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Keret's dream: ḏhrt and hdrt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Jonas C. Greenfield
Jonas C. Greenfield
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Extract

The dream near the beginning of the tale plays an important role in the Keret epic from Ugarit. Keret, suffering from deep depression after the death of his wife and his children in a series of tragic incidents, cries himself to sleep. This is stated in the text as:

šnt tlun wyškb ‘Sleep overtook him while he lay,

nhmmt wyqmṣ slumber while he crouched’; (CTA 14 i 33–35).

Lying in the crouched, curled-up position usual in incubation, he dreamt. The narrative concerning the dream begins with:

wbḥlmh il yrd ‘In his dream El descended,

bḏhrth ab adm in his ḏhrt the Father of Man’ (11. 35–37).

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , February 1994 , pp. 87 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1994

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References

1 I prefer Keret, as a noncommittal name for this text rather than Krita or Kirta, both of which presume a particular historical or cultural background.

2 It is of no consequence if he meant to induce a dream or not, the result was the same. For the root qmṣ see my remarks in JAOS, 82, 1962, 296–7Google Scholar and for this passage see Eretz-Israel, 9, 1969, 61–2Google Scholar. For some aspects of the incubation dream see Oppenheim, A. L., The interpretation of dreams in the ancient Near East (Philadelphia, 1956), 187–190Google Scholar. Other pertinent works are Lewis, N., The interpretation of dreams and portents (Toronto, 1976)Google Scholar; and Gnuse, R. K., The dream theophany of Samuel (Lanham, 1984)Google Scholar.

3 The standard transliteration of ‘sign 16’ is used in ḏhrt; it will be discussed below.

4 The accepted transliterations for these names are used here. For rbt and ṯrrt the epithets of Udum see Greenfield, J. C., ‘The epithets rbt//ṯrrt in the Keret Epic’ in Conrad, E. W. and Newing, E. G. (ed.), Perspectives on language and text (Winona Lake, 1987), 35–7Google Scholar.

5 For the interpretation of the root ḫyṭ found here, and in tšḫṭnn (CTA 19 iii 151) see below.

6 In Ugaritic the same phenomenon is true of ẓr<ẓhr ‘back, top’, cf. Arab, ẓahru, Heb. ṣohar.

7 The etymology of ḏhrt, ḏrt would then be Heb. šwr ‘to see’ as has been proposed. Note that Gibson, J. C. L., Canaanite myths and legends (Edinburgh, 1977), 145Google Scholar, who offers this etymology uses ž, rather than ḏ, for sign ‘16’ as he is cognizant of the difficulty in using ḏ. See the discussion below. Speiser, E. A., ‘A note on alphabetic origins’, BASOR, 121, 1951, 17–21Google Scholar proposed using for sign ‘16’ in both Hurrian and Ugaritic. He thought ḏhrt was a loanword from Akkadian širtu ‘in its specific sense of oracle’. This was never seriously considered.

8 Since the appearance of Fronzaroli's, P.La fonetica ugaritica (Rome, 1955)Google Scholar, there has not been a thorough discussion of Ugaritic phonology or its writing system. We shall deal here with the anomalies of the texts written in the ‘normal’ Ugaritic orthography. The texts CTA 12 ( = UT 75) and 24 (= UT 11) are written in a divergent orthography. See also Garr, W. R., ‘On voicing and devoicing in Ugaritic’, JNES, 45, 1986, 45–52Google Scholar and the recent works of J. Huehnergard and D. Sivan.

9 But note the ambiguity in ģr ‘skin’, CTA v vi 17; 19, 173.

10 Gordon, Ugaritic textbook, Glossary, 436, no. 1524 lists mṣ’ but Hernder, CTA 6 v 4 reads ymṣḫ. The South Arabic mẓ’ ‘go, proceed, reach’ et al. and the Arabic cognate maḍā ‘to pass’ show how complex the situation can be. For South Arabic see Beeston, A. F. L. et al. , Sabaic dictionary (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1982), 89–90Google Scholar. In CTA 12 i 36–7, written in the divergent orthography, we find ymģyl/ymẓ’. Blau, J. has discussed the problem in Israel Oriental Studies, 2, 1972, 67–72Google Scholar. However, as instructive as his survey is, he has not taken Ugaritic's special phonological circumstances into consideration. I hope to return to this problem soon.

11 The unique mẓm’ occurs in CTA 15 i 2, a text written in the normal orthography.

12 These two are used in parallelism in CTA 4 vii 54–5 and CTA 8, 7–8.

13 See the discussion by Fronzaroli, P., La fonetica ugaritica, 22–7Google Scholar, Ullendorff, E., ‘Marginalia Ugaritica’, JSS, 7, 1962, 348–51Google Scholar (with references to previous discussions on p. 348, n. 1); Gordon, C. H.Ugaritic textbook, II, 26–7Google Scholar. See also the works referred to in n. 8, above.

