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Figurative Language in the Ancient Near East

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Figurative Language in the Ancient Near East SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST The Burney Relief Figurative Language in the Ancient Near East Edited by M.MINDLIN M.J.GELLER J.E.WANSBROUGH SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF LONDON Malet Street, London WC1E 7HP 1987 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” © School of Oriental and African Studies 1987 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Figurative language in the ancient Near East. 1. Semitic languages—Figures of speech I. Mindlin, M. II. Geller, M.J. III. Wansbrough, J.E. 492 PJ3051 ISBN 0-203-98498-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-7286-0141-9 (Print Edition) Acknowledgements The symposium on ‘Figurative Language in the Ancient Near East’, which took place on 17–18 November 1983, was achieved with the aid of grants from the British Academy, the Institute of Jewish Studies at University College London, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, with additional support and hospitality from the Warburg Institute and the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum. The session at the Warburg Institute included papers by Th.Jacobsen, D.O.Edzard and O.R.Gurney; and that at the School of Oriental and African Studies included the papers of W.G. Lambert, K.R.Veenhof, C.Wilcke, J.E.Wansbrough and S.Talmon. All the papers submitted for publication were substantially amplified and revised. The editorial work of Murray Mindlin, including his English translation of D.O.Edzard’s contribution, deserves particular mention, especially in the light of subsequent illness, which compelled his retirement from the project. His death on 8 May 1987 has deprived us all of an energetic colleague and great friend. The editors wish to thank Martin Daly for his wise counsel and the Publications Committee of the School of Oriental and African Studies for meeting the cost of production. Abbreviations The Assyriological abbreviations can be found in the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary and in R.Borger, Handbuch der Keilschrift Literatur (HKL). CONTENTS Introduction vii M.J.Geller (University College London) Pictures and Pictorial Language (The Burney Relief) 1 Thorkild Jacobsen (Harvard University emerit.) Deep-rooted Skyscrapers and Bricks: Ancient Mesopotamian Architecture and its 11 Imaging D.O.Edzard (University of Munich) Devotion: the Languages of Religion and Love 21 W.G.Lambert (University of Birmingham) ‘Dying Tablets’ and ‘Hungry Silver’: Elements of Figurative Language in 38 Akkadian Commercial Terminology K.R.Veenhof (University of Leiden) A Riding Tooth: metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche, Quick and Frozen in 69 Everyday Language C.Wilcke (University of Munich) Antonomasia: the case for Semitic’TM 93 J.E.Wansbrough (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) Har and Midbār: An Antithetical Pair of Biblical Motifs 105 S.Talmon (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) INDEXES Subject 126 Words: Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew 134 Primary sources 147 Biblical sources 151 ILLUSTRATIONS Frontispiece: The Burney Relief 1. Mesopotamian seed-plough 70 2. Standard of Ur and wild animal approaching 70 3. Silver handle of dagger ending in lion’s mouth 72 4. Axe blade hanging from lion’s mouth 73 5. Hoe from Urnammu’s stele (with coil of measuring rope similar to 74 one held by Inanna in the Burney Relief) 6. Sun god on the gate (photograph C.Wilcke) 83 Introduction M.J.Geller A group of scholars from Britain, Holland, Germany, and Israel met at the Warburg Institute and the School of Oriental and African Studies in November 1983, to discuss the use of figurative language in Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, and biblical Hebrew literature. The papers were presented in memory of Henri Frankfort, and consequently also took into account figurative expression in ancient art and architecture. The original impetus for the colloquium came from Thorkild Jacobsen’s extended visit to London as guest of the British Academy, and all of the participants came to honour both Frankfort’s memory and Jacobsen’s presence. This volume represents the fruits of that meeting. Until now, there has been little interaction between Assyriologists, Semitists, and literary theorists, for obvious reasons. Modern studies of structuralism, semantics, and metaphor1 usually begin with Aristotle and then advance abruptly to nineteenth and twentieth century European literature, or following the example of linguistics analyse contemporary language and discourse.2 The current trends away from historical grammar and linguistics have meant that languages such as Sumerian and Akkadian do not feature in studies of metaphor and figurative language. The Semitists, on the other hand, have generally not entered into the arena of semiotics and ‘the meaning of meaning’, because so much of the basic work of lexicography and the