Introduction

The Assyrian dialect of Akkadian in the first millennium BCE is closely related to the Babylonian dialect. This, together with their common cultural background and the high degree of interaction and mobility between the two regions means that the personal name repertoires of Assyria and Babylonia overlap to a significant degree. For example, Neo-Assyrian sources mention many individuals who can be identified as Babylonians, whether active in Assyria (as deportees, visitors, or settlers) or in Babylonia (as mentioned, for example, in Assyrian royal inscriptions, or in the Babylonian letters of the official correspondence). Their personal names, for the most part, are indistinguishable from those of the Assyrians themselves. These circumstances make it somewhat challenging to distinguish names of genuinely Assyrian derivation and to identify them in the Babylonian sources.

The Babylonian name repertoire is well established, thanks to the wealth of published Neo-Babylonian everyday documents. For Assyria, The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (PNA) includes not only biographies of all named individuals but also concise analyses of the linguistic background of individual names, together with the attested spellings (Reference RadnerRadner 1998, Reference Radner1999; Reference BakerBaker 2000, Reference Baker2001, Reference Baker2002, Reference Baker2011). The series includes more than 21,000 disambiguated individuals bearing in excess of 7,300 names. The names themselves represent numerous linguistic backgrounds, including Akkadian (Assyrian and Babylonian), Aramaic, Hebrew, Moabite, West Semitic, Phoenician, Canaanite, Arabic, Egyptian, Greek, Iranian, Hurrian, Urarṭian, Anatolian, and Elamite. PNA covers texts of all genres in so far as they mention individuals by name; it forms the basis for any attempt to distinguish between Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian personal names. The focus of this chapter is on presenting the methodology and issues involved in identifying Assyrian names in Babylonian sources, with due consideration of the historical context. The names discussed here are intended to be representative cases; they do not constitute a complete repertoire of Assyrian names documented in Babylonian texts.Footnote ¹

Before addressing current approaches to identifying Assyrian names in Babylonian sources, it is worth highlighting a key difference in Assyrian and Babylonian naming practices: while family names are commonly used in Babylonia by members of the traditional urban elite (see Chapter 4), they were never adopted in Assyria. Also, these same members of the Babylonian urban elite regularly identified themselves by their father’s name in everyday documents, whereas in Assyria, with the exception of members of scribal/scholarly families, genealogical information is far less common, being limited to the occasional inclusion of the father’s name. This means that the disambiguation of individuals is generally easier for Neo-Babylonian sources than for Neo-Assyrian ones, especially in the case of common names. One final point to bear in mind: feminine personal names make up around 7 per cent of the total number of names catalogued in PNA, so it is hardly surprisingly that Assyrian feminine personal names can only very rarely be identified in Babylonian texts.

Historical Background

As far as the onomastic material is concerned, the fall of Nineveh in 612 BCE forms a watershed for the presence of Assyrian name-bearers in Babylonia. Evidence prior to the fall of Assyria is slight: John P. Reference NielsenNielsen’s 2015 study, covering early Neo-Babylonian documents dated between 747 and 626 BCE, includes only six individuals bearing names that are clearly Assyrian according to the criteria discussed later in the chapter. They are: Aššur-ālik-pāni ‘Aššur is the leader’ (^IAN.ŠÁR–a-lik–pa-ni), Aššur-bēlu-uṣur ‘O Aššur, protect the lord!’ (^IAN.ŠÁR–EN–URÙ), Aššur-dannu ‘Aššur is strong’ (^IAN.ŠÁR-dan-nu), Aššur-ēṭir ‘Aššur has saved’ (^IdAŠ-SUR), Aššur-ilāˀī ‘Aššur is my god’ (^IAN.ŠÁR-DINGIR-a-a), and Mannu-kî-Arbail ‘Who is like Arbaˀil?’ (^Iman-nu-ki-i-LIMMÚ-DINGIR) (Reference NielsenNielsen 2015, 41–2, 196; cf. Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 5). Aššur-bēlu-uṣur is a particularly interesting case since he served as qīpu (‘(royal) resident’) of the Eanna temple of Uruk at some time between 665 and 648 BCE (Reference BeaulieuBeaulieu 1997, 55–6). The question has been raised of whether he was posted there or belonged to a local family, but, as Karen Radner notes, the office of qīpu denoted the king’s representative as an ‘outsider’, in contrast to the other high temple officials who were drawn from the local urban élite (Reference Radner, Levin and MüllerRadner 2017, 84; cf. Reference KleberKleber 2008, 26–7). In general, though, this scarcity of Assyrian names in Babylonian sources prior to the fall is interesting because a lot of Assyrians were stationed or active in Babylonia during this period of more or less continuous Assyrian domination. The onomastic evidence suggests either that such people seldom bore diagnostically Assyrian names, or, if they did, then they did not integrate or mix with local people in a way that led to them featuring in the local transactions that dominate the extant sources from Babylonia.

