The Export and Adaptation of Lexical Lists in the Late Second Millennium

chapter 8 The Export and Adaptation of Lexical Lists in the Late Second Millennium

In the late second millennium, more so than ever before, the lexical tradition spread to areas well beyond the Babylonian “heartland”. Most excavated lexical texts of the period, in fact, stem from sites in Western Anatolia and along the Syrian coast. These areas are commonly referred to as the “periphery”. This problematic term is grounded in the idea of a southern Mesopotamian cen- ter, from which cuneiform writing and traditions spread to other, “peripheral” areas.1 Without disputing the southern Mesopotamian origin of cuneiform writing and the lexical tradition, I avoid the term “periphery” here, because it conveys the idea that all scribal centers outside of Babylonia were mere receiv- ers of these traditions. This does not reflect the actual historical situation. In contrast, local innovative scribal traditions existed. This chapter deals with the different ways in which the Babylonian lexical tradition was treated in the scribal centers outside of the Babylonian core, with a focus on Ḫattuša. As will become clear, we find a different grouping of lexical lists in each of the cities Ḫattuša, Emar, Ugarit, and Aššur. Also the changes made to the lists and the degree to which they were changed vary considerably. This is not very sur- prising, seeing that these cities had very different relations to Babylonia and Babylonian tradition, and to cuneiform. The different historical contexts play a key role in understanding the differences between the late second millennium lexical corpora. In §8.1 I will discuss the find-spots of late second millennium lexical lists outside of Babylonia. The transfer of the lexical material to the foreign scribal centers brought about different types of changes, of which I will offer an over- view in §8.2. In §8.3 I will zoom in on the lexical corpus from Ḫattuša, which I will compare with those from the contemporary scribal centers in §8.4, in order to find out what makes Ḫattuša special. The focus will be on the treatment of the (originally Babylonian) lexical tradition. The function of the lexical lists in Ḫattuša will be discussed in Chapter 10.

1 For example, cf. Labat 1962, 1.

8.1 Find-Spots of Lexical Lists outside of Babylonia

The political landscape of the area misleadingly known as the “western periphery” (see above) was determined by three rival empires: Mitanni, the Hittite Empire, and the New Kingdom of Egypt. Around 1350 BCE the Hittite King Šuppiluliuma I conquered large parts of territory under Mitannian influence, which led to the fall of Mitanni and made the Hittites Egypt’s new opponent in the struggle for control over the Levant. At the same time, this enabled the rise of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia. The Levant consisted of city-states, which were never fully integrated into the respective empires, but were sub- jected to them to various degrees. The majority of the textual finds from this period stem from centers under Hittite hegemony, namely, the capital city of Ḫattuša and the vassal states of Ugarit, Emar, and Alalaḫ. For the written correspondence between the great political powers (and between them and their vassals) the Akkadian language and the cuneiform script were in use. The Hittite cuneiform tradition had already started several centuries earlier, before or during the Old Kingdom (the circumstances of the Hittite adoption of the cuneiform script are debated; see §10.1). Egyptian scribes probably learned cuneiform from the Hittites.2 In Emar and Ugarit, on the other hand, cuneiform was introduced by scribes from Mitanni.3 At some of these scribal centers, the cuneiform writing system was used to put the local language into writing. In Emar, Ugarit, Aphek and Ashkelon, local scribes now and again inserted words in their native languages into the lexical lists of Mesopotamian origin.4 Cuneiform texts were being written in Elamite and Hurrian. In Ugarit, an alphabetic cuneiform script was developed. After the political crisis of the 12th century, alphabetic and hieroglyphic scripts took over in the area. By the first millennium, apart from a few texts in Aramaic, the use of Mesopotamian cuneiform for local languages is found only in Urartu and Elam.5 Along with the spread of cuneiform, the transmission of the lexical tradition can be observed. Numerous lexical lists have been found in Ḫattuša, Emar and Ugarit. Occasional finds were made in Alalaḫ (Ura), Šapinuwa (Ura 10) and Ekalte (Lu), and in Siyannu, where a prism with entries from Ura and a fragment of Lu-azlag were excavated. These two lexical texts show a connec- tion with Ḫattuša, since prisms are not attested elsewhere in this period, nor is

2 Beckman 1983b, 112–114. 3 Veldhuis 2013, 270. 4 For example, in the Emar version of SaV. See Sjöberg 1998. 5 Van Soldt 2012, 104.