The Bukān Aramaic Inscription: Historical Considerations

The Bukān Aramaic Inscription: Historical ConsiderationsAuthor(s): Israel EphʿalSource: Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 49, No. 1/2 (1999), pp. 116-121Published by: Israel Exploration SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27926881 .

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The Buk?n Aramaic Inscription: Historical Considerations

Israel Ephcal

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

A fragment has recently been published of a monumental Aramaic inscription unearthed in excavations near Buk?n, south-east of Lake Urmia, in the region known during the period of the Assyrian Empire as the land of Mannaea.1 Only 13

lines of the inscription have survived (see also pp. 105-115). They contain curses to

be inflicted by the gods Hadad and Haldi on the land of the king who would remove

the inscription from its place.2 Clear parallels of these curses are found in the

Aramaic inscriptions from Sefire and Tell Fekherye, as well as in the Hebrew

Bible, in the Books of Leviticus and Jeremiah.3 The literary expressions and

metaphors clearly indicate that the inscription is deeply rooted in the West-Semitic

cultural milieu, that it was originally composed in Aramaic, and that it is not an

Aramaic translated version of a bilingual inscription whose linguistic and literary

origins were Assyrian or Urartian.

The face of the stone on which the inscription is engraved is flat and does not seem to be part of a relief.4 From the size of the stone (80x150 cm.), one may presume that the full inscription was at least double the size. If, indeed, it was

bilingual, its size would have been even larger. (Admittedly, the likelihood that the

inscription under discussion is bilingual is slight: in Ancient Near Eastern

multilingual inscriptions ? such as those from Tell Fekherye [Assyrian and

Aramaic], Karatepe [Phoenician and Luwian], Topzaw? [Urartian and Assyrian] and Xanthos [Greek, Aramaic and Lycian]

? at least one version is rendered in the local language. This condition is not met in the Buk?n inscription since, as shown

1 A. Lemaire: Une inscription aram?enne du VIIIe S. av. J.-C. trouv?e ? Buk?n (Azerba?djan iranien), Studia Iranica 27 (1998), pp. 15-30. In fact, the text published in this paper is a combination of two fragments: the larger one was unearthed in an archaeological excavation, while the smaller one was purchased in the antiquities market.

2 Curses on potential mutilatore of commemorative royal inscriptions are generally directed in the Ancient Near East against persons, and not against their lands. It seems that the writer of the Buk?n inscription had expected his inscription to be damaged by a

foreign enemy, rather than by a Mannaean. The curses against the land of the mutilator may reflect the geopolitical situation of Mannaea, which was constantly under threat by its neighbours, the kingdoms of Urartu and Assyria. On the history of the Mannaeans and their land in the ninth-seventh centuries B.C.E., see J.N. Postgate: Mann?er, 3. History, Reallexikon der Assyriologie 7 (1987-1990), pp. 340-342.

3 Lemaire (above, n. 1), pp. 22-27\ 4 Ibid, y photograph on p. 17.

116



BUK?N ARAMAIC INSCRIPTION: HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS 117

below, there is no evidence that the Mannaean language was ever written.) The size

of the stone leads us to deduce that it was not brought from afar, but rather

engraved near its find spot. No personal names have survived in the inscription. On

palaeographical grounds it is to be dated to the eighth or early seventh centuries

B.C.E.

The inscription can be associated with two geographical regions: its linguistics and its literary character point to the realm of the West-Semitic cultures, whereas

its place of discovery and the occurrence in it of Haldi, known as the Urartian chief

god, point to the mountainous, northern 'Caucasian' region. The linguistic, cultural and religious features of the inscription require

elaboration, because of its significant geographical and chronological context:

1. The Aramaic inscription was written outside the Semitic speaking area

(although we know nothing about the language of the Mannaeans, it is clear

from their surviving personal names that it was not Semitic). 2. The god Hadad occurs outside the realm of the pantheons of the Semitic

peoples. 3. The gods Hadad and Haldi, belonging to distinct pantheons

? one of the

peoples of the Fertile Crescent and the other of the Caucasian peoples ?

appear

together as protectors of the inscription's owner.

