Hurrian Personal Names

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century tablets from chance finds at Yorġān
Tepe (Nuzi) and Kirkūk (Arrapḫa) prior to the first excavations at Nuzi in 1925 entered the tablet collections of
various museums all over the world. More than 360 of such Nuzi tablets, dating roughly from the mid 15th to
the mid 14th century BCE, have been acquired by the British Museum (henceforth BM) in several individual
purchases. Three more Nuzi tablets have now been identified at the Museum and are presented here. One is a
list of household personnel (BM 86005), mostly female, receiving wool allotments, and includes some
previously unattested Hurrian female personal names. Two are fragments of legal documents, one from the
lower right (BM 95280) and the other from the reverse (BM 95463) of their respective tablets. They bear seal
impressions and the names of the witnesses sealing the contracts. A letter (BM 103203) is also presented here.
It shows both typical Nuzi features (the addressee has a Hurrian name) and Middle Assyrian characteristics.
Most importantly, it is dated according to Assyrian custom with a līmu, but one that could be either an
unusual writing (the scribe may have had a Hurrian background) of a known līmu from the reign of Aššuruballiṭ
I (Kidin-kūbe), or a new līmu dating to the 14th century BCE (Kitte-kūbe or Qītī-kūbe).

This paper studies some Cilician names attested in Greek sources that contain the element ζαρμα-. The two main interpretative hypotheses-a connection to Luwian zalma-, or a connection to the god name Šarruma/Šarma-are critically analysed. The conclusion reached is that while the ambiguity of ζαρμα-cannot be resolved, it is highly likely that both-sarma and-zarma really existed as different elements in the formation of personal names in Iron Age Hieroglyphic Luwian. There was probably a tendency towards confusion between-sarma and-zarma, caused by phonological proximity and semantic crossing of certain names. In an article published in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie in the late nineteenth century (Sachau 1892: 89, 93, 102), Eduard Sachau drew attention to an element-ζαρμα in some Cilician names attested in a long inscription found in the Corycian Cave and published for the first time in Hicks (1891: 243-256, inscription Nº 27) and later in Heberdey-Wilhelm (1896: 71-79; inscription Nº 155; now in Hagel-Tomaschitz 1998: 184-190, Kory-kion antron 1). The inscription comprised a list of priests, presumably of the cult of Zeus of Corycus (the name of the divinity is actually missing) and the names were inscribed over a period of many years. The names in question, Ιαζαρμας, Ρωζαρμας, and Τροκοζαρμας, and also another name, Ρωζρυμερις/Ρωνζρυμερις (appar-ently a derived form from-ζαρμα) appear in the oldest part of the list, dated by Wilhelm around 59 BC at the latest. Assuming that each name corresponds to an annual priest, the individuals bearing these names (Ia-zarmas son of Rozarmas, a Rozarmas father of a priest called Neon, Trocozarmas son of Rozarmas, Rozru-meris son of Oetasis and a second Ronzrumeris son of another Oetasis 1) can be situated chronologically in the second half of the second century BC. Although Sachau and other contemporary scholars, particularly Kretschmer (1896: 364), also acknowledged the indigenous character of the Cilician names Sandasarme and Wassurme preserved in Neo-Assyrian sources (see below § 5), these authors did not establish any connection between these names and the names ending in-ζαρμα. It was Johannes Sundwall (1913: 249) who placed the two groups of names together by recognizing a common lexical element *zerma. According to Sundwall, this *zerma was also present in the Lycian name Ζερμουνδις 2 (Zgusta KPN § 383). The discovery of Hurrian linguistic materials in the early twentieth century, thanks to the documents found in Boğazköy and later in Ugarit, offered a new perspective on the interpretation of these Cilician names

The books provides a complete and detailed grammatical description of Hurrian, and of its archaic, literary or classical varieties. It describes the phonology of the language, the morphology of the classes of words and morphemes, and Hurrian syntax. It surveys atypical and anomic forms, and defines the relevant isoglosses, establishing three main geographical dialects. It deals with Person and Place names of Hurrian origin, according to their different types and morphemic structures. It proposes etymologies for the toponyms: Mittanni, Hani-rabbat, Kizzuwadna, and Alašiya.
The book should fulfill the needs of descriptivist and typologist linguists, and all persons that are interested in the languages of the Ancient Near-East.

1. Introduction to the Hurrian Language 1
2. Phonology, Writing Systems  9
3. Main Grammatical Features of Hurrian 33
4. Dialects and Periods of the Hurrian language 43
5. Nominal Morphology 47
6. Hurrian Toponyms 57
7. Introduction to Hurrian Onomastics 61
8. Verbal Morphology 69
9. Pronouns, Deictics 79
10. Adjectives, Numerals 87
11. Conjunctions, Adverbs  89
References 91
Main agglutinative patterns 101