Considerations on the Proto-Euphratic Language (PE)

Considerations on the Proto-Euphratic Language

1. Auflage, erschienen 4-2021

Umschlaggestaltung: Romeon Verlag

Text: Erlend Gehlken

Layout: Erlend Gehlken

ISBN: 978-3-96229-818-0

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Considerations on the Proto-Euphratic Language (PE)

A Daniela,

in ricordo del tempo trascorso insieme a Sanremo

Preface

I.Introduction

‘Technical’ Remarks

II.The “PE Question”

III.Writing, Vocabulary and Grammar

IV.Document Observations

Various Types of Lists, Calculations, Festival Texts, Calendars, Field Texts, BA, GI & GU7, Additional Payment Notes

V.Detail Studies

EN, ḪAL GAR, UB ŠÀ, Homophones, BA & GU7: c1/168 and c1/156

VI.“Non-Sumerian” Sign Combinations, Abandoned and Retained PE Signs, New Sumerian Readings

VII.Selected PE Personal Names

Bibliography

Index of Terms

Logograms

Words

1Akkadian

2Sumerian

3Proto-Euphratic (PE)

Index of Names and Subjects

Non-PE Personal Names

Gods, Nature Spirits and Stars

Countries, Towns and Rivers

Temples and Other Buildings

Subjects

Index of Texts

Abbreviations

Literature

General Abbreviations

Conventions Used in the Transcriptions and Translations

Appendix: Cuneiform Script

Figures

Notes

PREFACE

One of the most important advanced civilisations of antiquity is to be found in Mesopotamia, a second one in Egypt. There may have been more ancient cultures, but they have not yet emerged from the mists of history. It goes without saying that this study refers to cultures that have developed a system of writing as we know it. The artists who created the paintings in the caves of Altamira, Lascaux or in the Maros-Pangkep Karst on Sulawesi were no less talented. The indigenous inhabitants of Mesopotamia are difficult to grasp as a people. In the north of the country, rain-fed agriculture was feasible, but not in the south. Accordingly, the south of the country was settled at a late stage. Nobody knows when and from where the Sumerians migrated to Mesopotamia.

No notable Assyriologist claims that the Sumerians were the first settlers in southern Mesopotamia, but almost all Assyriologists are of the opinion that the first settlers had not yet written down their language, the “Proto-Euphratic language” (henceforth PE; an artificial word). In general, the Sumerians and the Egyptians are considered to be the ones who, according to current knowledge, created the first writing systems. For Mesopotamia, one of the most prominent advocates of this opinion was the well-known Heidelberg Assyriologist Adam Falkenstein († 1966), who in 1936 was the first to publish a volume with archaic texts from the city of Uruk, from which the oldest written documents originate. His most prominent, albeit somewhat hesitant, “opponent” was Robert K. Englund († 2020), who wrote under the keyword “The 4th millennium” in the article “Uruk. A. I. Philologisch. 4.–3. Jahrtausend” in the “Reallexikon der Assyriologie” (vol. 14, published in fascicles 2014–2016): “The consensus among specialists is that the number of identified probable phonetic renderings of protocuneiform signs indicates that Sumerian was at least one of the languages employed by Late Uruk scribes (and by logical extension, the only one) (among many others, cf. Nissen 1999, 45f.; Cooper 2004; Krebernik 1994a; Rubio 2005). Englund (1998, 73–81; id. 2009, § 2.5) and Whittaker (2005) remain sceptical; s.a. the discussion in Sumer*, Sumerisch. § 6.”

This short study attempts to securely and sustainably validate the existence of a written form of the PE language. Almost all the material presented here has been published before. The aim of this publication is to gather the scattered published views so as to enable a better understanding of this discussion. Robert K. Englund’s investigation Texts from the Late Uruk Period in OBO 160/1, in which he presents and analyses the archaic text corpus of the Uruk period in an exemplary manner, remains fundamental.

This book is also addressed to the interested lay person. For this reason, explanations that the specialist colleague must consider superfluous have often been given. The appendix “Cuneiform Script” has been added for orientation.

