs assembly) (to) the god in like manner as the tablet on behalf of the peoplefs assembly) (and) the wav-scepter on behalf of my people(’s assembly) (to) the temple.” “(Concerning) the altar by me (and)these Yamkhad (offerings:) the altar(:) our Nureyala (to) the temple (of) the god, the people(’s assembly) (:) these bronze (objects) (from our) country(: thus) this on behalf of me(:) Kelidu and Tisadal(to) the temple.” “Our men of my (realm of) Yamkhad have given as an offering (the altar), and also my tablet, these Yamkhad (offerings), (and) the bit hilemi, (all) these (things).”“And these (offerings:) the man of the peoplefs assembly) then, the people(’s assembly): this, the man (to) the temple, (that is to say:) Tisadal, my people(’s assembly): (to) the temple of my god this, and these Yamkhad (offerings), this hall of columns to facilitate these (offerings), (to) the city:(to) the temple (of) the city(:) my people(’s assembly), (through the intermediary of) the ambassador and Tisadal (:) a house on behalf of it, (z. c.:) the aforesaid altar.”“Nureyala, mayor (of) the city, (gives as an offering to) the temple.” “His Y amkhad andmy tablet (have decreed) this (:) these (things) as an offering (:) Nureyala as an offering to my altar (precinct:) a hall of columns by the man (to) the


26. ra re-rei le wa-ya2 -ya u-ya tu-pîı -yâ

27. [a\-pi]-le ma ti-sai-da-lepij-ta lij

28. wa2 lu pii nu-re-ya-le wa2 lu pi 1 ~ya2 la

29. [w] / nu-re-ya-le da le -kej pi] del

30. YÄ2 -ki yä2 lu depij-ta-ki-lu I ti-sa i-da(T)

31. a w>s re -ya2 i-le-ki 1nu ra ta-ma

32. a-mi-ta-ki tu-pi a-lu I a-le-pi

33. la lehrst -ki AES a-ma-ri-tu u sa

34. [-fe] wa rej -ya ke YA2 lenu-re-li

35. [T] P • nu de le ra ka lu sa

36. [..] ra ARA 10 le -ya le w*sra rei

37. [..] ma nu ki ma yâ] le sa saydı nu de

38. le -nu sa-re I i-le-ke 10 pi7 / pi]

39. d’dw u ta-le-pi] rim wa f wa-sa -yâ 1 /

40. pii-li1 f -yâi le nu-re-ya-la le ra

41. [vacat] ya-rim-lim • [vacat]

temple, Nureyala(to) the city here on behalf of both me and my tablet,(through the intermediary of) the ambassador and Tisadal(:) a house on behalf of (it),(so): (through the intermediary of) the men by Nureyala, (through the intermediary of) the men by me these (offerings).”“(Thus): Nureyala this, on behalf of him (to) the temple this (:)on account of his Yamkhad so verily the men (have given) this: the bit hiläni.” “Tisadal(:)the aforesaid ws-sceptre on behalf of me from the due(s:) 1“Now, the city (received) the missivefrom the side of Ammitaku (on account) of the tablet(:) the charter town of Aleppo (:)these (things) on behalf of its (own) country: bronze (and) inspection, (and): (subsidiarily) fromhim, (that is): on behalf of me, in like manner as Yamkhad on behalf of Nureyala:an altar (and) wav-scepter.” “Now, this on behalf of the city [of Byblos], in like manner as the men of (..) the city(:) an altar and 10 [??], on behalf of me, on behalf of the was- scepter (...)

(...) thison behalf of us the king(:) as a due 10 [??] as an offering, as an offering a hall of columns.” “(Thus): at Aleppo the people(’s assembly): (to) my royal (treasury),(thus) my ambassador on behalf of Nureyala on behalf of the city.” “Yarimlim.”


III Spatula bfront 1. • TU sa • YÂ2 Pİı 11

2. 1 le < tu-pb I sa NU waj-yä] le

3. tu-pi sa TI 110 NU4. [................. ]

back 1. pi~pl i Tl 10 NU2. tu-pi lei I YÂj nu

3. na lu -yâ2 1 mA

“Tablet of Yamkhad as an offering: 1, 1 on behalf of (the tablet) of Nureyala and on behalf ofthe tablet of Tisadal 10 Nureyala

“As an offering Tisadal 10 Nureyala on account of the tablet on behalf of Yamkhad (:) Nureyalato my man(:) 1 wav-scepter.”

Part Three: Key Elements of the Interpretation

I Onomastic EvidenceThe evidence for personal names in combination with that of titles and toponyms may be summarized as follows:

PERSONAL NAME1. ya-yä-ka-le, yai-ka-li/

2. ya-rim-lim

3. a-mi-ta-ki (n}a-mi-ta-ki

4. ke-li-tu, ke-lii-de

5. nu-re-ya-la, nu-re-yai-la, nu-re-ya-ye-la, nu-ya-rerye-la^ etc.

6. ti-sa-da-lu, ti~sarda-lu, ti-saj-da-lu^ etc.

TITLElu-kai-lu, sa-re

[lugal.gal]

[lugal]

wa-pi-le, a-pii-le, a-ke -yâ ilu ra, wa-ka-ya-lim le Um

wa-ka-ya-lu, etc.

PLACE NAME ra-ta-nu [= region of Byblos]Ya\mkhad] [= region of Aleppo] a-lu a-le-pi [= Alalakh]

[stationed at Byblos at the time](t)a-le-pii

ha-le-pif[sent by the people(’s assembly) to Byblos]

Comparative DataYarindim I—III, great kings of Aleppo (also occurring in form of Halpa orHalab), the capital of the land known as Yamkhad (see Klengel 1976-1980, 255-256; for the latter’s occurrence in abbreviation as YÂ, etc., cf. Luwianhieroglyphic HÂ “Hatti”); west-Semitic name composed of the elements yarim “he has exalted” and &Lim < Akkadian Um “thousand” as a collective (Huffmon 1965, glossary, s. v. RM and LM; cf. names like Yarim^Adad,


Ugaritic Yrmb'l, and Hebrew JirimejähÜ), developing into Ugaritic lim and Hebrew leöm "people” (del Olmo Lete / Sanmartin 2003, s. v. lim), hence likely denoting the foremost god of the community, which in case of Middle Bronze Age Aleppo can only have a bearing on the stormgod Addu or Adad.

