Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 16.08 19/06/00 -0700, Dave Washburn wrote:
>Ian,
>> This text has a number of difficulties. The first being the significance of
>> b++. This has been related to the Hebrew b$$, "on the six(th)". (Not a
>> strange connection, the Ugaritic y+tr, is Ishtar.) This would mean that the
>> text reads something like,
>> 
>>   On the sixth, the day of the full moon of Hiyaru,
>>   the sun went in with her gate-keeper Rashap.
>
>Actually, Gordon renders it "new moon," which is more in keeping 
>with the meaning of the Hebrew XD$.  

Sorry, you're right. It was an early lapse of concentration.

>It looks to me as though `rbt 
>is a construct, hence "the setting of the sun."  I'm not sure where 
>you get "with" and "her" before "gatekeeper," but there's nothing in 
>the text to indicate these terms.  So the translation is speculative 
>at best.

You're right that there is no preposition. As +gr is gatekeeper, the final
h is taken as the possessive. So we end up with, "the sun entered, her
gatekeeper Rashap."

>Peter wrote in part, in response:
>
>"Of course, if you interpret neither b++ nor `rbt in the Ugaritic text 
>as referring to an eclipse, we are left with a problem: no-one would 
>have written such a text (we may presume) just to report that the 
>sun set on a particular day."
>
>True, but there's more to the tablet.  The reverse continues:
>
>w`bdm tbqrn
>skn
>
>This suggests to me that +grh (not precise, but the actual Ugaritic 
>is virtually impossible to represent in ASCII) 

(I guess you're referring to the form of the g, which the Spanish data base
represents with the ascii G, and which has what looks like an acute above
it in the literature.)

>is not "gatekeeper," 
>but its more common meaning "gate," and hence "gate of r$p."  

One translation has actually given, "the sun entered her gate ($. ging in
ihr Tor hinein)" with Rashap being taken as "Pestilence".

>Hence we may have something along the lines of
>
>"On the 6th day of the new moon [or as Gordon renders, 'in the 6 
>days of the new moon, == 1st quarter?'] at sunset at the gate of 
>r$p, the servants did thus and so [meanings for the last 2 words 
>are apparently uncertain]."  

I'm aware of this approach to the text, ie six days of the new moon or on
the sixth day of the new moon. It is one that doesn't allow the text to
mean an eclipse at all (an eclipse can only happen on the "true" day of the
new moon). This may be the case. I was analysing the text with the notion
of an eclipse in mind.

Again as you pointed out with "with" there is no preposition "at" as the
above would have there be twice and is, as you put it, "speculative".

>It would be good to know, as well, 
>whether this is the whole tablet or whether more has broken off.  
>Judging by the transcription in Gordon, I suspect the former.  But in 
>any case, if we look at both sides of the tablet, I doubt it has 
>anything to do with an eclipse.

There is actually less on the second side than the first. The text is very
difficult to read because it has been burnt at some stage, either during
the palace fire mentioned by Rib-Addu or in the final conflagration. I
don't think that there is anything missing. The second part seems to be
related to an act of divination.


Ian