Canaanite in the Amarna Tablets: A Linguistic Analysis of the Mixed Dialect used by Scribes from Canaan.

• Author: van Soldt, W.H.
• Position: Review

By ANSON F. RAINEY. Four volumes. Handbuch der Orientalistik, erste Abteilung, vol. 21. Leiden: E. J. BRILL 1996. Pp. xxii + 204; xxx + 416; xxii + 280; vi + 198. HFl 604, $390.

The title under review here is the result of over twenty years of research on the Amarna letters, starting in 1969 when the author obtained a copy of W. L. Moran's unpublished dissertation on the verbal system in the Byblos letters (vol. 1, p. xv). In its four volumes every aspect of the grammar of the Akkadian written by the scribes in Canaan is thoroughly treated and usually put in a wider context. Phenomena in Akkadian texts from other areas and cities of the same period, such as Ugarit (and occasionally Emar), Mittanni, Nuzi, and Egypt, as well as other periods, such as Old Assyrian, Old Babylonian, and Marl Akkadian, are frequently cited for comparison. As can be expected, the book took a long time to write. It was started in 1981 and completed in 1995. The order in which the volumes were written reverses the order in which they are numbered. The first one was vol. III (particles and adverbs), the second vol. II (the verb), and the last vol. 1 (writing and nouns): see vol. 1, pp. xiv-xv.

Volume I is devoted to the orthography of the letters, as well as the pronouns and the noun. In about fifty pages the syllabary and a number of phonological features are highlighted. Almost immediately, the author puts forward one of the main theses of his book, namely, that the Akkadian written in Canaan traces its origin back not to contemporary Middle Babylonian, but to "an archaic dialect of Old Babylonian" (vol. 1, p. 27). The author frequently returns to this thesis (see my remarks below). The pronouns are discussed in the chapters that follow, the remainder of the volume is devoted to the noun.

The most important volume is without question the second. In its over four hundred pages the author gives a very detailed description of the verbal system used in the Canaanite Amarna letters, a system which has attracted the attention of scholars ever since the letters' discovery more than a hundred years ago. The volume builds on the pioneering work of Moran on the Byblos letters in the early fifties (see the bibliography in vol. IV) and on Rainey's previous studies. Rainey reconstructs from the syllabic evidence the supposed verbal system spoken in Canaan during the second half of the fourteenth century. That this system was also used in the fifteenth century is shown by the letter from Taanach. The prefix conjugation of Canaanite can be divided into two modes, the indicative for tenses and the injunctive for "volition." Both have three...