2, Ammitakum I-II, kings of Alalakh, seat of the sekundogenitur of Aleppo from the reign of Abba’el onwards; name characterized by the Semitic onomastic element camm- "paternal uncle” in first position (Huffmon 1965, 166), which may perhaps be suggested to occur here in combination with Hurritic tak- “to establish” (Gelb/Purves/MacRae 1943, Hurritic elements, s. v. tak-) as the resulting interpretation is, if the verbal root in question also serves to render a passive meaning, likely to suit Ammitakum I very well, who may indeed have been raised to the throne of Alalakh with the consent of his father’s brother, Abba’el of Aleppo.

The combination of Yarimlim with Ammitakum, if correctly identified as such, rules out the possibility of Yarimlim I and by means of deduction can only have a bearing on Yarimlim II and Yarimlim III. As it is further known of Yarimlim II that, like his predecessor and, as far as this can be determined, his successors or their viziers, he presented himself as na-ra-am dI[M] "beloved of the god Adad” (Collon 1975, 8, no. 5; cf. no. 3 of Abba’el, no. 11 of Abba’el, the son of Sarran, stipulated to have been used by Niqmepa of the level IV period, and no. 19 of Nahmidagan, the vizier of Niqmepuh; for the variant formula İR dIM "servant of the god Adad” cf. the aforesaid level IV seal no. 11), of whom an im-

d * • •portant cult center is reported for Aleppo, the Lim raised by this great king is, if his name indeed comes into consideration to be a speaking one, in line with the related Ugaritic km and Hebrew leöm "people”, rather to be identified as the primary deity of the Aleppian state, which in the Middle Bronze Age can only be identified as the stormgod Haddu or Adad, than as the thousand (or totality of) gods, an expression which became current only after the Hittite conquest of Alalakh during the reign of Hattusilis I (1650-1620 BC), marking the beginning of the Late Bronze Age.

3. 'Egel or Egliya, king of Byblos: A direct association of the couple of Yarimlim and Ammitakum with cEgel or cEgliya, if rightly identified as such, is only conceivable for Yarimlim II, whose approximate regnal years of 1720- 1700 BC correlate most closely to those attributed to cEgel or eEgliya, viz. 1690-1670 BC. The city of Byblos, the find spot of the tablets, may reasonably be identified as the capital of the land Retenu in like manner as Aleppo is that of Yamkhad, at least in sofar as this is restricted to the hr.t Rtnw "Upper Retenu” of Egyptian texts, which has a bearing on the region of Byblos in present-day Lebanon and its hinterland, extending to the south as far as the lake of Tiberias, whereas hr.t Rtnw “Lower Retenu” denoted more southerly areas of the Levant, up to or perhaps even including the Sinai desert (Helck


1971, 266-268). In view of Yarimlim’s II aforesaid predilection for the god Adad, it is relevant to note in this connection that a cult of this particular god at Byblos is indicated, be it indirectly, by the royal name Ribaddi (- “compensation of (H)addu or Adad”) as attested for the Amama period during the early 14th century BC (Hess 1993, 132-134, no. 140). At any rate, the text of the Byblos tablets, if interpreted correctly on this aspect, makes clear that the ruler of Yamkhad in question and the state he represented had a temple (PI -nu “our temple” in d3) with an altar precinct (ARA -nu “our altar (precinct)” in d. 11) and a royal treasury (wa-s a -ya or wa-sa -yd z “my royal (treasury)” in c.9 and <7.39) in Byblos of his god (ntr -ydi “my god” in dA and 19), to which the commemorated offerings were donated and which, given the nature of the god in question, can only be identified with the temple of the obelisks (or a section of it) dedicated to Adad’s local counterpart, the wargod Resef. It is interesting to note in this connection that cEgel or cEgliya, whose name, variously written in Egyptian hieroglyphic as ck>i or is related to Hebrew cegel “calf” (Montet 1964, 63; Kitchen 1967, 42, note 2), i. e. the animal, if only male, closely associated with the stormgod either for sacrificial purposes or as his companion or support in decorative art (cf. the expression in Akkadian cuneiform buru ekdu sa dAdad “wild bull-calf of Hadad” as cited in Bunnens 2006, 70), is known from two inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphic on stone stelai to be responsible for dedications to the goddess Nut, who in turn is likely to be identified with the Mistress of By-

8 The possibility that the Byblian Resef originally represented a stormgod, rejected by Fulco (1976) on the basis of pictorial and textual evidence dating from the Late Bronze Age onwards, receives emphasis from the fact that six bronze tridents are found among the inventory of Royal Tombs I (nos. 663-665) and II (nos. 666-668) (Montet 1928a, 181-182; cf. Jidejian 1968, figs. 38, 42, 44), belonging to Abisemu I and his son and successor Yapisemuabi, respectively, if we realize that the temple of the obelisks, generally assumed to facilitate the cult of Resef, has been built during the early phase of the Middle Bronze Age (Hrouda/Röllig 1957, 673-675), to which the reigns of Abisemu and Yapisemuabi also belong, so that it may reasonably be assumed that these kings during their lifetime acted as patrons of the cult of Resef, which, along this line of reasoning, was duly expressed by including bronze tridents as religious symbols of the stormgod par excellence, the thunderbolt, among their grave gifts (cf. Bunnens 2006, 67-69). Consequently, the linguistic evidence for Resef s identification as a stormgod, like his name being a reflex of Semitic *rsp “to bum” to which also Aramaic rispa “flame” and Hebrew resep “pestilence, plague, flame” are traced back (Fulco 1976, 64) and the expression rsp hş “Resep of lightening” (Fulco 1976, 71) should be taken into serious consideration, again. Fulco’s (1976, 55) further dismissal of the identification of Semitic Resef with Egyptian Herysef in my opinion also results from a misplaced sense of precision untenable in the light of the documentary evidence according to which the foremost female deity of Byblos, Baealat “the Mistress”, is variously addressed as Hathor and Nut in Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, whereas her male counterpart, generally assumed to be Resef, variously occurs as Herysef and Khatau in the same class of documents.


bios, Ba'alat—so that these blocks, found in a secondary find-context, may reasonably be suggested to originate from the temple of Ba'alat—, which as far as their contents are concerned provide us with the closest comparable evidence for the inscriptions of tablets c and d conducted in the local Byblian script and in one of which the name of cEgel or 'Egliya is indeed followed by the image of a young bull serving as his personal badge (Montet 1964, 63, fig. 1, end of the final line 9).