One should bear in mind that the inscription under discussion is the only Aramaic

literary document discovered so far in Mannaea.5 We should also note that no

documents written in the Mannaean language have been discovered, leading us to

the conclusion that the Mannaeans, like other nations in their vicinity, such as the

Medes and the Persians at that time, did not write in their own language.6 Our

5 Short Aramaic inscriptions, dated to the eighth century B.C.E., appear on bronze vases from north-western Iran, see Lemaire (above, n. 1), pp. 29-30. Nonetheless, taking them

as evidence for writing Aramaic in Mannaea at that time is problematic. In addition to

questions about their provenance and authenticity, one must bear in mind that portable objects may travel long distances. Bronze plaques bearing Aramaic inscriptions have found their way from Damascus to Samos and Eretria, and a fragile Judaean jar, with a

stamped handle, even reached Babylon. See I. Ephcal and J. Naveh: Hazael's Booty Inscriptions, IEJ 39 (1989), pp. 192-200; J. Naveh: Gleanings of Some Pottery Inscriptions, IEJ 46 (1996), pp. 44-47.

6 The mention of '[Man]naean scribes' in an Assyrian letter from the time of Asarhaddon

(R.F. Harper: Assyrian and Babylonian Letters belonging to the Kouyunjik Collection

of the British Museum, London ? Chicago, 1892-1914, No. 434) cannot be taken as proof for writing Mannaean. From the contents of this letter it appears that these 'scribes' were, in fact, interpreters who recorded (for the Assyrian authorities) the information extracted from Mannaean deserters (cf. also PN l?targum?nu sa knrMannaia, TN the

interpreter of the Manneans', in C.H.W. Johns: Assyrian Deeds and Documents ...in the

Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum, Cambridge, 1898, No. 865 = EM. Fales



118 ISRAEL EPHCAL

remarks on matters related to the Mannaean religion are based, therefore, on

an analogy with the Urartian religion, because of the geographical proximity and the occurrence in the inscription of the name of Haldi, the chief god of the

Urartian pantheon. Under such circumstances, the following discussion should

be regarded as an initial attempt to deal with the find, and to provide some

plausible explanations, based on the limited evidence at hand. We shall start

with the first and third features, and this will help us to deal with the second one as

well.

The discovery of the inscription in Mannaea, outside the Aramaic-speaking

region (and, in fact, beyond that of other Semitic languages as well), indicates that

the spread of Aramaic did not necessarily reflect demographic changes, which were mainly the consequence of massive deportation. The fact that this is a royal

inscription suggests that Aramaic was used among the upper class of the Mannaean

society, which, as already noted, seems to have lacked a script of its own. It stands to reason that the use of Aramaic among the Mannaeans did not occur in the second

half of the ninth century B.C.E., when we have the first evidence on Mannaean

history, because the consolidation of Aramaic in Assyria had not yet been achieved. If it had occurred so early, the Mannaeans should have adopted the cuneiform

script system which was in use in Assyria and in Urartu, the strong and developed

kingdoms in their vicinity. It was in the eighth century, and particularly in its latter

half, that Aramaic and its script became widespread in Assyria, and that Aramaic

started to become a lingua franca.7 What matters more than the actual use of the

Aramaic script are the metaphors which, as already stated, are rooted in the cultural milieu of the West-Semitic world. Their occurrence in the inscription indicates that Aramaic was used both for writing and as a language of culture. This

does not mean that the Mannaeans had abandoned their native language and had become Aramaic speakers. It seems more plausible that we are dealing here with a

small group whose members were scribes, and perhaps officials and members of the state leadership, who adopted Aramaic for writing and as a language of culture

(as French was adopted in Russia and Germany in the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries, for example).8 Thus, the literary expressions only indicate that the

composer of the inscription was trained as a professional Aramaic scribe.

and J.N. Postgate: Imperial Administrative Records, Part II: Provincial and Military Administration [= State Archives of Assyria XI], Helsinki, 1995, No. 31).