The inhabitants of Assyria continued to worship the god Aššur long after the fall of Assyria in 612 BCE, as is clear from the Parthian onomasticon as late as the third century CE (Reference MarcatoMarcato 2018, 167–8). In fact, based partly on the evidence of the Cyrus Cylinder, Karen Radner has recently suggested that the post-612 BCE rebuilding of the Aššur temple at Assur may be attributed to Assyrians who had fled to Babylonia but who returned to Assur after the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 BCE (Reference Radner, Levin and MüllerRadner 2017). Be that as it may, there is no direct contemporary evidence for actual deportations of Assyrians following the fall of their empire, though it seems clear that a great many people either fled or migrated into Babylonia from the north after 612 BCE. Evidence for this comes mainly in the form of Assyrian personal names in Babylonian texts written during the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods. In the case of Uruk, there is evidence for a flourishing cult of Aššur, with a temple or chapel dedicated to him in that city (Reference BeaulieuBeaulieu 1997). Moreover, one of the texts discussed by Paul-Alain Beaulieu refers to ^lúŠÀ-bi–URU.˹KI*˺.MEŠ ‘people of Libbāli (= Assur)’ (Reference BeaulieuBeaulieu 1997, 61). This evidence for an Assyrian presence in the south is complemented by the mention of some toponyms of Assyrian origin in Babylonian sources (Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 3). While Karen Radner attributed the establishment of the cult of Aššur in Uruk to fugitives who fled Assur following its conquest in 614 BCE (Reference Radner, Levin and MüllerRadner 2017, 83–4), Paul-Alain Beaulieu considers the Urukean cult of Aššur to date back to the late Sargonid period, when Uruk was an important ally of Assyria (Reference BeaulieuBeaulieu 2019, 8).

Text Corpora

The Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid-period text corpora that contain Assyrian personal names derive especially from the temple sphere, including the archives of Eanna at Uruk and Ebabbar at Sippar. While these two cities dominate the material under discussion, Assyrian names have also been identified in archival texts written in other Babylonian cities, including Babylon and Nippur (Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 10–11). A detailed examination of the archival background of the relevant texts, which would assist in further contextualising the Assyrian name-bearers, is outside the scope of the present study; the individual archives and their contents are treated in summary form by Michael Reference JursaJursa (2005).

Principles for Distinguishing Assyrian Names from Babylonian Names

For the sake of the present exercise, we may distinguish three major groups of Akkadian names of the first millennium BCE: (1) distinctively Neo-Assyrian personal names, (2) distinctively Neo-Babylonian personal names, and (3) names that were common to both Assyria and Babylonia. Only names belonging to the first group are of interest here, so our challenge is to define this group more precisely with reference to the other two groups. This process of distinguishing Neo-Assyrian from Neo-Babylonian personal names centres on four key features which may occur separately or in combination, namely: (i) Assyrian divine elements, (ii) Assyrian toponyms, (iii) Assyrian dialectal forms, and (iv) vocabulary particular to the Neo-Assyrian onomasticon. I shall deal with each of these features in turn in the following pages.

Names with Assyrian Divine Elements

With regard to Assyrian divine elements, Ran Zadok has remarked: ‘It should not be forgotten that the Assyrians worshipped Babylonian deities (as early as the fourteenth century), but the Babylonians did not worship Assyrian deities. Therefore, if a name from Babylonia contains an Assyrian theophoric element its bearer should be regarded as an Assyrian’ (Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 2). This is a sound methodological principle, although in practice it is of restricted application since there are few Assyrian deities that were not traditionally worshipped in Babylonia: the two pantheons overlap to a considerable extent. The following paragraphs deal with the relevant divine names, their spellings, and their reading.