4. Nurili or Nurielmu: Semitic name, the first variant of which is composed of the elements nur- “light” and Hi “of god” (Kinlaw 1967, 310, 292).

5. Tisatal: Hurritic name, composed of the elements tisa- “heart” and -atal “the strong” (Wegner 2000).

6. Kilta. Kieltie. or Kilidu: Hurritic name, based on the element keldi- “to be 7 7 7

good, prosper” (Saporetti 1970, 290; Wegner 2000).

The Semitic personal name Nurili is reported for as early as the Old Akkadian period and can be shown to have been in continuous use up to the late 15 th century BC on account of its attestation in form of Nurilia in the Nuzi texts (Gelb/ Purves/MacRae 1943, s. v.), and, if the obviously related form Nurielmu as attested for a tablet (Wiseman 1953, no. 300) from the level IV archive of Alalakh, may be considered to have a bearing on the matter, even afterwards in the

thearly 14 century BC. In like manner, the Hurritic personal name Tisatal is al- thready attested for texts from the 20 century BC (Wegner 2000, 15), whereas, in view of its mention in the aforesaid tablet no. 300 of the level IV archive at Alalakh in form of Tistila, it can be shown to have been in continuous use up till the

th thlate 15 or early 14 century BC. Only the Hurritic personal name Kilidu. etc., to the best of my knowledge lacks an attestation in the relevant corpera antedating that of Alalakh IV. The radiation of Hurrian influence from northern Mesopotamia along the upper Euphrates to the region of Yamkhad in North Syria, which on the basis of the evidence from the level VII tablets at Alalakh appears to be already substantial in the late 18th and early 17th century BC, culminates according to Wiseman (1953, 9) in the tablets from the level IV archive of Alalakh from the late 15 th to early 14th century BC to the extent that it affects as much as about 95% of the onomastic material either partially or entirely.


ByblosIbdadi

Abis emu I Yapisemuabi

Yakinilu/ Riin Yantinammu Ilimayapi9

9The legend of the scarab of this dignitary attributes him with the title h>ti-e “prince,

mayor”, but without the regular specification n k’pni h’st “of the land of Byblos”; in line with this extraordinary omission, it may reasonably be argued that Ilimayapi is synchronous with Hasrurum, son of Rum (= Ahîröm), the chieftain of the rural hinterland of Byblos, and as such one of the successors of Ammiensi of Qedem (< Semitic qdm “east”) in Upper Retenu known from the story of Sinuhe situated at the end of the reign of Amenemhat I and the beginning of that of Senusert I in the early 20th century BC, who, in view of his use of the titular expression hq’ h’st kbn h>st “ruler of the land of Byblos [mark the archaic writing variant of the place name]” in the legend of his cylinder seal, apparently had seized the opportunity offered by the upheavals caused by invading gangs of Indo-European chariot fighters that ultimately culminated into the Hyksos takeover of control in Egypt and usurped power over the city. Note that the rendering of the liquid [1] by the double aleph in ı’mipi “Ilimayapi” is paralleled for one of the two variant writings of the royal name 'Egel or ‘Egliya, viz. ck'i.10 Although according to Martin 1968 the scarab is only datable within wide margins on stylistic criteria, running from the 18th (12th/13th dynasty) to the late 17th century BC

th • •(18 dynasty), its text points out that the ruler of Byblos in question is subject to the Egyptian pharaoh, again (who, by the way, restores the ancient tradition of dedications to the Mistress of Byblos), which seems only conceivable after the defeat of the kingdom of Aleppo by Hattusilis I (1650-1620 BC) sometime during the latter half of the 17th century BC, thus allowing us to assign, the scarab to an advanced stage of the Hyksos period or that of the beginning of the subsequent 18th dynasty.

Egypt MesopotamiaAmarsuen

Amenemhat IIIAmenemhat IV

Sehetepibre II/IIINeferhotep I Zimrilim

Datec. 2050 BC

1820-1795 BC1798-1789 BC

1776-1770 BC1778-1730 BC

Interlude of dominance by ruler of the non-urban Byblian hinterlandHasrurum Sihathor 1730-1729 BC♦ son of Rum

Abis emu II Yapasemuabi cEgel / 'Egliya

Rynty

Ka In

Nehesy

Yarimlim II

Ma'ibre (15th dyn.)Ykbm (16th dyn.) (pharaoh unspecified by name)

c. 1710 BC

1720-1700 BC

1650-1550 BC (= Hyksos per.) 1650-1550 BC10

Table I. List of MBA Byblian kings (grouped together according to explicitly indicated kinship relation) with relevant synchronisms (adapted from Gersten-

blith 1983, 103, Table 7 with the help of Klengel 1992, 79).

2007] On the Byblos Script

Aleppo

Sumuepuh Yarimlim I Hammurabi I Abba"el I Yarimlim IINiqmepuh Irkabtum Yarimlim III Hammurabi II

Alalakh

Yarimlim Ammitaku I Irkabtum

Ammitaku II

Mari / HattiW

YahdunlimZimrilim

Hattusilis IW

Date

1778-1760 BC

1650-1620 BC

Table IL List of MBA kings of Yamkhad with relevant synchronisms (based on Wiseman 1953, 2-3; Bryce 1998, 76).

II Vocabulary1.2.3.4.5.

6.7.8.9.10.11.12.

13.14.15.16.17.

18.

19.20.

