Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Etymology of "'Eylam" at Genesis 14: 1: Part II

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Peter Bekins <pbekins AT fuse.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Etymology of "'Eylam" at Genesis 14: 1: Part II
  • Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 13:34:00 -0500


On Feb 6, 2008, at 11:02 AM, b-hebrew-request AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:
Etymology of “’Eylam” at Genesis 14: 1: Part II

HALOT’s Reference to “cf. Sum. Elam”

When confronted with the claim in my prior post that the Hebrew word ’Eylam
is not related to the name of the predecessor of Persia, most people on the
b-Hebrew list might be expected to turn to HALOT. HALOT says that the Hebrew
word ayin-yod-lamed-mem/(YLM/’Eylam means the predecessor of Persia, and then
sets forth the following seemingly airtight etymology:

“Haltam/ti, cf. Sum. Elam, Akk. Elamtu”...

In order to get Sumerian “NIM” and Akkadian “KUR elammatum” to look like
the Hebrew word “’Eylam”, no fewer than 11 changes of letters are needed....

there is no reasonable basis for supposing that the
sumerogram “NIM” is anything like the Hebrew word ’Eylam.

HALOT knows all that. HALOT is trying to mislead people into thinking that
the Sumerians called the predecessor of Persia “Elam”, a word that seems
fairly close to the Hebrew word ’Eylam. But that’s not true, as HALOT knows. The
Sumerians called the predecessor of Persia “NIM”, a word that bears no
reasonable relationship to the Hebrew word ’Eylam.

The inconvenient truth is that there simply is no “Elam” in any ancient
language attested anywhere....

No matter how many times HALOT
says “cf. Sum Elam”, there was no word “Elam” in Sumer, there was only “NIM”,
and HALOT knows that.


For anyone interested, the relevant article is Arno Poebel, "The Name of Elam in Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hebrew," The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 48, No. 1. (Oct., 1931), pp. 20-26.

Poebel argues that NIM is not a phonetic rendering of the name of the country (contra EA Speiser), but a sign that can also be read "Elam". He cites the phonetic value e-la-am for NIM attested in CT, XI, 5: 4152 (Syll. A.) rev 9 and also in an unpublished Nippur tablet containing part of the Nippur syllabary. Further in CT, XI, 5:4152 rev 10 is reference to the name of the sign being "Elam". Accordingly, Labat (a standard Akkadian signlist) lists ELAM as a reading of NIM.

Poebel also refutes the idea that elam and elamtum are translations of NIM.KI as "highland" related to Akkadian elû "upper" (also contra Speiser). Rather he sees Sumerian Elam and Akkadian Elatum as separate borrowings of the original Ha(l)tam/Ha(l)tam-ti.

In other words, cuneiform signs can have multiple values, both phonetic and logographic. They can represent either a phonetic sound (syllabic) or a word which need not have any phonetic association with the normal "syllabic" value of the sign. The Sumerian sign used to write "Elam" was the sign that scholars label NIM, but (according to Poebel) a Sumerian would have understood the word "Elam". Elam was not the result of a process of historical sound change originating with a word "nim".

Note: CT = Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum

Peter Bekins
Grad Student - Bible and Comparative Semitics
Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, OH
















Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page