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Some Hittite Etymologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

E. H. Sturtevant
E. H. Sturtevant*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

Friedrich and Goetze have recently shown that Hittite ša-ak-nu-(wa-)an-za means ‘ritually unclean’. The word is used of persons who engage in ritual acts or enter a temple when they are ritually impure. A distinction is sometimes drawn between ‘pure tables’ (GIŠBANŠUR. ḪI.A pár-ku-i-ya-aš) and ‘impure tables’ (GISBANŠUR.ḪI.A ša-ak-nu-wa-an-da-aš), both of which are used in the ritual.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 12 , Issue 3: July-September , September 1936 , pp. 181 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © 1936 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Archiv Orientalní 6.365–8.

2 Götze-Pedersen, Muršilis Sprachlähmung 35 and fn. 1.

3 A Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language 160 f. See also JAOS 54.405.

4 See Sturtevant and Bechtel, A Hittite Chrestomathy 108.1.25, 119 f.

5 See HG 149, 157, Lang. 10.266–73.

6 For this orthography, see KUB 22.33.1.9.

7 The hapax, ga-ma-ar-šu-wa-an-za-an, seems to be an adjective in agreement with ku-in. Possibly it contains the possessive suffix want- (with za instead of the usual ta or da). For the underlying stem, cf. the verb ka-mar-ši-eš-kán-zi (KUB 18.41.2.8), which stands in a mutilated context, but is followed in line nine by wa-a-tar ‘water’ and in line ten by a-ar-aš-zi ‘flows’.

8 See Götze, Kulturgeschichte 141.

9 This meaning of tarna- is no doubt to be assumed also in passages from omen texts where a bird name is the subject and no object is expressed.

10 Archiv für Lateinische Lexikographie 15.3 fn. 2, Grundriss 22.1.579.

11 Sturtevant, HG 47 f.

12 Sturtevant, HG 74–83.

13 KUB 13.4.3.64–8 = Sturtevant and Bechtel, Chrest. 160.

14 Is the glossenkeil omitted before za-ak-kar because it comes from another source? And may that source be Skt. śakrt or its Indo-Iranian predecessor? There is no reason to suppose that Indic (or Indo-Iranian) loan words in Hittite were confined to names of gods and technical terms of horse training.

15 See Sturtevant, Lang. 7. 115 f.; HG 110.

16 For the origin of the variation in the initial consonant, see Sturtevant, AJP 50. 360–9; TAPA 60. 33 f.; Lang. 7. 170; HG 114–6.

17 Revue Hittite et Asianique 1. 78; Lang. 7. 119. The inclusion of Hittite mahhan proves to have been an error; intervocalic h and hh are different phonemes.

18 See most recently Kurylowicz, Études Indo-Européennes 1. 27–76 (Cracow, 1935).

19 Lang. 4. 161. It is probably a coincidence that a majority of the words for ‘turn’ in the early IE languages begin with wer-, and that in Hittite texts weh-‘turn’ is sometimes confused with wer- ‘burn’ (see Götze-Pedersen, Muršilis Sprachlähmung 28–32).

20 L'Akkadien de Boghazköi 32 (Bordeaux, 1932).