21.

a-ke-a-lua-ma-ra-tu, a-ma-ri-tu i-le-ke, i-le-ki lim, rim

lulu-kaj-lulu-mapirplh pii-pii, pii-phplj-tu.pirtapii-ta-kipi i-ta-ki-lu, pi i-ta-ki-le, pi rta-ki-le-nasa-reta-matu-pi, tu-pij, tu-pii u-ra-ka

ahu(m) “brother”älu(m) “charter town”amertu(m) “inspection”ilku(m) “due”lim, Umu “thousand”, l"m, le"öm “people”(Ug., Hebr.)LÛ “man”LUGAL “king”lu(m) “bull”biblu(m) “offering”bltu(m) “house”pitakku “building”bit hiläni (= typically Syrian two columned portico entrance)sarru(m) “king”temu(m) “missive”tltuppu(m) “tablet”(yv)arhu(m), urhu(m) “month”(w)aklu(m) “overseer”wa-ka-ya-lu, wa-ka-li-,

wa-ka-ya-lim, (n)u-ke-la wa-pi-le, a-pii-le, \a\-pirle, (w)äbilu(m) “ambassador, envoy”(a)pii-liiPI pl “temple” (Hebr.)ra car “citadel” (Phoen.) or cf. TN Ramah

“citadel, high place” (Canaanite)wa-sa w ’s “dominion, lordship” (Eg.), cf. the use of

wav-scepter as a symbol of royal power


References: for the Sumerian and Akkadian forms, see AHw, s. v.; for the Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Hebrew forms, see del Olmo Lete / Sanmartin 2003, s. v. lim; Bernal 2006, 185, 239 (Hebrew pi); Hoftijzer/Jongeling 1995, s. v. car; rmh; cf Bernal 2006, 181 (Canaanite TN Ramah); for the Egyptian form, see Gardiner 1994, 559 (= Egyptian-English Vocabulary, s. v. w>s).

Ill Grammar

IILA Nominal Declension(1) Nom. sg. in -w: a-lu “charter town” (d.32), a-ma-ra-tu or a-ma-ri-tu

“inspection” (c. 11; d.33), ke-li-tu “Kelidu” (c.6; 10), pipta-ki-lu “bit hiläni” (d. 17), piptu “house” (c.7), ti-sa-da-lu, ti-sapda-lu or [ti]-sapde-lu “Tisadal” (c.2; 6; 10; d. 15-16; 19), wa-ka-ya-lu “overseer” (c.15)

(2) Acc. sg. in -a: pipta “house” (d.22; 27), pipta-ki-le-na “bit hiläni” (c.8), tama “missive” (d.31), (ana) u-ra-ka lu-ma “(in) the month (of the) Bull” (c.ll)

(3) Gen. sg. in -i: a-mi-ta-ki “from the side of Ammitaku” (c.l 1; d.32), a-le-pi “of, from the side of Aleppo” (c.12; d.32), (t) a-le-pi] or a-le-pi/ “(at) Aleppo” (d.2; 39), ha-le-pi] “of Aleppo” (d.8), i-le-ki “from the due(s)” (d.31), yâpka-liı “of cEgliya” (d.6), (le) nu-re-li “(on behalf) of Nureyala” (d.34), pipta-ki i-le-ki “from the building due(s)” (c.7), tu-pi “of, (on account) of the tablet” (c.l 1; d.32)

(4) ObL pl. in-im: wa-ka-ya-lim “from among the overseers” (d.4)

III.B Enclitic Pronouns(1) 1 pers. sg. -ya or -ye*. (a) attached to nouns: a-ke -yâ] “my brother” (c.3;

14), (a)piplii -yâj “my ambassador” (d.40), ARA -ya or ARA -yâ] “my altar” (d.12; 25), YA] -yâ, YÂ] -yâ2 or YÂ -yâ] “my Yamkhad” (c.9; d.12; 16), lim -yâ or rim -yâ “my peoplefs assembly)” (d.l; 10; 13; 19; 21), lu -yä^ “my men (dual)” (c.8), ntr -ya or ntr -yâ] “my god” (c.13; dl; 19), a-le-pi/ -ya“my Aleppo” (d.2), tu-piı -yâ, tu-pi] -yâ, tu-pi ı -yâ2 or TU -yâ “my tablet” (c.6; d.3; 17; 24; 26), wa-ka-li -ya2 or wa-ka-li -yÜ2 “my overseer” (c.5; 14), wa-sa -ya or wa-sa] -yâ] “my royal (treasury)” (c.9; d.39), vUs -ya “my was-scepter” (c.4; d.6)tions: le -ya, le -ya], le -yâ], rej -ya or re -yâ2 “on behalf of me” (c.3; 9; 13; d.l 5; 31; 34; 36), le wa-yâ2 -ya (u-ya tu-pi] -ya) “on behalf of both me (and my tablet)” (d.26),/?z/ -ya, pi] -yâ] or pi] -ya2 “by me” (c.5; 12; d.l 1; 13;

-ye “my councillors” (c.3); attached to preposi-

(2) 3 pers. sg. -ke or -ki: (a) attached to nouns: h>st -ki “his, its (own) country” (c.12; d.33), YA] -ki or YÂ? -ki “his Yamkhad” (d.23; 30), lim -ke “its people(’s assembly)” (d.12); (b) attached to prepositions: le] -ke, le -ke] or li] -ke] “on behalf of him, it” (c.12; d.22; 29), sa [~fc] “from him” (d.33-4)


our men (dual)” (c.2; d.6; 8; 16), Pl -nu “our temple” (d.3),(3) 1st pers. pl. -nu or -nit (a) attached to nouns: ARA -nu “our altar” (d.l 1), lu

-nu or lu -ni “wa-pi-le -nu “our ambassador” (d.5-6); (b) attached to prepositions: le -nu “on behalf of us” (d.38)

(4) 3rd pers. pl. -ke or -ki: (a) attached to a noun: ARA -ki “their altar” (d. 10);(b) attached to prepositions: ka -ki “thanks to them (both)” (c.l4), pi] -ke “by them (both)”

IILC Demonstrative Pronouns(1) anaphoric: a ke-li-tu wa-yä ti-sa-da-lu “the aforesaid Kelidu and Tisadal”

(c.6; refers back to a-ke -yâ] ma ti-sa-da-le “my brother and Tisadal” in c.3), a ra “the aforesaid city” (d.3 refers back to the immediately preceding ra re-rei “the city here” in d.2-3), a w>s “the aforesaid wos-scepter” (d.31; refers back to w*s “ws-scepter” in d.13), a • ARA “the aforesaid altar” (d.22;refers back to ARA “altar” in d.l 1), le a “on behalf of the aforesaid (councillors)” (c.10; refers back to X“councillors” in c.7)

