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Four Syriac inscriptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

J. B. Segal
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Extract

In the course of a visit to Urfa in south-eastern Turkey in 1961 I was able to re-examine and to photograph the short inscription at the bottom centre of the Tripod mosaic which I had discovered in 1956. The photographs are incorporated in the colour transcription of this mosaic by Mrs. Seton Lloyd, published with my article ‘The Sabian mysteries’, in E. Bacon (ed.), Vanished civilizations, 1963, 204. The revised text of this inscription, however, has not yet received detailed analysis; I venture to return to it here because it contains features that may be of interest to students of Semitic philology and religion.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , June 1967 , pp. 293 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1967

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References

1 The interpretation of the text given here supersedes the tentative rendering offered in my ‘New Syriac inscriptions from Edessa’, BSOAS, XXII, 1, 1959, 26Google Scholar f., and ‘New mosaics from Edema’, Archaeology, XII, 1959, 154.Google Scholar

2 See p. 294 below.

3 See BSOAS, XVI, 1, 1954, 35.Google Scholar

4 Forms of Edessan costume of this period are illustrated in Bacon, E. (ed.), Vanished civilizations, 204 f.Google Scholar

5 The modern inhabitants of Urfa, however, derive the name of the quarter from the burial there of Turks who died in the defence of the city against the French after the first World War.

6 Jenni, E., ‘Die altsyrischen Inschriften 1.-3. Jahrhundert n. Chr.’, Theologische Zeitschrift, XXI, 1965, 378.Google Scholar

7 Zeitschrift für Semitistik …, X, 1935, 36.Google Scholar

8 Ingholt, H., Parthian sculptures from Hatra (Memoirs of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, XII), 1954, 26,Google Scholar points out that the use of s for š was already a characteristic of cuneiform texts at Barran in the late Assyrian period. It is to be observed that the earlier forms with ŝ/śinstead of s are identical with the form of these words in literary Arabic. On this and on the interchange of these letters in Palmyrene see Cantineau, J., Grammaire du Palmyrenien epigraphique, 1935, 41Google Scholar ff., and further Starcky, J., Inventaire des inscriptions de Palmyre, X, 1949, –.Google Scholar

9 Zeitschrift für Semitistik …, X, 1935, 38, 41, 163.Google Scholar

10 The passage in the document would then be translated: ‘And if anyone shall bring a (legal) claim and plot (dub.; Syriac nthg') with Tiro the purchaser or with his heirs concerning the impediments (affecting) this slave-girl, I, the contractant and seller, make a claim in advance and wipe out (the charge) and am clear (of blame) and establish (these impediments) as the (ill) fortune of Tiro the purchaser’.

11 See now Drijvers, H. J. W., Bardaiṣan of Edessa, 1966.Google Scholar

12 There is no justification for rendering ḥrt' here as ‘issue, offspring’.

13 On the Marilaha cult see my articles in Anatolian Studies, III, 1953, 97Google Scholar; BSOAS, XVI, 1, 1954, 21 ff.; and in Bacon (ed.), op. cit., 212.Google Scholar

14 The text is difficult here. See Jenni, op. cit., 384, on ṭm' and kpr'.

15 See on this title Bivar, A. D. H. and Shaked, S., ‘The inscriptions at Shīmbār’, BSOAS, XXVII, 2, 1964, 274Google Scholar ff., and my article in Iraq, XXIX, 1, 1967.Google Scholar

16 As shown in Maricq, A., ed. Pirenne, J., Classica et Orientalia, 1965, 141 ff.Google Scholar

17 The mosaic is reproduced in Bacon (ed.), op. cit., 209.

18 See Bacon (ed.), op. cit., 208.

19 Bacon (ed.), op. cit., 204.

20 Bacon (ed.), op. cit., 205.

21 Ingholt, op. cit., 33 f.

22 De dea Syria.

23 See the photograph in Bacon (ed.), op. cit., 204. It is to be noted that Strabo confuses Hierapolis with Edessa, possibly on account of their pools of sacred fish.

24 This should be abandoned as the name of the mosaic. The pr. name improbably read as ‘Zenodora’ is likely to be not that of the principal personage of the mosaic, but that of her father; p. 298 below.

