30 An Inscribed Arrowhead of the Eleventh Century BCE in the Lands Museum in 1

[1992]

The corpus of bronze arrowheads of the eleventh The name smd' is evidently the same name as that of century BCE inscribed in Old Canaanite and Linear the clan of Manasseh, Semida<. Its biblical vocalization is Phoenician scripts continues to grow. In Appendix A to problematic (comparable to 'Abida<, the Midianite of the preceding paper (Paper 29) I have listed some thirty Genesis 25: 4). In view of the writing smyd' in the Sa• published exemplars, and more unpublished pieces are maria Ostraca, it has been assumed that the name should known. be analyzed as semi+ yada', "My name (i.e., the name The arrowhead of the Bible Lands Museum is la• upon whom I call= my personal god) has known (i.e., beled No. 24 in the published series. It is quite large. It is, entered into an intimate [kinship or covenant] relation• in fact, the largest of the extant inscribed arrowheads: ship)." The orthography of the arrowhead, along with 12.8 cm. in length with its broken tip; reconstructed, it Ugaritic b'ld', presumably ba'lfda', suggests a different would have been 13.4 cm. long; the blade length is analysis. 3 It may be that the verbal element is a jussive 9.85 cm. One may compare the size of Arrowhead No. 2 (or better an old preterit), *yida' (later Hebrew yeda'), ('El-ijac;lr I), 10.5 cm., or of the arrowhead of the king of and that dialectically, in the sequence iyi, there is syncope Amurru, No. 12, 11.3 cm., among the largest of the cor• of the yod: iyi > f). This may be the case for the Ugaritic pus. The blade is oblanceolate with a fairly developed personal name IJa-am-mi-is-ta-mar, alphabetic 'm8tmr, stem, a tapered "cut" to a rhomboidal, tapered tang. The ['am-mi-yi0tamar]. 4 One may compare the syncope of blade has a slightly raised, flat rib. In type it stands close yod in gentilics like ~idonfm and ~orfm (iyi > f). In Phoe• to 'El-ijac;lr IV (No. 10). 2 nician they are normally spelled ~dnm and ~rm. The inscription reads: One is given pause in so interpreting the name by a series of forms in Amorite which apparently are based on (obverse) nominal forms: *da' and *da'at. Compare the names sa• J:z~ smd' bn ysb' Arrowhead of Semida< son of Yissaba< mi-da-lJu-um, sami-da-ba-tum (fem.), and 'i-li-ma-da-lJi. 5 (reverse) A final caveat. While the reading smd' seems to be man (retainer) of Sapat, the Tyrian clear to me, the last two letters could conceivably be read

1. I am indebted to Dr. Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Curator of the 'ayin-lamed, reading an angularly-drawn 'ayin and a Bible Lands Museum, for kindly granting me permission to publish the round lamed: sm'l, [semi-'eli], "My personal god (name) arrowhead from the Museum Collection. She has also provided me with is

203 204 Old Canaanite and Phoenician Inscriptions

Ostraca, and the Old South name smh'ly, "His the gentilic, !jdny, "the Sidonian." In late Phoenician, personal god (name) is