(2) “near” lem. sg. de or daz ARA pîj -ya la YÂ] ARA -nu ra re lim de u-ya“(concerning) the altar by me (and) these Yamkhad (offerings) (to) our altar (precinct) (in) the city [of Byblos] on behalf of the people(’s assembly) this:” (d.l 1-22), da le -yâ] “(: thus) this on behalf of me” (d.l5), de d*dw rei la “this hall of columns to facilitate these (offerings)” (d.20), YÂ] -ki ya2lu de pi]-ta-ki-lu “on account of his Yamkhad so verily the men (have given) this: the bit hilänF (d.30), YA] -ki u-ya tu-pi] -yâ de “his Yamkhad and my tablet (have decreed) this(:)” (d.23-4), YÂ} lu de “(at) Yamkhad the men (have decreed) this(:)” (d.l), pi] \ti}-sa]-da-le wa de “’’through the intermediary of Tisadal: (thus) this (as follows):” (d.7), [ti]-sai~de-lu rim -yâ wa PI ntr -yâ] de “Tisadal, my peoplefs assembly): (to) the temple of my god this” (d. 19), [w] nu-re-ya-le da le -kei pi] de “(thus): Nureyala this, on behalf of him (to) the temple this (:)” (d.29), wa-ya la lu sa wa lim lim da lu Pl “and these (offerings:) the man of the peoplefs assembly) then, the peo-

t(3) “near”ple(’s assembly)(:) this, the man (to) the temple” (d.18)

the bit hilani, (all) these (things)” (d.17; referring back to the previously specified offerings, in the first case those on behalf of the peoplefs assembly) of Aleppo and in the second case including those on behalf of its king Yarimlim personally), ka la “because these (offerings)” (c.14; referringback to all offerings mentioned earlier), la YÂ] “these Yamkhad (offerings)” (d.l 1; referring back to d>dw ha-le-pi] “a hall of columns (from the side) of Aleppo” in d.8 and ARA -ki “their [= \lu\ rim -yâ “the men (of) my people(’s assembly)”] altar” in d.10), la pii-pi] “these (things) as an offering” (d.24; anticipating on d’dw “a hall of columns” and pi]-ta li] <-ki> “a house on behalf of <it>” as mentioned in the following lines, i. c. d.25 and d.27), la ra lu


-ni sei} w’.v -ya “our men of my was-scepter (accomplished) these (offerings) (on behalf of) the city” (d.6; referring back to ARA u-ya tu-pi -yâ “ an altar and my tablet” in d.3), le la “to facilitate these (offerings)” (c.7; referring back to wfv “wav-scepter” in c.4, ARA “altar” in c.5, and possibly bit hiläni as likely to be implied in c.7), lu [= lu ra “the mayor (of) the city (of Aleppo)” in d.2] la “the mayor (accomplished) these (offerings)” (d.5; referring back to ARA u-ya tu-pi -yâ “ an altar and my tablet” in d.3), wa-ya la “and these (offerings)” (d. 18), wa-ya la YÂ de d’dw rei la “and these Yam- khad (offerings), this hall of columns to facilitate these (offerings)” (d.20). From the aforegoing overview of the use of the plural of the “near” demonstrative la it appears that this pronoun may now refer back to offerings specified earlier and then anticipate on offerings specified later on, but it should be realized in this connection that to the visitor of the sanctuary reading the tablet the offerings in question were probably all directly visible and hence it was in any case absolutely clear to him or her what precisely the pronoun refers to.

(4) “near” dem. re-re i: ra re-re i “the city here [= Byblos]” (d.2-3; 26)

III.D Prepositions(1) a-le “to”: a-le ARA ra “to the altar (precinct of) the city” (c.5), a-le wa-sa

-ya “to my royal (treasury)” (c.9)(2) le “over, on behalf of”: de d>dw rei la “this hall of columns to facilitate

these (offerings)” (d.20), le h>st -ki “on behalf of his (own) country(:)” (c.12; d.33), le -ya, le -yah le -yâh re -yâ2 or re} -ya “on behalf of me” (c.3; 9; 13; d.31; 34; 36), le -ya le w*s “on behalf of me, on behalf of the was- scepter” (d.36), le -yäj le X -ye “on behalf of me, on behalf of my councillors” (c.3), le -kei, lei ~ke or Hi -kei “on behalf of him, it” (c.12; d.22; 29), le la or rej la “on behalf of these (offerings)” (c.7; d.20), le la pii-tu “to facilitate these (offerings:) a house” (c.7), le lim, re lim or rej lim “over, on behalf of peoplefs assembly)” (d.4; 11-12; 13); le nu-re-ya-la or le nu-re-li “on behalf of Nureyala” (d.34; 40), le nu-re-ya-la le ra “on behalf of Nureyala on behalf of the city” (d.40), le -nu sa-re “on behalf of us the king(:)” (d.38), le ra “on behalf of the city” (d.35; 40), le <tu-pi> sa NU “on behalf of <the tablet > of Nureyala” (b.a2), le tu-pi sa TI “on behalf of the tablet of Tisadal” (b.a2-3), le wa-yâ2 -ya u-ya tu-pi ı -yâ “on behalf of both me and my tablet” (d.26), le X -ye “on behalf of my councillors” (c.3), lu le pii-pii le -yâi “the men responsible for the offering on behalf of me” (c.13), nu de le ra “now, this on behalf of the city [of Byblos]” (d.35), tu-pi lei YAi “on account of the tablet on behalf of Yamkhad” (b.b2), TU le lim w’s reı lim -yâ “the tablet on behalf of the peoplefs assembly) (and) the was-scepter on behalf of my people(’s assembly)” (d.13)


(3) pi “by”: pi] -ya.pi} -ya2. orpi] -yd] “by me” (c.5; 12; d.ll; 13; 28),pz/ -ke “by them (both)” (c.4), pii nu-re-ya-le “by Nureyala” (d.28), pi] ti-sa-da-le. ti-sai-da-le or \ti\-saj-da-le “by, through the intermediary of Tisadal” (c.4; d.6-7; 9), pii u ti-sa r\da]-la “through the intermediary of Tisadal then” (d.7-8), pii wa-ka-li -yd2 “by my overseer” (c.5)