production of text editions remains to be done. The present volume should serve to show that both fields can profit from closer contact. The metaphorists may be surprised by the variety of Near Eastern texts in which figurative language regularly occurs. These papers contain examples of tropes from building inscriptions, private letters, and even economic texts, as well as literary compositions such as love poetry. The Assyriologists and Semitists have still to confront the problems posed by semantics in trying to determine whether the usage of a particular word is monistic or dualistic, i.e. whether its metaphoric meaning in a specific context is an integral part of its basic ‘meaning’ or definition.3 The difficulties posed by Assyriology are easy to document. Sumerian includes many words which are ‘compound roots’, combining separate lexical elements to create a new lexeme. Sumerian igi-bar, for instance, literally means to ‘open the eye’, but the combined form corresponds to ‘looking’ or even ‘noticing’, depending upon the context. Similarly ki-ús means to ‘touch the earth’, but becomes ‘reaching’ or ‘arriving’, while one literally ‘throws’ (šub) an incantation, i.e. ‘recites’ it. One hastens by ‘giving the head’ (sag-sum//hiāšu), and prays by ‘raising the hands’ (šu-íl). Likewise in Akkadian, idiomatic uses of combinations of words give quite different meanings from the individual lexical units: the court adversary, or bēl dabābi, is a ‘master of speaking’, and one silences or interrupts by ‘seizing the mouth’ . The modern translator must attempt to apply the ‘basic’ meaning of individual words to the context, and in many cases he may even be compelled to ignore the dictionary entry, somewhat consistent with the modern theory that words have no meaning, only contexts.4 The complex nature of Sumerian and Akkadian semantics is partially the result of a bilingual literary tradition which is first evident in the third millennium B.C., and continued to thrive at least until the first century A.D. Bilingualism accounts for the fruitful borrowing of words and expressions between the languages, and encouraged the study of grammar and translation in the ancient scribal curriculum. The result is an impressive lexical tradition from Mesopotamia which not only catalogued numerous categories of objects according to genus, but also created bilingual glossaries which could be organized according to words with similar meaning or even root structure, or as homonyms.5 The potential, therefore, for substitution of expressions from one language to another was great. A famous example is the Sumerian political title lu gal kiški ‘King of (the city of) Kiš’, becoming šar kiššati ‘King of the whole world’, as used in later Assyrian and Babylonian royal titles, with the geographical meaning of Kiš being substituted by its logographic use in Akkadian contexts corresponding to akkadian kiššatu ‘entirety’.6 The scope for figurative language in Assyriology and related fields is too broad to be enumerated here, but one intriguing line of inquiry can be opened by way of introduction to the subject. The ‘comparison’ theory of metaphor is ascribed to Aristotle,7 whose succinct insight into figurative language in Poetics 21 still retains its value, and certain of Aristotle’s statements cannot be improved upon. Nevertheless, all the literature cited in this volume pre-dates Aristotle, and one wonders whether metaphor or semantic analogy was ever recognized as such by the ancient scribes, despite the absence of a comprehensive theory. The use of simile and metaphor may not in itself imply an awareness of the role of tropes within the language, since it is conceivable that figurative language was used unconsciously or stylistically, without isolating such usage as a particular phenomenon. One possibility for crediting Mesopotamian scribes with a pre- Aristotelian conception of figurative language is to be found in certain commentaries to lexical texts, which are intended to amplify or explain the glosses of the standard compilations. One such commentary elucidates the following passage of the lexical text Aa III/1 86–88 (MSL 14 320): zi ZI na-da-ru (‘to be furious’) la-ba-bu (‘to rage’) na-al-bu-bu (‘to be enraged’) The ancient commentary on this passage (MSL 14 323) explains the terms nadāru (and presumably the adjective nadru) with a citation from a bilingual incantation: ur šu zi- ga//la-ab na-ad-ru ‘a raging lion’ (cf. CT 16 19:21–22, and CADN1 65a), thus relating nadru ‘raging’, labābu ‘to rage’ and labbu ‘lion’. That this association is intentional can be seen from other similes, such as Sennacherib’s statement that labbiš annadirma allabib abūbiš ‘I was furious as a lion and ferocious as a flood’ (OIP 2 51 25 et al.), which employs the same play on words. The commentary then proceeds to explain nalbubu with a citation from Babylonian wisdom literature (Ludlul I 86): na-al-bu-bu tap-pa-a ú-naq-qar-an-ni ‘the furious friend derides me’, which is followed in turn by nu-ug-gu-ru: ; this is an explanation of nugguru ‘to deride’ as akāl ‘eating in pieces’, i.e.
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