My sincere thanks go to ROMEON Verlag (Kaarst, Germany) for publishing this study. The beneficial and cooperative collaboration – especially with the Creative Director, Mr Christian Türling – as well as the pleasing presentation of the book speak for themselves. My special thanks are due to Mr Derek O’Brien (University of Heidelberg), who carefully reviewed the English translation and, with critical questions in cases of factual doubt, made a valuable contribution to the success of this work.

I. INTRODUCTION

It is not easy to write about something that most people believe did not exist – that is, the writing of texts in the PE language. Here, however, the attempt has been made. Honest criticism would not only help (or dismiss) the recognition of the existence of a written form of the PE language, but also promote understanding of Sumerian in the archaic texts. Philological questions will be dealt with in the following chapters; at this point the external framework will be outlined first.

1. Colonisation of Mesopotamia

After smaller predecessor settlements in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in the Pottery Neolithic the Hassuna culture, named after the site of the same name, developed in northern Mesopotamia in the second half of the 7th millennium BC in the zone where rain-fed farming was possible1. In the regions bordering Mesopotamia there were also important centres at this early time, such as Jericho in the Levant or Chogha Mish in the Khuzistan Province (modern Iran). An example of a city outside the Fertile Crescent is Çatal Höyük, southeast of Konya (Anatolia). In Mesopotamia itself, around 6300, the Samarra culture emerged, which flourished in the south of the country contemporaneously with the Hassuna culture for quite some time before the extinction of the latter. In the area of the Samarra culture rain-fed agriculture was not possible; the first irrigation systems are to be found here. Around 6000, two other cultures came into the light of history: the Halaf culture in the north of the country and the Ubaid (Obed) culture in the south2. The area where the Halaf culture is to be found would soon extend from Samarra in the south up the Tigris River almost to its source and from there in a westerly direction far beyond the Euphrates River towards the Mediterranean Sea. A striking feature of this culture is its aesthetically pleasing polychrome painted pottery. The southern regions of Mesopotamia were only settled relatively late. Most of the countryside was previously flooded. Only climate change and the associated drop in sea level in the Persian Gulf ensured that permanently dry stretches of land were available3. A characteristic feature of the Ubaid culture is the unmistakable terracottas in which the human face is reminiscent of that of a lizard. The Ubaid culture spread rapidly. After a few hundred years, it covered the entire area of the Halaf culture in addition to southern Mesopotamia and also reached the Mediterranean Sea (the region of the east coast north of Ugarit).

None of the cultures mentioned so far can be assigned to a specific people. This only changes towards the end of the Uruk period following the Ubaid period (approximately 4000–3000 BC). There is no clear break between these periods, only visible external changes, which, however, have nothing to do with a “cultural change”: for example, a new type of fine pottery is well attested here (the first red engobe shards of the so-called “Uruk ware” already appear in layer XVIII in the deep sounding [Tiefschnitt (a5/p57)] in Eanna: Heinrich 1982, 39). According to the Sumerian King List, Eridu in southern Mesopotamia is the city where the first two kings ruled before the Flood. There is a temple in Eridu, from which 18 superimposed layers of an ever-bigger cult house are known; here the later development of the Mesopotamian temples is already anticipated. The oldest layers are from the Ubaid period, the most recent from the Uruk period, during which, however, no further changes were made. The city of Uruk can also be traced back to an Ubaid period settlement. Uruk develops into a metropolis and is (according to current knowledge) around 3000 BC the largest city in the world. In the late 4th millennium, an increase in population can generally be observed in the centres in southern Mesopotamia4.

Detailed information on the issues addressed can be found, for example, in Hrouda 1998, Nissen 1983 or Roaf 1990.

Towards the end of the Uruk period the first script is found in the city of Uruk. In the ED I–II period following the Uruk period, the texts are written in Sumerian. The city of Ur has now become a new centre. Therefore the Sumerians must have been present in southern Mesopotamia at the latest towards the end of the Uruk period; otherwise they could not have adopted or created cuneiform script.