(4) ka or ke “because, thanks to; in like manner”: ka -ki “thanks to them (both)” (c.14), ka ntr -ya “because my god” (c.13), ka \ph\-pi] ARA] “in like manner as an offering an altar” (d.l 1), ntr ka TU le lim “(to) the god in like manner as the tablet on behalf of the peoplefs assembly)” (d. 12-13), nu de le ra ka lu sa [..] “now, this on behalf of the city [of Byblos], in like manner as the men of (...)” (d.35-36), u-ya TU re YÂ -yâ] ARA -yd] lim -ke ntr ka TU le lim w=s re] lim -yd Pl “: the tablet on behalf of my (realm of) Yamkhad (to) my altar (precinct) (and on behalf of) its peoplefs assembly) (to) the god in like manner as the tablet on behalf of the peoplefs assembly) (and) the wav-scepter on behalf of my peoplefs assembly) (to) the temple” (d. 12- 3), u ka la “(that is to say): because these (offerings)” (c. 13-14), wa re] -ya ke YA2 le nu-re-li “(that is): on behalf of me, in like manner as Yamkhad on behalf of Nureyala” (d.34), w’s ka [w’s] pi] -yd] “a wav-scepter in like manner as the wav-scepter on behalf of me” (c. 12)

(5) t “in, at”: t a-le-pi] or a-le-pi] “at Aleppo” (d.2; 39)(6) (d)na “in, in the name of; to”: na lu -yd2 “to my man” (b.b3), n u-ke-la ra

\lu\ rim -yd “in the name of the overseer (of) the city (and) the men (of) my people(’s assembly)” (d.9-10), u-ra-ka n(a) (...) lu-ma “in the month (of the) Bull” (c.ll)

(7) sa “of”: le < tu-pi> sa NU “on behalf of <the tablet) of Nureyala” (b.a2), le tu-pi sa TI “on behalf of the tablet of Tisadal” (b.a2-3), lu sa wa lim “the man of: the people(’s assembly)” (d.l8), sa] YA] -yd2 “of my (realm of) Yamkhad” (d.16), sa] w\v “of the wav-scepter” (d.8), sa] W’\v -ya “of my wav-scepter” (d.6), TUsa YA2 “tablet of Yamkhad” (b.al)

IILE Conjunctions(1) wa-ya or u-ya “and”: wa-ya “and” (c.l; 9; d.18; 20), wa-yd “and” (c.6;

10; d.l5), wa-yd] “and” (d.5), wai-yd] “and” (b.a2), wa-ya2 “and” (d.26), u- ya “and” (c.8; d.3; 23; 26), u-ya2 “and” (a.6; 8); wa-yd2 (...) u-ya “both (...) and (...)” (d.26)

(2) pa “and also”: pa tu-pi] -yd2 “and also my tablet” (d.l7)(3) wa, u or u-ya “:”, “then” or “; ”: wa “:” (c.9; d. 1; 7; 10; 18; 19; 34), wa

“;” (c.12), wa2 (d.28 [2x]), u “:” (c.5; 13; d.7; [21]; [29]; 33; 39), lu sa wa lim “the men of the peoplefs assembly) then” (d.l 8), pi] u ti-sa]-[da\-lu “through the intermediary of Tisadal then” (d.7), u-ya “;”(d,12)

(4) ma “and”: a-ke -yd] ma ti-sa-da-le “my brother and Tisadal” (c.3), a-ke -yd] ma wa-ka-li -ya2 “my brother and my overseer” (c.14), a-pi]-le ma [rij-


sûi-da-le or \a\-pij-le ma ti-saj-da-le “the ambassador and Tisadal” (d.21- 22; 27)

III.F Introductory Particles(1) ye oryâ2 “so truly, verily”: yd2 lu de “so verily the men (have given) this”

(d.30), ye lu tu -yd “so verily my men (of) the tablet” (c.6). Note that this introductory particle in both instances of its appearance stresses the actual offering of the btt hiläni,

(2) nu “now”: nu de le ra “now, this on behalf of the city [of Byblos]” (d.35), nu ra ta-ma a-mi-ta-ki “now, the city (received) the missive from the side of Ammitaku” (d.31-32). Note that this introductory particle marks the beginning of the sections on subsidiary offerings by Ammitaku, the king of Alalakh, and cEgel or 'Egliya, the king of Byblos, respectively.

IILG Verb(1) 3rd pers. dual of the past tense: yd2-ta-wa “they have given” (c.8; d. 16)

Comparative Data

A Nominal Declension(1) Nom. sg. in -w: cf. Akkadian -w(m), Ugaritic -u(2) Ace. sg. in -a: cf. Akkadian -a(m), Ugaritic -a(3) Gen. sg. in -i: cf. Akkadian -i(m), Ugaritic -z(4) Obi. pl. in ~im: cf. Akkadian -z, Ugaritic -ima

Note that the given Akkadian and Ugaritic endings are those of the masculine (Huehnergard 2000, 6; Tropper 2000, 341; cf. Segert 1984, 51); for the dating of the loss of the final m in the Akkadian singular forms to the period after c. 1500 BC, see Malbran-Labat 2001, 85.

B Enclitic Pronouns(1) 1st pers. sg. -ya or -ye: cf. Paleo-Syrian -z, -ya, Ugaritic -y, Phoenician -y(2) 1st pers. pl. -nu or -ni: cf. Paleo-Syrian -na, -nu, -ni, Ugaritic -n, Phoeni

cian -n

In contrast to the situation with respect to the enclitic pronouns of the 1st person, where we have a perfect match, the closest comparisons for the ones of the 3rd person in the Byblos texts are provided by those of the person in the related dialects:


(3) 3rd pers. sg. -ke or -kit cf. Paleo-Syrian -ka (m.), -ki (f.), Ugaritic -k. Phoenician -k for the 2nd pers. sg.

(4) 3 pers. pl. -ke or -ki: cf. Paleo-Syrian -kunu (m.), Ugaritic -km (m.), -kn (f.), Phoenician -km for the 2nd pers. pl.

References: Lipinski 2001, 314-315; Krahmalkov 2001, 50-74.

C Demonstrative Pronouns(1) anaphoric at cf. Phoenician article h- < Canaanite demonstrative han- “this,

that” (note that the Phoenician form is also used for the plural, see Krahmalkov 2001, 85-88 with examples)

(2) “near” demonstrative sg. de or da : cf. Ugaritic d. Phoenician z<*d(3) “near” demonstrative pl. la: cf. Phoenician 7

The “near” demonstrative re-rei “here” in our Byblian texts may, in view of the evidence for Z/r-interchange, perhaps be suggested to be related to the plural of the Canaanite demonstrative han- which developed into the Phoenician article h-, presenting forms like Syriac hallen, etc.

