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Hittite Hieroglyphic Texts at Aleppo.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2014
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The stele No. 2459 (Plates XIX–XXII) was acquired by the Musee National Syrien d'Alep in 1939, after its existence had been reported by peasants. It lay face downwards in an open field at Jekke, 22 kms. to the east of Azaz, which itself lies 25 kms. to the north of Aleppo (Fig. 8). Excavations were conducted by M. Dunand around the spot where it lay, but revealed nothing except some very simple foundations.
It is a tall stele, 1.66 m. high, of grey volcanic basalt. Its shape is that of a half-column, rounded at the top, a form favoured by the Hittites of North Syria for depicting a god or goddess, usually accompanied by a dedicatory inscription. The origin of the shape is not obvious, but the type goes back at least to Babylonian monuments, such as the stele of Hammurabi. The text is unusually perfect, except for a flaw running vertically through the stone. It was perhaps buried in antiquity to preserve it.
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- Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1948
References
page 122 note 1 The stele and the infoimation about its discovery ate published by Dunand, M. in Bulletin du Musée de Beyrouth, IV, 1940, p. 85 ffGoogle Scholar. For permission to publish its text and that of No. 2460 my thanks are due to the Emir Djafar Abd-el-Kader, Director-General of Antiquities, Syria.
page 122 note 2 Examples of such stelae: (1) that of the goddess Kubaba, Carchemish, B.M. 125007 = M., Plate XI. (2) Of a Storm-god from Babylon, ibid., Plate II. (3) Of the Protector god of the Sun-god (?) from Haci Bekli, now at Adana (Garstang, Hittite Empire, Fig. 43); there is an inscription on the back which has hitherto escaped notice as it is unfortunately too thickly coated with lime deposit to be legible without treatment. (4) Of a Storm-God, from Maraş, at Adana (von der Osten, Oriental Institute Communications, VIII, Fig. 87, with an unpublished text). (5) Of a Storm-God from Carchemish, A 18A.
page 122 note 3 For a similar stele buried in antiquity, see Ozgüç, , Belleten 45 (1948), p. 236 Google Scholar.
page 122 note 4 E.g., Rowe, , Bethshan I Google Scholar, Plate XXXIII (Mekal).
page 122 note 5 On plants sacred to deities in Anatolia, see my remarks on the sorrel and Dolichemis, Jupiter, in J.H.S. 1946, p. 135 Google Scholar.
page 124 note 1 E.g., H.H.M. Plate XXIII; or Woolley, , Carchemish, A, 17B Google Scholar.
page 124 note 2 The squeeze was made in the following manner: while the paper was still wet and adhering to the stone, the letters were traced on the back face of the paper with a copying pencil, in accordance with a copy previously made direct from the stone. The wet copying pencil spread a little and gave a strong blue-black line, enabling a photograph to be made direct from the back of the squeeze, while the front remained available for consultation unaltered.
page 124 note 3 This and other unknown ideograms we render by IDG.
page 125 note 1 There are also two further names, formed with that of this god in the present text (rev. l, 7 and 9 = Fig. 9: 15). IDG-war-me-s and HALPA-(pa)-IDG-war-s. Bossert, , Asia, p. 124 Google Scholar, rightly distinguishes the names compounded in -armas from those in -warmas. The -armas names preserved in Greek times certainly include some formed with a god's name such as Trokoz-armas, Roz-armas, from √Tarhunt-, Rund-, the change of -nd to z following a common Anatolian practice (Nazianzos = Nadi-andos, Podandus = Bozanti). On the other hand, the name Moormis, which Bossert explains as *Muwa-warmas, seems to me rather to belong to the -armas group, as representing *Muw-armas, and perhaps to contain the name of the deity in our present inscription. Cf. the gods Muwanus, Muwatallis, Bossert, op. cit., p. 124.
page 126 note 1 This and the other translations in this article must be regarded as no more than tentative attempts. As it is now reported ( Belleten, 45 (1948), p. 254 Google Scholar) that, by almost unbelievable skill and luck, Professor Bossert and Dr. Alkim have discovered at Karatepe in Cilicia what scholars have sought for so long, a considerable bilingual, much of what is written here and elsewhere will doubtless very soon require to be heavily revised. See now below p. 137.
page 129 note 1 Palu inscription, Lehmann-Haupt, Corpus Inscrip-tionum Chaldicarum, 31 Google Scholar.
page 129 note 2 Corpus, 19.
page 129 note 3 Sayce, , J.R.A.S., 1882, Vol. XXXVIII Google Scholar.
page 129 note 4 L.I.H.H., p. 379.
page 129 note 5 Information by courtesy of Dr. L. Keimer.
page 130 note 1 Cf. also, for farther examples, M. XI; A 11 b, 6; letters b 1; e III and IV; f III; g II and M. xlv. 2. Attached to a verbal phrase, especially in curse-formulæ: A 6 ls. 8 and 9; A 15** 4; A 1: 5, usually wtth the dative. Independent or adverbial: A 6: 4. For a derived adjective, see Emir Gazi, III C.
page 130 note 2 Bossert, , Asia, p. 137 Google Scholar, also takes it as sa.
page 131 note 1 Cf. King, L. W., Babylonian Boundary Stones in the British Museum, p. xiii Google Scholar.
page 134 note 1 I am obliged to Dr. O. R. Gurney for these references.
page 134 note 2 For Maliyas, as a Hittite deity, see Götze, Kleinasien, p. 126 Google Scholar.
page 135 note 1 See Bonfante, and Gelb, , ‘The Position of Hieroglyphic Hittite among the Indo-EuropeanLanguages’, J.A.O.S. 64, p. 169–190 (1944)Google Scholar, and Goetze's reply ‘Hittite and the Indo-European Languages, ibid., 65 (1945). p. 51.
page 136 note 1 But cf. the two bases from Bogaz-köy ( Bittel, , Kleinfunde, p. 12 Google Scholar and p. 9 transcribed in our Fig. 31), where EARS-NOSE is clearly either a title or an epithet.
page 136 note 2 On this dating for Kamanas, see above, p. 128.