The spr s lh "tablet scribe" at Phoenician Kition (CIS I 86 A 14).

• Author: Schmitz, Philip C.
• Position: Report

This study takes up the phrase rb sprm slh in the Phoenician text on the obverse of the well-known ritual account discovered at Kition in Cyprus in 1879 (CIS I 86 A 14 = [KAI.sup.5] 37 A 14). (1) My contention is that the letters slh should not be read as the verb s-l-h "stretch out, give free reign to, let go, accompany, send away" (DNWSI 1136-41; Krahmalkov 2000: 461-62 s.v. SLH I), (2) as has been the practice since the reading was established in 1968. I maintain that the string slh comprises two wds: the relative complementizer s-, and the noun lh 'tablet.' The phrase sprm s lh does not concern a chief scribe who was somehow sent commissioned, but a specific type of scribe who wrote on tablets, such as the stone tablet on which the Phoenician text under discussion appears.

CIS I 86 A 14 = [KAI.sup.5] 37 A 14 l'bd smn rb sprm s lh bym z qr /// wq[p'x] F Abdesmun, supervis of tablet-scribes, f this day: 3 qr and [x] q[p']. Line 16 is similar to line 14 and may involve the same construction. The beginning of line 16 is broken; the extant ption begins [.. ...] 'slh bym z qr // wq[p' x].

Ernest Renan and Philippe Berger, the edits of the first fascicle of the Cpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (CIS), read the text [w]lh (CIS I, vol. 1, p. 96). This reading continued to appear in handbooks (Cooke 1903: 65, no. 20; Lidzbarski 1905: 30, no. 29; [KAI.sup.4] [1979] 37.15). Further paleographic study of the tablet by J. Brian Peckham (1968) improved the reading of this passage by identifying the letter previously read waw as sin. Specialists (e.g., Masson and Sznycer 1972: 26, face A, line 14; 54; Magnanini 1973: 110; Healey 1974: 53, 56; Guzzo Amadasi and Karageghis 1977: 105, 116; Gibson, TSSI [1982] 3.125; Rollig, [KAI.sup.5] [2002] 37) have accepted the resulting reading slh. (3)

An analysis of the older reading [w]lh in a manner close to what I am advocating was already suggested by Hartwig Derenbourg (1881), who seems to have interpreted lh verbally, judging from the gloss "incisem tabulae" (cited in CIS I, vol. 1, p. 95). Van den Branden (1966: 257) followed a similar notion, translating lh as "the one who bakes the tablet." Sznycer, turning directly from a citation of these interpretations to the new reading proposed by Peckham, authized the interpretation of slh as a verb (Masson and Sznycer 1972: 54). Verbal interpretations of slh have ranged from G participle (ibid.; Guzzo Amadasi and Karageghis 1977: 116) to third-person passive fm (Healey...