References: Lipinski 2001, 324—325 (*hanni-)‘. 328-329 (z; 3Z); 334 (z < dy.Krahmalkov 2001, 75-85 (z; 7); 85-88 (/z).

D Prepositions(1) a-Ze“to”: cf. Phoenician Ugaritic / < ^aley(2) le “over, on behalf of”: cf. Phoenician 7, Ugaritic 7 < *le(3) pi “by”: cf. Phoenician b-. Ugaritic b < *bi-(4) ka “because, thanks to; in like manner”: cf. Phoenician k-, Ugaritic k

< *ka(5) t “in, at”: cf. Phoenician 7 < Proto-Canaanite *'itti(6) {d)na “in, in the name of; to”: cf. Akkadian ana(7) sa “of’: cf. Akkadian sa

References: Tropper 2000, 755-757 (b. a. o. “durch” ), 758-760 (Z),760-762; 795 (k). 766-768 (7); Krahmalkov 2001, 231-236 (/>), 241-245 (Z), 240-241, 267, 286-287 (k). 251 f. (7), 229 Çt. a. o. “with, together with”); Lipinski 2001, 477 (itti. a. o. “within”); Friedrich 1946, 112 (ana. a. o. “in”); Huehnergard 2000, 10-11 (sa).

E Conjunctions(1) wa-ya or u-ya “and”: cf Phoenician wy or w, Ugartic w or u. Akkadian wa

or u(2) pa “and also”: cf. Ugaritic p- or âp. Phoenician p or 'ap(3) wa or u “: ”: cf Phoenician w. Ugaritic w or u. Akkadian wa or u


(4) ma “and”: cf. Akkadian -ma, Ugaritic -m

References: Lipinski 2001, 480 (wa-; -ma), Tropper 2000, 831-832 (-ma; presents an example of the use of -m in exactly the same way as w\); Segert 1984, 103 (w-, p- or ap); Krahmalkov 2001, 270 (’p or ’ap); 272-274 (w-).

F Introductory Particles(1) ye or ya2 “so truly, verily”: cf Ugaritic i “so truly, verily”(2) nu “now”: cf. Proto-Indo-European *nu

References: Tropper 2000, 808 (i); Gamkrelidze/Ivanov 1995, 313-321 (Hittite nu-, Celtic, as represented by Old Irish no-, etc. < *nu)n

G Verb(1) 3rd pers. dual of the past tense ya2-ta-wa: cf. Ugaritic ytn lyatenul “he has

given”, showing the verbal root tn characterized by the prefix y- and the ending -u as markers of the 3rd pers. sg. m. Note that this very same form, as stipulated by Tropper (2000, 635), also renders services for the expression of the dual! In line with the given comparison, our Byblian form should be phonetically analyzed as lyatanwal.

11 The presence of an Indo-European element in the Old Phoenician dialectal variant of Byblos is not so unlikely as it might seem at first sight, because the material culture of the site, after its destruction at the end of the Early Bronze Age II, c. 2300 BC, happens to be typified by catacomb graves (see Montet 1929, pls. LXXIV-LXXVII) of North Pontic steppe antecedents and torques of central European origin which may well serve as indications of the arrival of settlers speaking in an Indo-European tongue, if not actually proto-Hittite (or proto-Luwian) and proto-Celtic, respectively, see Woudhuizen 2006a, 139-148. Obviously, in view of the fact that the MBA Byblian royal names are all clearly of Semitic type, these Indo-European settlers must have formed a minority, which assimilated to the dominant Semitic culture to the extent that virtually no linguistic traces of them are left, that is to say: if our identification applies, apart from the introductory particle nu, whereas one cannot help to observe that the specific use of some of the prepositions in our Byblos texts, like pi “by” and t- “at (cf. Dutch t- as in t-huis < te huis “at home” and t-hans < te hants “at hand”)”, clearly has an Indo-European ring.


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Fig. 1. Frequency of the signs occurring on tablets c and d (by Kees Enzler).


Li ft ly&n Vl L $ •? y *""* t nnn^Yrf'yJ

++ ) fl h fa \L T* I ■ . T-^rlx 5**^ ^^5 nx4 23fnA5* t.x* ^jâ < nAX2+^

3?+-/? & "7^ pi *o^d y G1^G1 f <X 5 * 7 it « 1

25

âo

Ş. Y y 2 7 08 V

40

n A * ■•-1711*+M li V A^^rt-S V Pl <■ % A ?if- x* >w im 0 A +- 0!tr n* a a \

n x y -xi«"» a 4 A /a^X^Y^rt X@kTT '¥ hû^Y 3 Îtf ) ftrtxßSp ''&>AVk ^xf 7A 4İ? * q fl n ft İÂ A j9<-h-c-> t <■»

Fig. 2. Punctuation marks on tablets c and d (after Best in Best/Woudhuizen 1989, 40, fig. 3).

10

15

20


Doublet 1 t\/ c. 2; 6; 10

c 3; 4 /

Quadruplet 1 t XA'ft'J A

Î ‘ß.ÄA

d. 15-6

d- 9; 27; a. 3[; d. 7; 22]d. 7-8a. 3

Doublet 2 I'M d. 24; 25; 28; 29

d. 2; 40

Triplet 1 c. 15

c. 2

tZ.4

c. number

Doublet 3 d. 17; 30

c. 7; 8

Doublet 4 c. T9.d, 31 c. numberd. 3^ c. number

4 A^-»-Doublet 5 d. 6; 8

d. 16

Fig. 3. Recurrent identical combinations with alternating final syllable (by Kees Enzler).


Writing variant 1 t\y

ä fa]

c 2: 6: 10

d. 15-6d. 19

Writing variant 2 0Ö ¥y

Writing variant 3

d. 2; 40d. 4d. 23d. 14

C. >

c. 14

Writing variant 4 A PI C. I; 9: d. 18: 20 B c. 8: d. 3: 12; 23; 26J7\ c 6; 10: d. 15

$ 171 d- 5 Ä b. a2PI d. 26

6; 8

Writing variant 5 c. 11: d. 32d. 3; 17; 24d. 26h- (1 > r); b2

rf.3;23-4d.26

Writing variant 6 t -2 2s d. 3; 23-4d. 26d. 12

Fig. 4. Writing variants of otherwise identical recurrent combinations (by Kees Enzler).


