Hadad-yith'i

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The Tell Fekheriyeh statue. Presently in the National Museum of Damascus

Hadad-yith'i (Aramaic, also romanized Hadd-yith'i and Hadad Yis'i) or when romanized from Akkadian, Adad-it'i, was governor of Guzana and Sikani in northern Syria (c. 850 BCE). A client king or vassal of the Assyrian empire, he was the son of Sassu-nuri, who also served as governor before him. Knowledge of Hadad-yith'i's rule comes largely from the statue and its inscription found at the Tell el Fakhariya.[1] Known as the Tell el Fakhariya bilingual inscription, as it is written in both Old Aramaic and Akkadian, its discovery, decipherment and study contributes significantly to cultural and linguistic understandings of the region.[2]

Statue

The life-size basalt statue of a male standing figure carved in Assyrian style was uncovered by a Syrian farmer in February 1979 at the edge of Tell el Fakhariya on a branch of the Khabur River, opposite Tell Halaf.[3] Most stone statues discovered and documented as belonging to the Neo-Assyrian period depict either the kings of Assyria or its gods. The statue of Hadad-yith'i, lacking in royal marks or insignia, is one of only three known stone statues from this period bearing images of figures of lesser rank or reverence.[4]

Tentatively dated to the 9th century BCE based on stylistic features in statue composition, it could be as old as 11th century when considering the archaic traits in several graphemes in the Old Aamaic script.[2]

Inscription

The statue bears the most extensive bilingual inscription in Akkadian and Aramaic,and the oldest Aramaic inscription of such a length.[1] It records the name of its commissioner as King Adad It'i (Hadad Yith'i), and dedicates the statue to the storm god Hadad, a deity worshipped throughout Syria and Mesopotamia at the time. The inscription declares that the god Hadad is the king Hadad Yith'i's lord, by whose blessing he rules. It also notably contains the Aramaic words for "image" (selem) and "likeness" (demut), thus furnishing an ancient and extra-biblical attestation for the terminology used in Genesis 1:26 on the Image of God.[5][6]

In the Assyrian version, he records his name as it is in Assyrian, and gives his title as governor" (saknu or saknu mati), whereas speaking to his own people in his own Aramaic tongue, he records his name as Hadad Yith'i and his title is given as "king" (mlk').[7] The inscription also contains a curse against those who would efface Hadad Yith'i's name from the Hadad temple, invoking Hadad not to accept the offerings of those who did so.[8] An English translation of the Akkadian version of this part of the inscription reads as follows:

"Whoever removes my name from the objects of the temple of Adad, my lord, may my lord Adad not accept his food and drink offerings, may my lady Shala not accept his food and drink offerings. May he sow but not reap. May he sow a thousand (measures), but reap only one. May one hundred ewes not satisfy one spring lamb, may one hundred cows not satisfy one calf, may one hundred women not satisfy one child, may one hundred bakers not fill up one oven! May the gleaners glean from rubbish pits! May illness, plague and insomnia not disappear from his land!"[1]

Name, meaning, root

Hadad Yis'i (Yith'i) is an Aramaic name, and the Akkadian version of the name in the bilingual inscription is transcribed as Adad It'i.[9] That the Aramaic has an "s" in place of the "t" in it'i, becoming yis'i is an indication of how the name was vocalized in Aramaic.[10]

The second part of the king's name is a derivation of an ancient Semitic root meaning "to save", so that the translation of the full name into English is "Hadad is my salvation".[11]

This name is significant in Semitic studies because it establishes beyond a doubt the existence of Aramaic personal names based on and derived from the root yt', meaning "to help", or "to save".[11][12] Prior to this decipherment, and that of another Aramaic inscription discovered in Qumran, scholars thought that this verbal root ישע, often identified as the root for the names Jesus and Joshua, existed only in Biblical Hebrew, and did not exist in Aramaic.[10][11] More discoveries and decipherments of ancient Semitic inscriptions have since uncovered dozens of other examples based on this proto-Semitic root morpheme (yṯ') , the earliest of these being from 2048 B.C in the Amorite personal name lašuil.[13]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Van de Mieroop, 2015, p. 241.
  2. ^ a b Fales, 2011, pp. 563–564.
  3. ^ Millard, Alan. "Hadad-yith'i". referenceworks.brillonline.com. Editor in Chief: W. Hallo. Retrieved 3 December 2014.
  4. ^ Roobaert, Arlette (1996). "A Neo-Assyrian Statue From Til Barsib". British Institute for the Study of Iraq. 58: 83. JSTOR 4200420.
  5. ^ Bandstra, 2008, p. 44.
  6. ^ Middleton, 2005, pp. 106 – 207
  7. ^ Zukerman, 2011, pp. 467-467.
  8. ^ Levine, 1996, p. 112.
  9. ^ Millard & Boudreuil, Summer 1982.
  10. ^ a b Fitzmyer, 2000, pp. 123 – 125.
  11. ^ a b c "The second element contains the same base as certain ancient names in Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Old South Arabic. This is y-sh-' in Hebrew, seen in Joshua (=Jesus) meaning to 'to save'. Thus the name means 'Hadad is my salvation.'" (Millard & Boudreuil, Summer 1982.)
  12. ^ Lipinski, 1975, p. 40.
  13. ^ Aitken & Davies, 2016. Also note: "The Aram. name hdys'y (Akk. adad-it-'i ) in ll. 1, 6 and 12 of the Tell Fekheriye bilingual inscription, probably of the mid-ninth century, can plausibly be associated with the root yṯ'/ישׁע (see initially Abou-Assaf et al. 1982: 43-44, 80: more recent bibliography in Millard 2000: 154). ישׁע is a loan-word in Aramaic found in the Prayer of Nabonidus (Milik 1956:413) and in the targum (Sokoloff 1990: ad loc.). Aramaized forms of two Biblical Hebrew names are found in the Elephantine papyri (Noth 1928:154–55, 176).

Bibliography

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