The question of when the Sumerians migrated to (South) Mesopotamia has not yet been conclusively clarified, nor is it certain whether they encountered an already resident indigenous population there. The discussion shall not be reignited at this point, but instead a few observations and opinions shall be presented without evaluation.

The so-called ‘Uruk expansion’, which allows Uruk’s influence to be felt in cities as distant as Habuba Kabira on the Euphrates in Syria, comes to a standstill at the end of the Uruk IV period (Englund 1998, 61). A somewhat mysterious building in Uruk is the socalled “Riemchengebäude” (Riemchen building5), whose dating (Uruk V or IV?) and function are not entirely certain. It seems as if cult equipment of an (older?) cult was ritually buried here (inter alia, cf. RlA s.v. Uruk, column 463f.). In the Uruk III/Jemdet Nasr period6 the large cult houses in Uruk were replaced by less monumental buildings [Heinrich 1982, passim]. The profound changes that took place during this period need not necessarily have anything to do with the immigration of a new people; one might think of comparable innovations in architecture and painting during the transitions from Romanesque to Gothic, from Gothic to Renaissance, etc. Useful ideas are always taken up and spread quickly. A notable observation is presented by Forest: after the decline of the influence of the Uruk culture, older (autochthonous) traditions flared up again in Jemdet Nasr and other regional centres (Forest 2011). Nissen assumes that the Sumerians immigrated after 3500 BC (Nissen 1999, 161); others argue that the Sumerians immigrated before or during the Uruk IV period or even after the Uruk III period (see Englund 1998, 65 with footnote 124).

2. Natural Science Issues

Different peoples or tribes do not need to speak different languages, but may have originally spoken various languages (think of the Red Indians in North America, most of whom now speak English). But if different peoples or ethnic groups speak different languages, that does not mean that they are of different origin (think of the Indo-European languages in Europe). Nevertheless, it would be interesting to use bone finds to investigate whether local differences can be determined in the early population of Mesopotamia by means of aDNA analyses, i.e. whether, for example, in Jemdet Nasr, from which only texts from the Uruk period are known7, a population that can be separated from the Sumerian or Semitic might have been native. The physician (palaeopathology) and anthropologist Professor Dr Dr Michael Schultz, University of Göttingen, who, among other bone finds, studied the skeletal remains from the queens’ tombs in Nimrud wrote to me to say that by means of aDNA examinations with optimal bone preservation, Assyrians, possibly also Babylonians, could be distinguished from Sumerians with a very high degree of probability8. Unfortunately, there are currently very few bone finds from this early period in museums and collections, so that an appropriate investigation has had to be postponed to a later date.

3. Corpus of the Archaic Texts

The corpus of the archaic texts includes the texts from the Uruk period (writing phases [Uruk V], Uruk IV and Uruk III) as well as those of the ED I–II period (see Englund 1998, note 123). The history of the excavations and the progress made in the study of the texts have been described in several publications; for the Uruk period reference is made exemplarily to Englund 1994 (introduction) and 1998 (passim). According to Englund, 5820 archaic texts are known (Englund 1998, 65); if the search engine of the CDLI is used, 7432 entries are found for the Uruk period (excluding ED I– II)9. About 85% of the documents are administrative texts, the remaining 15% are lexical lists (LL), school texts, and similar. Literary texts do not yet exist (the LL a3/TRIBUTE could be an exception10). Texts are found not only on clay tablets but also, for example, on tags (m1/239), clay cones (a7/21842; possibly ED I), seals (‘City Seal’ [MSVO 2]; UET 2, no. 1 [ED I–II]), jugs (m1/244) and kudurrus (boundary stones) (OIP 104)11. Texts from writing phase Uruk IV are only attested in Uruk, those from writing phase III mainly in Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, though also in Urum and Larsa. Individual finds are known from Kiš or Ešnunna, for example12.