7 On the spread of Aramaic, see H. Tadmor: The Aramaization of Assyria: Aspects of Western Impact, in H.-J. Nissen and J. Renger (eds.): Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn, Berlin, 1982, pp. 449-470.

8 Compare the team which came out from Jerusalem to negotiate with the delegation of Sennacherib king of Assyria: 'Eliakim son of Hilkiah (who was in charge of the palace), Shebna (the scribe), and Joah (the recorder) replied to the Rabshakeh, "Please, speak to your servants Aramaic, for we understand it'" (2 Kings 18:18 and 26).




Professional Aramaic scribes were also employed in Assyria in the eighth century B.C.E. Yet Aramaic still did not supplant the traditional Assyrian writing, whose history in Assyria at that time reached back more than a thousand years. Since the Mannaeans did not have such a tradition, the penetration of Aramaic ?

both its script and its use as a language of culture ? would have been achieved, as

in the Persian world, with relative ease.

In a relief depicting the battle over the Mannaean town of Pazasi, from Sargon's

palace at Khorsabad, we see an Assyrian officer in a siege machine, holding a scroll

in his hands and apparently confronting the defenders of the besieged town with

the demand for their surrender.9 Since it was inconceivable that there were

Aramaic speakers in Mannaea, the figure was regarded as that of a scribe reading in Aramaic, turning to 'the people on the wall' and simultaneously translating the

text into the Mannaean language. Had the written text been in Assyrian, we would

have expected him to hold a writing board, not a scroll.10 Now that it appears from

the Buk?n inscription that Aramaic was already in use in Mannaea during the

eighth century B.C.E., we may explain the scene differently: the officer is indeed

speaking in Aramaic, and not in Mannaean, but his words are not directed to 'the

people on the wall', but rather, to the leaders of Pazasi, who are familiar with this

language.

As already stated, the genre of the Buk?n inscription is that of a royal

inscription, not that of a political treaty, where the names of foreign gods are at

times inserted in the lists of divine witnesses. Hence, the gods listed in

this inscription were undoubtedly the gods of the king who erected the monument.

The reference to 'Hadad and Haldi' in line 11 ' indicates that what we have here are

two distinct gods who cannot be amalgamated into one deity. From the Urartian

and Assyrian inscriptions we know that the cult centre of Haldi, the Urartian war

god, was in his temple at Mussasir (Assyrian) = Ardini (Urartian).11 Line 5' has

'Haldi of Zctr\ It seems that Zctr was the place of another, local, temple of this god. (We find a parallel phenomenon in the Phoenician version of the Azitawadda

bilingual inscription from Karatepe,12 which refers both to Baal and to Baal

9 See Y. Yadin: The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands, New York, 1963, pp. 319-320, 425. 10 H. Tadmor: On the Use of Aramaic in the Assyrian Empire: Three Observations on a

Relief of Sargon, EI 20 (1989), pp. 249-252 (Hebrew). 11 M. Salvini: Geschichte und Kultur der Urart?er, Darmstadt, 1995, pp. 183-185. 12 The Phoenician version appears in H. Donner and W. R?llig: Kanaan?ische und

aram?ische Inschriften, Wiesbaden, 1964-1966, No. 26. J.D. Hawkins and A. Morpurgo Davies provide a synoptic English translation of both the Luwian and the Phoenician versions (On the Problems of Karatepe: The Hieroglyphic Text, Anatolian Studies 28

[1978], pp. 114-118). On the identification of the deities mentioned in the two versions and on the conclusion that the Phoenician version is the original one, see M. Weippert: Elemente ph?nikischer und kilikischer Religion in den Inschriften vom Karatepe, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenl?ndischen Gesellschaft, Suppl. I (1969), pp. 192-196.