Names Formed with Assyrian Toponyms

In addition to the names discussed here which contain Assyrian divine elements, there are a number of occurrences in Babylonian sources of personal names formed with Assyrian toponyms, notably Arbaˀil (modern Erbil): Arbailāiu ‘The one from Arbaˀil’ and Mannu-(a)kî-Arbail ‘Who is like Arbaˀil?’ (Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 8–9; Reference Zadok1985, 28). The feminine name ^fUrbil-ḫammu ‘Arbaˀil is the master’ (^fur-bi-il-ḫa-am-mu), borne by a slave, can be added to these (Reference ZadokZadok 1998). The family name Aššurāya ‘Assyrian’ (^Iaš-šur-a-a), based on the city name Assur, is also attested. Since none of the members of this family bore Assyrian names, Ran Zadok suggests that the family’s ancestor migrated to Babylonia before the Neo-Babylonian period (Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 2). As I noted already, the Assyrians did not use family names, so the adoption of Aššurāya as a family name must reflect the ‘Babylonianisation’ of the descendants. Related to this phenomenon is the presence of Assyrian toponyms in Babylonian sources, such as Aššurītu, written ^uruáš-šur-ri-tú (Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 3); there is no telling when such toponyms were originally introduced into Babylonia.

Names with Assyrian Dialectal Forms

Examples in this category include names formed with the Assyrian precative -lāmur ‘may I see’ (Bab. -lūmur), and nouns in Assyrian dialectal form, such as urdu ‘servant’ (Bab. ardu). The Assyrian D-stem imperative -balliṭ ‘keep alive!’ (Bab. -bulliṭ) comprises another potentially distinctive form, though I know of no example of the name type DN-balliṭ attested in Babylonian sources to date. Examples of names with Assyrian dialectal forms include:

• Pāni-Aššur-lāmur ‘May I see the face of Aššur’ (^IIGI–AN.ŠÁR–la-mur; Reference BeaulieuBeaulieu 1997, 59–60). The use of Neo-Assyrian dialect was not always consistent since ^IIGI–AN.ŠÁR–lu-mur is also attested (Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 6). In UCP 9/2 57 the name is written with both -lāmur (l. 8) and -lūmur (l. 4) (Reference BeaulieuBeaulieu 1997, 59).

• Pāni-Bēl-lāmur ‘May I see the face of Bēl’ (^Ipa-ni–^dEN–la-mur; Reference BeaulieuBeaulieu 1997, 59–60).

• Urdu-Eššu ‘Servant of Eššu’ (^Iur-du-eš-šú, Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 2). The common use of the logogram ÌR often makes it impossible to tell whether a name includes urdu or ardu.

In addition, the Neo-Assyrian onomasticon – unlike the Neo-Babylonian – includes names formed with the imperative of riābu ‘to replace’ (Rīb(i)-DN) as well as with the preterite (Erība-DN), though note that logographic writings with ^ISU- as first element are ambiguous. A number of elements particular to Assyrian occur only with Assyrian divine names, according to Ran Zadok: ‘It is worth pointing out that the exclusively Assyrian forms urdu “slave”, rīb (Bab. erība), bēssunu (Bab. bēlšunu) and iššiya (reflecting NA issiya) “with me”; Bab. ittiya) are recorded in N/LB only as the predicates of -eššu and ^dŠÁR names’ (Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 4–5).

Names Formed with Vocabulary Characteristic of the Assyrian Onomasticon

In discussing the divine name Eššu, I identified a number of Assyrian names formed with characteristic vocabulary items, namely (with translations following PNA): Kiṣir-DN (‘Cohort of DN’), Mannu-(a)kî-DN (‘Who is like DN?’), Sinqi-DN (‘Test of DN’), Tuqūn-DN (‘Order of DN’), Tuqūnu-ēreš (‘He [a deity] has desired order’), and Tuqūnu-lāmur (‘Let me see order!’). To these we can add Unzaraḫ-[…] (^Iun-za-ra-aḫ-[…]; Reference ZadokZadok 1998); compare the names Unzarḫu (‘Freedman’?), Unzarḫu-Aššur, and Unzarḫu-Issar (PNA 3/II, 1387–8).

