An ardu brought ārittu, “downstream” (to GN)? (2023)

N.A.B.U. 2023 n° 4 (décembre) Bibliography GEORGE, A.R. (2003). The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. 2 vols. Oxford University Press. GEORGE, A.R. (2022). Poem of Gilgameš. Standard Babylonian I and XI (with contributions by E. Jiménez and G. Rozzi, translated by A.R. George) electronic Babylonian Library. https://www.ebl.lmu.de/corpus/L/1/4/SB/I and https://www.ebl.lmu.de/corpus/L/1/4/SB/XI RINAP 2 = G. FRAME, The Royal Inscriptions of Sargon II, King of Assyria (721-705 BC) (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 2). Winona Lake, 2021. http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap2/ Michael ROAF <Michael.Roaf@lrz.uni-muenchen.de> Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München (GERMANY) 103) An ardu brought ārittu, “downstream” (to GN)? — Occasionally we encounter an idea which has never really been properly discussed anywhere—a “factoid,” as Norman Yoffee would say—but which is nevertheless worth clarifying or debunking. This is the situation with the possible semantic relationship between OB (w)ārittu adj. (CAD 1, “downstream”; AHw 1, “Hinabsteigende”) and (w)ardu s., “slave.” This relationship would supposedly exist in consequence of the two words as etymological twins descended from arādu A v., “to go/come down,” in that a “slave” might be a “person brought down.” To be sure, the arguments in favor of this relationship do not go beyond the brief suggestions of the dictionaries, where CAD gives “cf.” relationships between ārittu and arādu, and AHW has for ārittu “vereinz(elt) aradu” and a second definition as “(Sklavin) wa-ri-it-tum v oben gekommene(?),” presumably suggested for the appearance of ārittu in a few slave sale texts ca. 1700 BC. A few points may be made to disconnect any semantic link between ardu and ārittu. First, ārittu only appears in three texts dated within a quarter-century of each other, (1711–1684 BC: VS 9 146, VS 29 7, and TCL 1 147), whereas arādu A and ardu were in use from Old Akkadian into first millennium times. Thus, ārittu was an ephemeral expression, not even used in many other sale documents of the same period in which the sold slave had clearly “come down” from a highland place.1) In fact, none of the persons sold in the three OB texts in question (see below) was an ardu—one was a “child” (lu₂ tur) and two were “slavewomen” (sag.geme₂). It is therefore hard to see why ārittu (a feminine form) should be thought to have characterized (masculine) ardu when not a single pairing is actually in evidence. Second, descriptions of slaves as “(having come) downstream” runs against what we expect of the language-speakers’ geolinguistic perspective. If directionality was being used to characterize the origin of slaves, would the text-writing slaveholders not have thought of slaves as “having come from upstream” (elītu or the like) rather than “(having been brought) downstream”? A locution privileging the slave’s perspective seems unlikely. Third, ārittu described not only slaves but the transportation (expenses) of non-slaves, and arādu described the movement of all kinds of people and things—non-slaves, divine emblems, caravans, animals, boats, equipment, etc. Thus, even if the verb and the adjective were etymologically related to ardu, their use was not particular to (and therefore particularly denominative of) slaves, only to transportation generally. (And, for what it’s worth, neither the adjective nor the verb conveyed senses of downward social mobility.) In fact, the structure of the ārittu phrases in the three slave sale contracts suggests that the term referred not to the slave being sold or his place of origin, but transportation to the place of sale: TCL 1 147: 1 sag.geme₂ mamma-[x mu.ni] / munus su.bir₄ki wārittum / uruQaṭṭara One female slave, Mamma[-x] is her name, a Subarean woman (brought) downstream [to] the city of Qaṭṭara VS 29 7: 1 sag.geme₂ wārittum / uru ša Ḫaḫḫum / [x-x]-ennatum m[u.ni] One female slave, brought downstream [to] a town of Ḫaḫḫum, [x]-innatum is her name VS 9 146: 1 lu₂.tur ši-ni-b/pu / uru.ki ša Ḫaḫḫu / wārittum ēlīt[um] One boy, two-thirds (healthy),2) (from) a town of Ḫaḫḫum, (brought) downstream (from) upstream In these cases, ārittu is syntactically as close or closer to the place of sale than to the noun identifying the sold person. This conforms to the likelihood that the place of sale was likewise not a descriptor for the slave (as, e.g., his place of origin), but locative to the final verb of sale (“in GN … was sold”).3) In this – 189 – N.A.B.U. 2023 n° 4 (décembre) view, the adjective describes not the slave, but that the point of sale was “downstream” to the slave’s place of origin. The directional sense of ārittu in these texts described the travel to market. We may therefore say that even if ardu and ārittu both derive from arādu, as is morphologically possible, there is nothing to suggest that the semantic sense of an ardu as “someone brought downstream” or “the descending one” survived. More likely is that ardu had always been a primary noun, as von Soden assumed, rather than one derived arādu or any other verbal root. Notes 1. See VAN KOPPEN 2004: 15, 24 nos. 7, 10–11, 15–16, 18–19, 21, 39–40. 2. This has been read as a personal name (Šinibu), but the omission of mu.ni (“his name”) militates against this, with šinipu, “two-thirds,” as an equally possible reading. This may yet be a hypocoristic (~“two-thirds [guy]”), but cf. the expression 2/3 namru, “two-third healthy,” for a sold slave in KD 31:2 (JOANNÈS 2006: 140–41 no. 99). Age is also a possible reading, in the sense of “a two-thirds grown [boy].” 3. RICHARDSON 2020: 62. Bibliography JOANNÈS, F., 2006, Ḫaradum II: Les textes de la période paléo-babylonienne (Samsu-iluna–Ammi-ṣaduqa) (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations). RICHARDSON, S., 2020, “The Origin of Foreign Slaves in the Late Old Babylonian Period,” KASKAL 17: 53–73. VAN KOPPEN, F., 2004, “The Geography of the Slave Trade and Northern Mesopotamia in the Late Old Babylonian Period,” pp. 9–33 in Mesopotamian Dark Age Revisited, ed. H. Hunger and R. Pruzsinszky, Vienna. Seth RICHARDSON <seth1@uchicago.edu> University of Chicago (USA) Abonnement pour un an/Subscription for one year: FRANCE AUTRES PAYS/OTHER COUNTRIES – Par carte de crédit (et Paypal) sur la boutique en ligne de la SEPOA By credit card (and Paypal) through our online store http://sepoa.fr/?product_cat=revue-nabu 35,00 € 55,00 € – Par virement postal à l’ordre de/To Giro Account: Société pour l’Étude du Proche-Orient Ancien, 39, avenue d’Alembert, 92160 ANTONY. IBAN: FR 23 2004 1000 0114 69184V02 032 BIC: PSSTFRPPPAR – Par chèque postal ou bancaire en Euros COMPENSABLE EN FRANCE à l’ordre de/By Bank check in Euros PAYABLE IN FRANCE and made out to: Société pour l’Étude du Proche-Orient Ancien. 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