10. Early Canaanite yaqtula Despite great advances in our knowledge of early Northwest Semitic dialects a still mooted point is the existence in any of these dialects of the morpheme -a which is found in the Arabic subjunctive. Sources such as Alalakh and Mari have yielded nothing relevant for the problem, and Ugarit has been hardly less disappointing. The little it offers is quite ambiguous, 1 and even if one accepts the existence of yaqtula in Ugaritic, its function and distribution remain completely obscure. In the present state of the question, therefore, yaqtula in early Northwest Semitic is still little more than the hypothesis of some gram­ marians to explain the origin of the Hebrew cohortative.2 In this article we hope to present evidence which not only demon­ strates the existence of yaqtula, but also gives us a fairly good idea of its range of usage in one Canaanite dialect in the early 14th century B.C.3 Our source is the sixty-six Amarna letters written from Byblos.4 Restricting ourselves to this small corpus we thus have for our study the language of a small number of scribes within rather narrow limits of time and place. This reduces to a minimum the margin of error due to other and conflicting scribal traditions. In view of the verbal prefixes ya-, yi-, yu-, the suffixes -a (3rd sg. perf.) and -ti (1st sg. perf.), etc., the presence of a Canaanite morpheme in these letters is in itself not surprising. Our problem is one of identifi­ cation, for in Akkadian we have the homophonous morpheme known as the ventive, and a large number of the relevant occurrences of -a are readily explained, at least at first sight, as examples of the ventive. What we shall try to show is that in the vast majority of instances they 1For the material see Cyrus H. Gordon, Ugaritic Manual, 57, §9.7. 2Bauer-Leander, Historische Grammatik, 273, §36d; Joiion, Grammaire de l'hebreu biblique2 , 315, n. l. 3The writer first presented this evidence in his dissertation [see pp. 84-99 in the present volume]; see also JCS 5 (1951) 33, n. 3 [above, Paper 6, p. 160, n. 3]. Though we have reworked the material completely for this study, our conclu­ sions remain substantially the same. 4We therefore omit from consideration EA 136-138, which were not written from Byblos, though the use of yaqtula in these three letters is virtually identical with its use in Byblos letters. EA 103 seems to have been written from Simyra, butyaqtula does not occur in this letter. 180 Amarna Studies are really not ventives, but ventives which have been equated with a formally identical morpheme in a completely different speech pattern.5 And this speech can only be the scribes' native Canaanite. We begin with a description of the two most common uses of yaqtula: A) To express wish, request, command- 1. a$u: a. u yi-[Ja-am6 LUGAL be-li-iayiJmur7 [K]UR.MES-su u yi­ il-qi gab-ba, "And so may the king my lord come forth, look upon his lands and take possession of everything" (EA 362:60-61). b. yi-[Ja LUGAL, "May the king come forth" (EA 124:46, broken context). 2. b,ummutu: a. u yu-b,a-mi-ta be-li ERIN.MES pi-ta-tam u ni­ USx(BAD), "And so may my lord hastily despatch the archers or we die" (EA 362:40-41). b. ki-na-[na] yu-b,a-mi-t<i us-sar ERIN.MES p[i-taJ-t[iJ LUGAL u yi-U-qi-su-nu u ti-ni-pu-us KUR.MES a-na LUGAL BE-i[a], "Accordingly may the king speed the sending of the archers so he may capture them (the sons of c Abdi-Asirta) and the lands be joined to the king my lord" (EA 129:77-80). 3. maqiitu: a. u-ul yi-ma-qu-ta ERIN.MES ka-ra-[s]i UGU-ia, "Let not the men of the camp (?) fall upon me" (EA 83:43--44). b. u-ul yi-ma­ qu-ta x-[x-x] [UGU]-ia u yi-il-qa-ni, "Let not the ... fall upon me to take me captive" (EA 81:31-32). 4. nadiinu: a. u ia-di-na LUGAL LU.MES ma-[Ja-ar-ta a-na ARAD­ su, "And so may the king give his servant a garrison" (EA 118:11-13). b. u LU-ia an-nu-u yu-wa-si-ra-su LUGAL-ru ki-ma ar-!J,i-es u ia-di-na LU.MES ma-[Ja-ar-ra a-na na-[Ja-ar ARAD ki-ti-su u URU-su, "And as for this man of mine, may the king send him with all haste and grant a garrison to protect his loyal servant and his city" (EA 117:76-80). c. li-es­ mi LUGAL-ru a-wa-te ARAD-su u ia-di-na ba-la-ta ARAD-su u a-na­ [Ja-r[a URU kJi-it-ti-su, "May the king heed his servant's words and grant his servant's means of sustenance, and keep his servant alive that I may guard his loyal city" (EA 74:53-56). d. s[uJm-ma lib-bi LUGAL be-li-ia a-[nJa na-[Ja-[aJr URU-su u ya-[dJi-n[aJm BE-ia L[U].MES ma- SBecause of this equation (yaqtula = iprusa) we have included the occurrences (9) of the ventive in the form -am. Moreover, final -m is often otiose in these letters: ka-ta, ka-tam, mi-ni, mi-nim, ni-nu-um (for ninu), etc. 6or yu-$a-am in view of tu-$a (line 19), tu-$u (lines 56,62). For the copy of EA 362 see Thureau-Dangin, RA 19 (1922) 102-103.-With regard to the interpretation of verbs tertiae infirmae, the rule is this: jussive (or preterite) forms end in -i (yiqbi, yismi I yisme, yilqi, etc.), indicative in -u (yiqbu, yismu, yilqu, etc.), yaqtula in -a (yiqba, yilqa, etc.). .