Orthography and Phonology

In the writing of Assyrian names in Neo-Assyrian sources, the divine determinative is often omitted, whereas in Neo-Babylonian this is only rarely the case. In Babylonian the divine name Ea is rather consistently written ^dé-a, whereas in Assyrian it is often written ^(d)a-a and, more rarely, ia, rendered Aia (Parpola in PNA 1/I, xxv–xxvii). Note that Aia is not to be confused with the goddess Aya (^(d)a-a), spouse of the sun god Šamaš. Otherwise, in terms of phonology, the main difference between the writing of Assyrian and Babylonian names lies in the treatment of the sibilants. We have already seen how the Assyrian divine element Issar (Ištar) was rendered Iššar in Babylonian. The sibilant š in Babylonian names may be rendered s in Neo-Assyrian: for example, the common Neo-Babylonian name Šumāya was sometimes rendered Sumāya, written ^Isu-ma-a-a and ^Isu-ma-ia in Neo-Assyrian sources (PNA 3/I, 1157–8). This tendency of Assyrian scribes to ‘Assyrianise’ Babylonian names may hinder the identification of Babylonians in the Assyrian sources. The same is true of the converse: if a Babylonian scribe were to render an Assyrian name by, for example, changing -lāmur to -lūmur, then there would be no way of identifying the individual as Assyrian in the absence of an Assyrian theophoric element or of further corroborating evidence.

Introduction

The Aramaic onomasticon found in Babylonian sources linguistically belongs to the West Semitic languages while it is written in cuneiform script used to express Late Babylonian Akkadian, an East Semitic language (see Figure 8.1). Among the languages classified as West Semitic, four are recognisable in the Late Babylonian onomasticon: Arabic names, generally viewed as representing the Central Semitic branch; Phoenician; Hebrew (or Canaanite); and Aramaic names representing its Northwest Semitic subgroup.Footnote ¹

Figure 8.1 A family tree model of Semitic languages.

(drawing by Rieneke Sonnevelt)

Aramaic names make up the largest part of the West Semitic onomasticon in the Neo- and Late Babylonian documentation. They will be the focus of this chapter. Chapter 9 deals with Hebrew names, Chapter 10 with Phoenician names, and Chapter 11 with Arabic names from this period. The Aramaic onomasticon of the preceding Neo-Assyrian era, which has been researched by Fales, is not included here.Footnote ² A given name may be recognised as Aramaic on the basis of patterns and trends regarding patronym, the occurrence of an Aramaic deity, and the socio-economic context of the attestation. Despite the fact that these factors provide valuable background information (see section on ‘Aramaic Names in Babylonian Sources’), the most secure way of deciding on the Aramaic nature of a name is based on linguistic criteria:

1. - phonological: phonemes of Semitic roots are represented in a way specific for Aramaic;

2. - lexical: words are created from roots that solely appear in Aramaic;

3. - morphological: forms and patterns used are peculiar for Aramaic;

4. - structural: names are constructed with, for instance, Aramaic verbal components.Footnote ³

Opinions differ as regards the nature of the Aramaic language in Babylonia during the Neo-Babylonian era. Aramaic attestations from this timeframe are – together with those from the preceding Neo-Assyrian period – variously evaluated as belonging to Old Aramaic as found in sources from Aramaean city states, as manifestations of local and independent dialects, or as (precursors of) Achaemenid Imperial (or Official) Aramaic.Footnote ⁴

Defining the variety of Aramaic used in Babylonia is hindered by the fact that direct evidence from this area is generally scarce and textual witnesses from its state administration, which presumably was bilingual Akkadian–Aramaic, are non-extant. Aramaic texts mainly appear as brief epigraphs written on cuneiform clay tablets.Footnote ⁵ Moreover, a small number of alphabetic texts were impressed into bricks by those working on royal buildings in Babylon.Footnote ⁶

