Early Lexical Lists Revisited Structures and Classification as a Mnemonic Device* Klaus Wagensonner University of Vienna § 1. Introduction Besides the extraordinary rich data obtained from the “lexical” remains of the ancient Near East, the so-called lexical lists (henceforth LL)—preferably bi- or poly-lingual ones1—are the foundation of our modern-day dictionaries of Akkadian, and, to a certain degree, mirror and enlighten the cultural foundations and peculiarities of Mesopotamia by classifying and labeling the environment.2 Despite the high status this text genre has, it should be considered with respect and sometimes also scepticism. The latter holds true when we are dealing in particular with late lists, which were the end-product of a long canonization process and therefore produced a high number of misleading or, from our modern perspective, dubious entries.3 But to say it in * The study presented here is partly continued in a lecture held at the 54e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in Würzburg on July 23rd, 2008. There, the author tried to compare the lexical lists with contemporaneous mundane texts. This issue is briefly introduced in the conclusive remarks of this paper. 1 It is disputable if we can consider the earliest mono-lingual lists as outputs of “lexicography” or regard them exclusively as “word-lists.” In Egyptology such word-lists were interpreted as “onomastica.” The discussion of this and other topics regarding classification and categorization is ongoing within the framework of the COST Action A-31 “Stability and Change of Classification Systems in a Cross-Cultural Perspective.” 2 Dietz Otto Edzard questions if these lists can be considered as “Kunstwerke,” works of art (2007). Although this approach regards later lexical lists, it also holds partly true for the lists under discussion; cf. infra §§ 3f. 3 For instance cf. the mātu-section of Nabnītu (SIG7.ALAN iv 52ff. = MSL 16, 79): KUR ma-a-tu4 KI MIN MA.DA MIN KALAM MIN KI.IN.GI MIN GU2 MIN KA.NAG MIN EME.SAL GI MIN (MUŠ3 MIN) IGI ma-a-tu4 MA MIN (MUŠ2 MIN) Just the entries in bold print are “genuine”; the others are partly derived from those. Numerous instances can also be gathered from late bilingual texts like the canonized Udug-¶ul-incantations. 286 Languages of the Ancient Near East Miguel Civil’s words, “the Sumerologist may fail to realize how lucky he is to have at his disposal an enormous wealth of ancient lexical material” (1982: 123). In this article it is the author’s intention to concentrate on the early monolingual evidences. Therefore I limit myself to the lexical data from Uruk IV and III and—where it is necessary in purpose of reconstruc- tion—its ensuing tradition in ED I and IIIa/b. Although this time span seems long, the lexical tradition remains highly steady. This homogeneity of structure and sequence during those periods is strongly connected to the scribal education and therefore has a profound mnemonic character. The sequence of entries in a LL seems to work primarily with graphic issues linked in many cases to the sign shape.4 At first glance, this serialization could be interpreted as a kind of mnemonic help for apprentice scribes to become easily acquainted with the information contained in the lists and achieve the ability to manipu- late early (cuneiform) writing. Although it is hitherto hardly provable, these arrangements seem to share some characteristics with the contem- poraneous administrative documents. It is obvious from the evidence that these characteristics intrude into the economic records more than previ- ously thought. Together with determinatives or classifiers to be discussed in § 5 they are an useful tool for a more elaborate recording of data, either lexical or administrative. § 2. Corpus Although an amount of approximately 700 tablets and fragments dealing with lexical information seems to weigh little in contrast to the huge corpus of about 5000 administrative documents found in the debris of Uruk, the information provided by that genre of textual inheritance makes it clear that the early writers were aware of the capabilities inherent in a script which was invented only a few centuries before the first secured attestations of LL in the Uruk IV and III-periods. In spite of sparsely found lists dating to the former period, the main progress of canonization was conducted—as far as we can date the texts—in the Uruk III-period. During that time, the differences between manuscripts 4 This principle was briefly quoted by Claus Wilcke: “Die ‘Listen’ waren in his- torischer Zeit hierarchisch nach Rang oder Größe des Bezeichneten, nach Asso- nanz oder Reinformen der Bezeichnungen, nach graphischer Identität oder Ähn- lichkeit, wie auch aufgrund semantischer Nähe geordnet und nach unterschiedli- chen Merkmalen aufgefächert” (2005:439). K. Wagensonner, Early