14 Revue des études sémitiques, 1942–1945, 36–7, 49Google Scholar; Syria, 29, 1952, 169–70Google Scholar.

15 J. C. L. Gibson, Canaanite myths and legends, consistently uses ž instead of d.

16 See the remarks of Ullendorff (ad n. 13 above); he correctly also lists aḏddy ‘Ashdodite’ and gmḏ CTA 12 i 13.

17 CTA 2 i 21 tk ģr 11 ‘m pḫr m'd. Since ḏd is found in parallelism with qrš ‘pavilion’ and ahl ‘tent’ (CTA 19 213, 220) the translation ‘territory’ or ‘premises’ fits. I am not convinced by Cross's, F. M. discussion of the relationship between Ugaritic ṯ, ḏ and š and el šadday in HTR, 55, 1962, 244–50Google Scholar.

18 The proposed Hebrew cognate šwr (see above n. 7) does not satisfactorily explain the h in ḏhrt.

19 Brockelmann, Syriac—C., Lexicon Syriacum (2nd ed., Halle, 1928), 760Google Scholar; Sokoloff, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic—M., A dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine period (Ramat Gan, 1990), 539Google Scholar; Schultess, Christian Palestinian Aramaic—F., Lexicon Syropalaestinum (Berlin, 1903). 202Google Scholar.

20 Unless šhr in this text has the same meaning as Mandaic šhr v ‘to slumber’, for which see Drower–, E. S.—Macuch, R., A Mandaic dictionary (Oxford, 1963), 451Google Scholar. The text would then indicate three degrees of sleep. This would be very unusual.

21 Montgomery, J. A., Aramaic incantation texts from Nippur (Philadelphia, 1913), 147 (text)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 148 (translation).

22 Yamauchi, E. M., Mandatc incantation texts (New Haven, 1967), 213Google Scholar.

23 The verb yḫṭ is usually translated ‘awoke, s'éveille’ based on the context, but as has long been accepted yḫṭ is etymologically related to Akk. ḫāṭhatu ‘to see, examine’, and the point of this text is not that Keret awoke, but that he realized that he had a ḫlm/hḏrt. The Aramaic phrase wĕ'uššaya yaḥīṭū (Ezra 4:12), usually translated ‘and they are repairing the foundation’ may very well mean ‘and they are examining the foundations’ with Aram, ḥyṭ ‘to examine, look at closely’.

24 This was proposed by Aistleitner on the basis of Arabic hḏr, but it is not acceptable, since Arabic hḏr ‘to babble, talk nonsense’ does not justify ‘phantasy’ for hḏrt. See Caquot, A. et al. , Textes ougaritiques, I (Paris, 1974), 527, note oGoogle Scholar.

25 C. Gordon, Ugaritic textbook, Glossary, s.v. hḏrt. Gordon works with the semantic equation majesty>theophany> dream which is not satisfactory.

26 Cross, F. M., ‘Notes on a Canaanite Psalm in the Old Testament’, BASOR, 117, 1950, 19 ffGoogle Scholar.; taken up again in his Canaanite myth and Hebrew epic (Cambridge, 1973), p. 152, n. 28. On p. 155 he translated bĕhadrat qodeš as ‘who appears in holiness’.

27 Passages such as Ps. 96:9; I Chron. 16:29c and II Chron. 20:221 are usually taken to be dependent on Ps. 29:21.

28 Caquot, A., ‘In Splendoribus Sanctorum’, Syria, 33 (1956, 36–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This article has not received the attention that it deserves. I have been influenced by Caquot's discussion of the Ugaritic text and of Ps. 29:2.

29 We have followed the translation of H. L. Ginsberg, ANET 429a except for the last word which he restored as buy ḥ[rynj and translated ‘as [free] men’. Others (Caquot, Grelot, Lindenberger, etc.) take the last word simply as bnyḥ[']’ in peace’. I do not think that I. Kottsieper's restoration bnyh[h] ‘zu [seiner] Zufriedenheit’, is correct. See Kottsieper, I., Die Sprache die Achiqarsprüche (Berlin, 1990), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 A discussion of this aspect of kingship would take us far afield. The CAD ‘M’ II, p. 9 interprets melammu as the ‘supernatural awe-inspiring sheen inherent in things divine and royal’. See most recently, Cassin, E., La Splendeur divine (Paris, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.