120 ISRAEL EPHCAL

Krntris;13 and in the local manifestations of Istar of Arbela and Istar of Nineveh.

This resembles the variety of local manifestations of the Virgin Maria in Roman

Catholicism.) Not only did the mountainous nature of Mannaea and its western

environs make pilgrimage to faraway temples difficult, but Mannaea repeatedly suffered from wars and conquests on the part of its neighbours, Urartu and Assyria.

Consequently, Mannaean Haldi worshippers would have been prevented from

reaching the temple in Mussasir, which was 150 km. west of Buk?n, as the crow

flies. We may assume, therefore, that Zctr was the site of a temple in Mannaea

proper. Regarding its location, Lemaire suggests identifying it with the Mannaean

royal city Izirtu. One questions, however, whether the metathesis tr/rt is

justifiable. The mention of Hadad in the Buk?n inscription and our recognition that

Aramaic was used as a language of culture in Mannaea do not necessarily lead to

the conclusion that the Mannaeans ? or the members of the social class that had

adopted the Aramaic language ? became worshippers of the Aramaean god

Hadad. As a matter of fact, the mention of Haldi along with Hadad may indicate

that the adaptation of Aramaic did not lead to rejection of the local gods. As is well

known, Hadad (dIM) has been identified in Ugaritic inscriptions with Baal, in

Hurrian inscriptions with Tessub, and in Hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions with

Tarhunzas.14 All these chief gods were storm gods, each in his own particular

pantheon. Recording the name of a deity according to its designation in the

language of the inscription is attested, for example, in the Azitawadda inscription: the Phoenician version of this inscription refers to Baal, while the parallel

Hieroglyphic Luwian version has Tarhunzas instead. It seems reasonable, then, that Hadad in the Buk?n inscription is an alternative name for a chief local, northern god. Since Hadad is mentioned in the inscription along with Haldi, one

would tend, by analogy with the Urartian pantheon, to identify him with the

Urartian weather god Teiseba (in Old Babylonian named Tessub), whose cult centre was in Qumenu (Assyrian Qumme). Teiseba and Haldi, together with their

consorts, were two out of three pairs of the chief deities of the Urartian pantheon.15 (In view of the distance between this city and Buk?n ? about 260 km., as the crow

flies ? may we assume that this god had another cult centre, closer to the site of the

13 The Phoenician version of the Azitawadda inscription refers also to the god Resef Sprm (his counterpart in the Luwian version is Runzas). On the opinion that both Krntris and

Sprm are toponyms, see W. J. Fulco: The Canaanite God Resep, New Haven, 1976, p. 46. 14 On Hadad and his counterparts in other pantheons, see J.C. Greenfield: The Aramean

God Hadad, EI 24 (1993), pp. 54-61 (Hebrew); and in a somewhat abbreviated version, idem, Hadad, in K. van der Toorn et al (eds.): Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD), Leiden, 1995, Cols. 720-726.

15 G.A. Melikisvili: Die G?tterpartias an der Spitze des urart?ischen Pantheons, Orientalia 34 (1965), pp. 441-445; Salvini (above, . 11), pp. 185-186.




discovery of the inscription?) The occurrence, then, of exclusive attributes of

Hadad in the inscription should not be taken as an outstanding theological innovation.

In sum, inscriptions written in a foreign language and the inclusion of the names

of foreign gods do not necessarily reflect local religious and linguistic reality.

Rather, they may point to the existence of scribes who were trained in foreign

languages and literary traditions, for reasons that cannot be determined with

certainty. Although the linguistic and literary character of the Buk?n inscription is

clearly Aramaic, we may define its religious and geographical background as

northern, most probably Mannaean, and hence appropriate to the area of its

discovery.