Lexical Lists Revisited… 287 of the same list decrease considerably,5 which leads to the assumption that there must have been a central institution partly or fully responsible for the scribal education.6 § 3. Arrangement in theory A thorough investigation of the lists reveals the features of serialization and shows that the entries are arranged, not arbitrary. To keep this study within reasonable limits I will only point to some representative examples demonstrating the high level of knowledge organization which underlies the lists’ content.7 As far as our modern interpretation is true, all Uruke- an LL are “thematic” according to their content. This means that each list covers one or—in a few cases—several semantic fields. To a certain de- gree, this is also acknowledged for the Sumerian Word List C (former Trib- ute) providing a kind of practical and usable guide for the LL and simulta- neously helping the apprentice scribe to convert the “theoretical” lexical entries to a more mundane usage as found in economic records.8 It is only this list which shows such a strong connection between the early lexicographic outputs on the one hand and the administrative documents on the other.9 An intriguing question is the arrangement of entries by means of hier- archy. In this paper I do not intend to neglect a hierarchical arrange- ment in the lists entirely. But, on basis of our still insufficient knowledge of the political, religious, and social stratification in Uruk at the end of 5 The LL Swine (former Dog) must be excluded from this process because both manuscripts dealing with designations of pigs do not share the same sequence (cf. Cavigneaux 2006:20ff.; Veldhuis 2006:186, n. 8). This list was obviously not dealt with in the lexical tradition of the 3rd millennium. The same holds true for other word-lists which were generally referred to as “vocabularies.” 6 Cf. inter alia Krispijn 1991–1992:13ff. and a forthcoming article by Hans J. Nissen. Jonathan Taylor studied the perception of the early lexical lists in the OB period following the different tablet types used in the scribal education. In his conclusive remarks he states that the “scribes were interested in the text [Stand- ard Professions List and the other Archaic/Early Dynastic compositions] itself and display a good level of understanding of it, but they were interested also in the formatting of the text” (2008:208). 7 Cf. infra § 4 with a separate discussion of each of the main lexical lists found in Uruk. 8 This was persuasively demonstrated by Niek Veldhuis in his thorough analy- sis and interpretation of Sumerian Word List C (2006:193ff.). 9 We have also other archaic LL attesting natural numbers; cf. Archaic Food (/Grain). 288 Languages of the Ancient Near East the 4th millennium it is almost impossible to make any conclusive re- marks on this topic according to the lists. Anyway, some features should be discussed here cursorily: It is the well-known professions-list Lu2 A which forms the main exam- ple for a proper discussion of hierarchy in this early stage of lexicogra- phy. Starting with the title NAMEŠDA,10 it is noteworthy, anyway, that the 11 constituent NAM2 ( ) is only attested in the first entries of that list. But this alone is no implication for any hierarchical structure. Nevertheless, the Urukean lexical corpus provides us with a second list containing pro- fessions and/or titles called Officials.12 There, some of the entries men- 13 tioned in the first section of Lu2 A are listed again. Nonetheless, a rather important indication for a hierarchy is the fact that professions preceded by GALa (e. g. GALa UMUN2) are listed prior to those preceded by SANGAa (e. g. SANGAa UMUN2). This observation is based on different groups of en- tries sharing the same sign or sign-sequence. The following table gives an inventory of those arrangements. Although many titles have not been in- 14 terpreted satisfactorily up to now, it is obvious that GALa—if there is any hierarchy intended—was an important function, perhaps of higher rank than SANGAa: Match Sequence Entries Lu2 A SUKKAL GALa SUKKAL, GADAa SUKKAL 18–19 GAa GALa GAa, SIG2b GAa 20–21 ŠABa GALa ŠABa, BUa ŠABa(, NAM2 ŠABa) 25–26(+26a) (KU3a) (GALa KU3a, IDIGNA KU3a) (28a–28b) 10 It would go far beyond the scope of this paper to deal with this title appro- priately, but cf. for a thorough discussion Lambert 1981:94ff. and Selz 1998:300f. 11 The signs are based on the CDLI-project (URL: http://cdli.ucla.edu/tools/ cdlifiles/archsignfiles_jpg.zip, accessed on October 19th, 2008). 12 A score transliteration of this list is found in Englund–Nissen 1993:86ff. and in the DCCLT-project (accessed on October 19th, 2008). For a thorough investi- gation of the list’s structure the Fāra-text SF 59 as well as MEE 3, 50 from Ebla are indispensable.