Die Personennamen der kassitenzeitlichen Texte aus Nippur.

• Author: ZADOK, RAN
• Position: Review

Die Personenamen der kassitenzeitlichen Texte aus Nippur. By MONICA HOLSCHER. Imungla, vol. 1. RHEMA, 196. Pp. vii + 306.

This systematic and updated collection of all the anthroponyms occurring in texts from Middle-Babylonian Nippur (fully or partly published) can serve also as a starting point for a prosopography of this important urban center. Each occurrence is followed, wherever applicable, by its date. The book consists of an introduction (pp. 1-12), where the methodological aspects (types of sources, lemmatization, structure of the entries, titles and occupations, dating) are fully explained. Then follow an analysis of the main name types of the Akkadian anthroponyms and a discussion of problematic and ambiguous readings. Most of the book (pp. 13-242) is devoted to the corpus, where all the names are listed alphabetically (the broken ones at the end; all the explicable Akkadian names are translated). The author is cautious and judicious regarding interpretation and etymology. The book includes detailed analytical indexes: Akkadian words (= name components, pp. 245-64), deities (disregarding their linguistic affiliation, pp. 265-72), toponyms (pp. 272-73), temple names (p. 274), as well as Elamite, Hurrian, Kassite, and West Semitic anthroponyms (pp. 275-79). The book ends with a list of occurrences of cuneiform signs and Sumerograms (pp. 281-94), abbreviations (pp. 295-99) and a bibliography (pp. 301-6). On the whole this is a useful and reliable monograph. The following remarks touch upon a small sample from the rich onomastic material:

Pp. 9f. with n. 15. -te a occurs only in a Kassite name (Ur-pa-te-ia, whose LB survival may be Ur-pa(*)-di-ia [Strassmaier 1897, 535, 5], Sippar or its region, 500/499 B.C.).

P. 15. Ab-da-da-nu is not straightforward Iranian, but perhaps Indo-Aryan (cf. Hinz 1975, 17; Zadok 1976b, 213b). Ab-du-Nergal and Mu-ti-e-kur (144b) are West Semitic, as the linguistic affiliation is determined by the predicative element.

P. 24. Ahlamu and Ahlamitu should be rendered as "the West Semitic (semi-)nomad" rather than "Aramean" (see Zadok 1991, 104f.).

P. 26b. A(k)-kidini is possibly Elamite (cf. Zadok 1987, 15: 154). [supf]Ak-ka-da-a(-a)-i-tu[sub4] and [supf]Til-mu-na-a-(a)-i-tu[sub4] (220b) contain the gentilic suffix -aj- (~-ayy-; cf. Du-ra-a-a-u, Kar-ka-ra-a-u, 61b, 118b; cf. also Zadok 1987, 107), whereas Ak-ka-du-u ends in the more ancient gentilic suffix -u.

P. 33a. [supf]An-di-ia-(a)-tu[sub4] is not a...