25 Clermont-Ganneau, C., ‘Rapports sur une mission en Palestine et en Phénicie’, Archives de Missions Scientifiques et Littéraires, 3 Ser., XI, 1884Google Scholar, No. 116 (p. 132 and plate IX); Renan, E., ‘Deux monuments épigraphiques’, JA, 8 Sér., I, fév.-mars 1883,250Google Scholar f. The most recent discussion of this mosaic is to be found in Leroy, J., ‘Mosaīques funéraires d'Edesse’, Syria, XXXIV, 1957, 307 ff. Leroy, however, does not go beyond reproducing, with hesitation, the views of Renan.Google Scholar

26 These may be boys, not girls (as maintained by Leroy). The dress of girls would not extend so far outwards at the bottom. The sketch sent to Clermont-Ganneau may have incorporated the Iranian baggy trousers of boys in their dress. On the other hand, two pieces of Edessan statuary show a daughter with a mother.

27 BSOAS, XVI, 1, 1954, 28 foot; XXII, 1, 1959, 32.Google Scholar

28 Renan's reading, ‘wife of MLT'’, is untenable.

29 cf. ZYDLT, , BSOAS, XXII, 1, 1959, 38.Google Scholar

30 See BSOAS, XXII, 1, 1959, 32Google Scholar, 35, 36, 38; and Pognon, H., Inscriptions sémitigues de la Syrie, de la Mésopotamie et de la région de Mossoul, 1907, 77 ff.Google Scholar

31 Or, ‘at the new moon of’.

32 Two letters have been transposed in the sketch sent to Clermont-Ganneau.

33 This line is assumed to have been inadvertently omitted from the sketch.

34 Two letters, imperfectly copied, have been combined in the sketch.

35 These two letters appear in 1. 4 of the text to the right of the portrait and are doubtful; see p. 298 above.

36 My rendering of the inscription differs at some points from that proposed in BSOAS, XXII, 1, 1959, p. 32, n. 1.Google Scholar

37 See BSOAS, XXII, 1, 1959, 32.Google Scholar

38 Reproduced in Bacon (ed.), op. cit., 205.

39 See BSOAS, XXII, 1, 1959, 33 f. and inscription IV below (which is referred to there on p. 34, 1. 12).Google Scholar

40 de Vogüé, C. J. M., Syrie centrale. Inscriptions sémitigues, 1868ndash;1877Google Scholar, No. 82 (p. 58). MKB is to be read for MKL in a Safaitic inscription, Ryckmans, G., Noms propres sud-sémitigues, 1934, Suppi., s.v. MKB.Google Scholar

41 Maricq, ed. Pirenne, op. cit., 60 ff. I am grateful to my colleague Dr. D. N. MacKenzie for allowing me to consult him on this point.

42 Ingholt, H. and Starcky, J. in Schlumberger, D., La Palmyrène du Nord-Ouest, 1951, No. 41 (p. 157).Google Scholar

43 See Littmann, E., ‘Syriac inscriptions’, Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904ndash;1905 and 1909, Division IV, Semitic Inscriptions, Section B, 1954, 22 f. (A.D. 513, 532), 1 f. (A.D. 551ndash;2).Google Scholar

44 The G'W inscription at Edessa, p. 295 above.

45 But ḥz' has a normal sense in Christian formulae, e.g. Pognon, op. cit., 101 f. (eighth century, near Urfa).

46 yḥz'.

47 Maricq, ed. Pirenne, op. cit., 136; cf. p. 295 f. above.

46 Lit. ‘star’.

49 ḥzyt.

50 cf. Saint Ephraim's comment on Bardaiṣan, cited by Drijvers, op. cit., 130 f., ‘… he counted six essences ('yty'); four essences he placed in the four directions, one he placed in the depth, another in the height ’.

51 Or, ‘rising (of sun or stars)’.

52 See the table in BSOAS, XVI, 1, 1954, 32.Google Scholar

53 cf. Chabot, J.-B., Anonymi auctoris Chronicon ad annum Christi 1234 pertinens (CSCO, Scriptores Syri, XXXVII), 1953, II, 294 ff.Google Scholar

54 BSOAS, XXII, 1, 1959, 27 ff.Google Scholar

55 See Pognon, op. cit., No. 117 and plate xrai (dated 1216ndash;17).

56 cf. Chabot, op. cit., 293, 'tqbr pgrh ‘his body was buried’.

57 On the formula see Littmann, op. cit., 20.

58 Chabot, op. cit., 81 f.

59 See , W. H. P. Hatch, An album of dated Syriac manuscripts, 1946.Google Scholar

60 BSOAS, XXII, 1, 1959, 27 ff.Google Scholar