Wi İtiııg variant 7 c. 13c. 8d. 16d. 24b. bl

. 8

16

Writing variant 8

c. 9d. 39

Writing variant 9

Writing variant 10 g- 4; 5 (t > b)X

Fig. 4. Writing variants of otherwise identical recurrent combinations (continued; by Kees Enzler).


Writing variant/triplet 2

d.4d.23d. 14d. 34

Writing variant/quadruplet 2 c. 15

d. 4c. 5c. 14

c. number

Writing variant/doublet 6 TQ_b£3 c.6;10 f e. Ö4 1C

y i/l 5 j” * 5-6

Writing variant/d@ublet 7

Writing variant/doublet 8 c. 7a. 8d. 22; 27

T A ? 5

Fig. 5. Recurrent combinations subject to graphical variation and alternating final syllable (by Kees Enzler).


Prefixed combination I

Prefixed combination 2

(writing variant)


(writing variant)


(writing variant)

% Y d. 32

HT c. 11

-^f >r(ft 1 n <

rf" VV

d. 5 (2x)d. 21

d. 27d. 21 -2d. 27

c. 12; d. 32d. 2d. 39d. 8

c. 15

c. 2d. 4

c. 5

c. 14

d. 9

n * LA^ X V .0 K

Suffixed combination

T < * 9 fi

d. 17c. 7

c. 8

Fig. 6. Prefixed and suffixed recurrent combinations including those subject to graphical variation (by Kees Enzler).


Coordinated couples (writing variant)

y ä ca-X Vr Pl X A <o ¥

* tAMX xJ n y 5? 1. X I .[hi

c\ 3c. 14^.21-2d. 27c. 6; 10d 15-6

Conjunctions (writing variant)

f İ> </3:23-4 rf.26

Int $ n

Fig. 7. Interchange between apparent coordinative copulae and conjunctions (by Kees Enzler).

2007] On the Byblos Script

(a) Result 1 RII DIMENT ARY GRID (1) vowel

consonant 1 AAA

consonant 2consonant 3

(b) Result 2 interchange 1 interchange 2 interchange 3 interchange 4 interchange 5 interchange 6 interchange 7 semi-vowels

(c) Result 3 RUDIMENTARY GRIB (2) vowel


A/'A


(d) Result 4(e) Result 5

interchange 8 q, 44- interchange 9 y coordinativesconjunctions

Fig. 8. Formation of rudimentary grid on the basis of doublets, triplets, and quadruplets, extended with evidence for interchange between signs and sign-combinations.

p4

n

I


Byblos script Egyptian hieroglyphic Creatan h. and Linear A

A12 re j D4 /rt“eye”

A14 Y D29 Lt *>*“soul”

A13 ya2 D36

A21 y ma E13

A3-4 yâ G25

A10 da HO

A6 8 pi L2

B5 y re M9

BIO wö2 M13

E20 9 i M17

ssn “lotus”

wld “papyrus”

/“reed”

E74-5 ma

E86 bity

L54 't' re

D3 p w M43 »7p “wine” EU6

A15 xA/ h>st, N25 fw| fy>st “foreign land”

ha

Fig. 9. Corresponding signs between the Byblos script and Egyptian hieroglyphic.


Byblos script Egyptian hieroglyphic Creatan h. and Linear A

Ell P} q I n pr “house” (Dem. pi)

D2 d ra 06 hwt “castle”

D6-8 dtdw 027 d>dw “hall of columns”

B11 y sa 030

D5

DI

F3

F2

A16

H 031

c2 ke 038

ntr R8

? tu Rll

$ ‘nh S34

H’Ay S40

shnt “supporting

pole”

S’ “door”

knbt “comer, angle”

ntJ “l

*nh “sandal-

strap”

w-Av-scepler

SB

E60

E44

dd ‘Wj>t/-C01umn” L39

sa

ya

tu

Cretan knot

1’?

Fig. 9. Corresponding signs between the Byblos script and Egyptian hieroglyphic (continued).

m F. C. Woudhuizen [UF 39

Byblos script Linear A Cretan hieroglyphic

E17 + pa L2 pa

D3 wawainu

L75 wa El 16

Fig. 10. Corresponding signs between the Byblos script and Cretan Linear A and/or Cretan hieroglyphic.

On the Byblos Script 753

TJnear A Cretan hieroglyphic

2007]

Byblos script

G13 h

Fl « ye

A21 y ma

G4 ĞL u

D9 3? de

E10 ki

D5 t} aes

B8 ta

E12 V lUl

L78 /I ti

L81a _X_ ye

L95 yTf ma

L97 P u

L102 X de

L103 ki

* 140 |S AES

MA6 £& ti7

E74-5 ma

E47 ki

E10 tâ

E14 T , , fI determ. of

personal name

Fig. 10. Corresponding signs between the Byblos script and Cretan Linear A and/or Cretan hieroglyphic (continued).


Fig. 11. Development of the Egyptian ankh “life” in the eastern Mediterranean: (a) Egyptian, (b) Anatolian, (c) North Syrian,

and (d) Cretan (from Woudhuizen 2006b, 3, fig. 1).

Egyptian hieroglyphic Cretan

Local Byblian

Standard

U6

Provincial Byblos script LB

M17

mr E13

CH

counci Her

LA

X homo

T25 A

ntr ntr

hnm El© Ll©3

dbl >9 r de

W9 f

Fig. 12. Provincial Byblian Egyptian hieroglyphic signs providing intermediary forms in the development of linearized

offshoots of the latter class of writing in the Byblos script and related Cretan Linear.


d

b

y

k

I

m

n

P

r

s

t

w

closed syllables

logograms

punctation

numbers

w

y

T

+

G1

I

*

0

n

AAA lim rim

rm

ntr ‘nlj w >\v h ist FI

didw ARA 2

A

coun-ciilor

ARA

2

AES

Fig. 13. Provisional grid of the signary of the Byblos script.


Variant writings Transliteration

v<, yâ

AAA

‘nb, y»„ y«/

y*2, y*2

pi, pi

p>, pi I, pit, fit/

dldw A. um/

lu

, W^tl

u

lim

ki

tl

ye

tu

&

Fig. 14. Writing variants of signs from the Byblos script.