Most of the texts from the Uruk period are published in the volumes ATU 1, (2), 3, 5, 6 and 7 [Uruk]; CUSAS 1 [texts from clandestine excavations; presumably documents from Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, possibly from Umma and other places], CUSAS 21 [origin of the texts uncertain; no. 129: Zabalam?] and CUSAS 31 [texts from Umma (?) and further texts of uncertain origin] as well as in MSVO 1 [Jemdet Nasr], 3 [probably all texts originate from Uruk] and 4 [texts mainly from Urum, Larsa, Uruk]. All texts (published and unpublished, including the volume MSVO 3) are accessible online via the CDLI. As already mentioned in the preface, there is disagreement as to the language in which the texts mentioned are written. The tablets of the chronologically subsequent text corpus, the archaic texts from Ur (ED I–II), are definitely written in Sumerian. There is a gap of about 100–200 years between the Uruk texts and the Ur texts, depending on the source used. The Ur texts were published by Burrows in UET 2 (Burrows 1935). Occasional text finds from other cities, including Uruk, also date from this era (see Englund 1998, note 123).

4. PE in (mainly) older publications

The “fight for the recognition of the PE” was preceded by a comparable fight for the recognition of Sumerian (in this case successful). A further three quarters of a century after deciphering the cuneiform script, the Orientalist Joseph Halévy declared that Sumerian was not a natural language, but a kind of cryptograph for rendering Akkadian13. Even the well-known Orientalist Friedrich Delitzsch, who was after all then to publish a “Sumerian Glossary” and a Sumerian grammar in 1914, initially adopted this view.

When Sumerian was “established” as a language, texts that were clearly older than the known Sumerian texts were first discovered in Susa (Iran): These Proto-Elamite tablets are written in a script of their own, which is (at least in appearance) remotely related to cuneiform script. In terms of time, they belong to the Uruk III writing phase. Proto-Elamite has not yet been completely deciphered. Currently, J. Dahl at Oxford University is devoting considerable effort to understanding these documents. The first tablets were published by Jean-Vincent Scheil in 190014. In Mesopotamia, Uruk III texts were first brought to light in Jemdet Nasr in 192515. The signs are partly reminiscent of hieroglyphics, but are the direct predecessors of the later cuneiform script. Englund refers to them as ‘proto-cuneiform (script)’ (ATU 5, note 4)16. The first publication was by Langdon (~ 1928). In Uruk, a larger lot of archaic clay tablets was first salvaged in the 1929/30 campaign17. The publication was not long in coming (Falkenstein 1936). That publication is considered a masterpiece, even though some of the views expressed there now have to be put into perspective as a result of newly gained knowledge. Falkenstein took the view that the texts were written in Sumerian. His main argument was that the supposed name Enlil-ti (“[the god] Enlil keep [her, him] alive”), written EN-É-TI, established Sumerian as language, since only in the Sumerian language are the words for “arrow” (the sign TI is the representation of a bow and arrow) and “to live” homonymous (a1/p37f.)18. The texts quoted by Falkenstein belong to the writing phase Uruk III; they are from Jemdet Nasr and Urum. Meanwhile a text from Uruk is also known (W 17729,ee). Falkenstein thinks it is therefore reasonable to consider the few older texts of the writing phase Uruk IV as Sumerian texts as well, but he does not categorically rule out another language (a1/p40f.). Krebernik wants the name EN-É-TI to be understood as “Der En (Priesterfürst) ist einer, der das ,Haus‘ (É, gemeint ist wohl eine zentrale Institution, etwa der Tempelhaushalt) am Leben erhält (TÌL)” – “The En (priestly lord) is one who keeps the ‘house’ (É, meaning probably a central institution, such as the temple household) alive (TÌL)”19. Englund takes the view that EN-É-TI is not a personal name (Englund 1998, 74–76). A text like MS 2500 might speak against this view; in that list sheep and goats are assigned to persons, including EN-É-TI. The reading of the name remains unknown. In theory it could be a Sumerian name that appears in a PE list. Since the texts of the Uruk period are incomprehensible (i.e. cannot be read in Sumerian) unless they are simple lists of animals or objects, a single expression (“Enlil-ti”; Falkenstein’s main argument) is not sufficient to identify a language (in English, the three “signs” B–A–D mean “bad, evil”, in German “bath and bathroom”; for the three signs EN–UNUG–ḪI → V–1, note 4). It should be emphasised in advance that the Sumerian pantheon does not yet exist in the Uruk period texts (as far as concretely demonstrable, sacrifices are made only for the later Sumerian goddess Inanna, who is equated with Venus: there are feasts for Venus as morning and evening star [text a7/21671; → V–1–a and ~e]). The cuneiform sign for Inanna is a drawing of the so-called ring-post (Schilfringbündel; a5/p57: ‘reed bundle’), which is reminiscent of the reed doorposts of the reed houses known from many illustrations20; possibly Inanna was worshipped in a similar way to Hestia/Vesta. The sign EN is discussed in detail in → V–1. It does not mean “city ruler” in the texts of the Uruk period.

