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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Abdi-H.eba in the Amarna Tablet # 286
  • Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 10:13:04 EDT


Ishinan Ishibashi and Yitzhak Sapir:

As to Ishinan Ishibashi’s suggestion that the name of the princeling ruler
of Jerusalem in the Amarna Letters may honor any Egyptian god, rather than
the Hurrian goddess Heba, Yitzhak Sapir wrote: “EA 286 does not say "Abdi".
It says IR. This is a logogram originally from Sumerian meaning "servant."
We therefore do not know the language of the name and it could just as
well be the word for "servant" in Hurrian.”

I question that last statement.

1. Logograms were not ordinarily used in Hurrian. “Unlike Akkadian and
Hittite scribal practices, the Hurrian cuneiform texts contain relatively few
Sumerograms. The most frequent ones in the Mitanni letter are DINGIR ‘god’,
KUR ‘country’, and MEŠ plural marker.” Fournet/Bomhard Hurrian website
at p. 4.

2. The Hurrian word for “servant” is purame (at p. 33). Note also the
following remark: “As discovered by Laroche, according to the four-language
dictionary from Ras Shamra (R. quadr. 137 III 4), Hurrian purame = Sumerian
ÌR = Akkadian ardu = Ugaritic (‘)abdu means “slave, servant”.” The website
“Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European”
, by Vyacheslav V. Ivanov.

But there was a Hurrian name “Purame”, which is well-attested. If
Abdi-Heba had a 100% Hurrian name, it seems unlikely to me that the first
half of
that name would be rendered by IR, which usually meant the west Semitic word “
abdi”, instead of as “Purame” There are many Hurrian-type names in the
Amarna Letters, and I know of none that mix in logograms. Meanwhile, the
single most common beginning of a princeling name in the Amarna Letters is
the
west Semitic “Abdi”.

For example, look at Amarna Letter EA 280 from a princeling with a
Hurrian-type name: $u-wa-ar-da-ta. [That’s actually an Indo-Aryan name, but
Hurrian rulers routinely had Indo-Aryan names.] Note how the Hurrian
princeling
Suwardata represents the name of the princeling ruler of Jerusalem at line17,
line 23, and line 34. it’s always IR-he-ba [where the H, by the way, is a
heth/X].

If the ruler of Jerusalem had been a Hurrian princeling whose name started
with the Hurrian word “Purame”, it is unlikely that in every single case in
the Amarna Letters, both in letters written by him and the letter written
about him, that name would have been rendered by the logogram IR, which
usually was used to mean west Semitic abdi. Yes, the meanings are the same,
but
that was not the Hurrian way. Suwardata’s letter is thus important, because
as a Hurrian princeling, he would presumably have followed the Hurrian way
if the princeling ruler of Jerusalem were a fellow Hurrian whose name began
with the Hurrian word Purame.

More likely is that IR/abdi is west Semitic, and Heba is Hurrian. It’s
just like the (YN $W at item #5 on the Thutmose III list (which Anson Rainey
erroneously characterizes as being a “scribal error”). (YN is west Semitic,
and $W is Hurrian. West Semitic-speaking people did not know many Hurrian
words, but they knew a few. They would have known the famous Hurrian goddess
Khipa/Heba, and likely the Hurrian word for “great”, which is $W. What we’
re seeing here is a deliberate mixing in of an occasional Hurrian word by
west Semitic-speaking people. It’s just like “Taco Bell” in modern America.
So west Semitic-speaking people came up with (YN $W as an alternative name
for the Hurrian city of KD$WN/QD$ in eastern Upper Galilee, as an “Eye on
Great”, that is, “Eye on Mt. Hermon”. The ruler’s name, Yamiuta, of that
city is a Hurrian-type name. [We see the all-west Semitic version of (YN $W
at Genesis 14: 7 as the alternate name of Qadesh of Upper Galilee: (YN
M$P+/En Mishpat, meaning “Eye on Seat of Justice”/“Eye on Mt. Hermon”.]

For whatever reasons, Hurrian women were prized as wives. For example,
many Hittite kings married Hurrian women, not Hittite women. It is likely
that
Abdi-Heba had a west Semitic-speaking father and a Hurrian mother. The
second half of his name in effect honors his mother’s traditions. But
Abdi-Heba is not a Hurrian princeling.

As to whether Heba might instead be the name of an Egyptian god, I am not
aware of any princeling rulers in Canaan having names that honor Egyptian
gods. Even though Abdi-Heba probably spent many years of his youth in Egypt
(as a type of genteel hostage), he was not Egyptian, and his name would not
honor an Egyptian god.

I agree with the conventional scholarly view here that IR is “Abdi”, a
west Semitic word, that in this name is paired with the Hurrian name of a
Hurrian goddess, Heba/Khipa.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois



  • Re: [b-hebrew] Abdi-H.eba in the Amarna Tablet # 286, JimStinehart, 05/12/2010

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