Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

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