Landsberger pointed out that mainly many place names and occupational names made a ‘non-Sumerian’ impression (Landsberger 1944). He coined the name ‘Proto-Euphratic’ (PE) for this language, but assumed that it was never written (in other words: according to Landsberger, writing was probably created [“invented”] by the Sumerians). The ‘Proto-Tigridians’, who were different from the Proto-Euphratians, were (according to Landsberger) resident in northern Babylonia. The situation in Greece is comparable: many toponyms are of non-Greek origin (Wendt 1961, 134). Rubio then drew a symbolic final stroke to the discussion (Rubio 1999). He concludes “Thus, there is no monolithic substratum that would have left, in a sort of primeval age, its vestiges in the Sumerian lexicon. All one can detect is a complex and fuzzy web of borrowings ...” (~, p. 11). He concedes that the toponyms are non-Sumerian (~, p. 6). When examining the names of professions, in some cases no interpretation is given21, reference is made to other authors (passim) or it is stated that the word could well be Sumerian: “simug (DÉ) ‘smith.’ The structure of this word (CiCuC) is not unknown in Sumerian (for instance, lirum, zikum)” (~, p. 4). The latter criterion could just as well be used to prove that most names of professions are PE. Later, cautious resistance arose again against Rubio’s view (cf. the foreword [Englund]; see also Lecompte 2013, 14f.: “The divergence between Uruk and Ur cultures (and probably languages) is made evident by many examples: ...”).

Languages can disappear without a trace, think of (meanwhile “revived”) Cornish (1777). The Kassites had long provided the kings in Babylonia, but they adapted to Babylonian culture. Apart from the royal names and a few words, nothing is known of their language. Often it takes a lot of luck to find out that a language was actually written. In the Sumerian texts of the Fara period (around 2600 BC) there are some Semitic names, but texts written in Semitic (i.e. Babylonian) are difficult to prove (according to the CDLI only 14 tablets). The situation is different with PE. It is easier to dismiss the texts as still incomprehensible “archaic” Sumerian texts than to prove that some passages or expressions cannot be Sumerian at all and therefore have to be PE. PE might have died out after the Uruk III period – Englund also believes this to be possible (Englund 1998, 65) – but we still have written evidence of that language (in the opinion of the author of this book) in the form of the archaic cuneiform texts of that period.

‘Technical’ Remarks

1. Dating

Dates according to Brinkman 1964 for historical time, according to the entries in the CDLI for the periods of the earliest written documents.

It should be noted that in works dealing with the early periods of Mesopotamia, dates do not necessarily coincide (one often finds variation ranges of ± 100 years, in extreme cases even greater ones).

Rough dating of the writing phases (all dates BC)22:

2. Geographical Names

The transcription of Mesopotamian place names is not uniform. One and the same place name can be rendered differently in French, English and German, even within one language there are differences (Bagdad and Baghdad in German). In this study “conventional” English (partly also German) spellings are used; no attempt is made to standardise the spelling. “Hypercorrectness”, which does not provide an additional gain in knowledge, but only a useless burden for the reader, is rejected.