Chronologically, the major part of the Aramaic onomasticon appears in cuneiform texts dating to the latter half of the fifth century – a period in which the use of Aramaic as chancellery language of the Achaemenid Empire seems to have been established in all parts of its vast territory. Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic is attested in a large variety of literary genres across socio-economic domains and is written in alphabetic script on various media, such as papyri, ostraca, funerary stones, and coins.Footnote ⁷ Overall, the orthography of this language variety is marked by consistency (especially in administrative letters), its syntax displays influences from Persian and Akkadian, and its lexicon contains an abundance of loanwords from various languages.Footnote ⁸

Aramaic Names in Babylonian Sources

Aramaic names can be found in cuneiform economic documents from all over Babylonia, but they appear most frequently in texts from the villages Yāhūdu, Našar, and Bīt-Abī-râm, dating to the sixth and early fifth centuries,Footnote ⁹ and in the extensive Murašû archive originating from the southern town of Nippur and its surroundings, which covers the second half of the fifth century.Footnote ¹⁰ By contrast, the proportion of West Semitic names in city-based cuneiform archives is relatively marginal: about 2 per cent of the c. 50,000 individuals appearing in this text corpus bear an Aramaic name if the Murašû documentation is disregarded; this amounts to 2.5 per cent if the latter archive is included.Footnote ¹¹ The proportion of Aramaic names in the Murašû archive is ten times higher than the norm (see Figure 8.2).Footnote ¹²

Figure 8.2 Distribution of names in the Murašû archive from Nippur.

One of the reasons behind the marked difference in the proportion of non-Babylonian names between the rural archives and the Babylonian sources in general is the fact that the former are characterised by less formative influence – and thus representation – of Babylonian elites, who formed a relatively homogenous social group. They lived in the city; were directly or indirectly connected to its institutions, most notably the temples; and virtually always bore Babylonian personal names, patronyms, and family names (see Chapter 1).Footnote ¹³ Unsurprisingly, they appear as protagonists in the urban documentation, while individuals with non-Babylonian names tend to have the passive role of witnesses.Footnote ¹⁴

Onomastic diversity thus correlates with a decidedly rural setting. This is underlined by the fact that Murašû documents not written up in Nippur, but in settlements located in its vicinity, display larger proportions of both parties and witnesses with non-Babylonian names.Footnote ¹⁵ Likewise, texts from the rural settlements of Yāhūdu, Našar, and Bīt-Abī-râm contain a substantive amount of West Semitic names. Indeed, the multilingual situation in Babylonia’s south-central (or possibly south-eastern) region, whence these two cuneiform corpora originate,Footnote ¹⁶ already stood out during earlier centuries. Letters in the archive of Nippur’s ‘governor’ written between c. 755 and 732 BCE attest to the connections between powerful leaders of Aramaean tribes and feature many Aramaic-named individuals, as well as Aramaisms.Footnote ¹⁷ Moreover, a letter dated to king Assurbanipal’s reign (seventh century BCE) mentions speakers of multiple different languages living in the Nippur area (roughly indicated by the brackets in Figure 8.3).Footnote ¹⁸

Figure 8.3 Nippur and its hinterland.

(drawn by Rieneke Sonnevelt, adapted from Reference ZadokZadok 1978, 332)

Various forms of migration contributed to the multi-ethnic character of the population in this region. First, non-Babylonian sections – among which were Aramaean groups – migrated into the territory east of the Tigris (the area indicated by the arrows in Figure 8.3).Footnote ¹⁹ Second, the diverse populace was a result of forced migration. For instance, the Babylonian king Nabopolassar (626–605 BCE) took many prisoners of war – most of them Aramaeans – from settlements in upper Mesopotamia and the middle Euphrates region and relocated them to the Nippur area in 616 BCE. Not long before, Nippur itself had been an Assyrian town where a garrison was stationed; it was only besieged and conquered between 623 and 621 BCE. Campaigns led by subsequent kings, most notably Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 BCE), resulted in deportations of communities from Syria and the Levant and their resettlement in the same region around Nippur.Footnote ²⁰ The state provided the deportees with fields and in return levied taxes and/or rents and conscripted the landholders as troops. The process is documented in its early stages in the cuneiform texts from Yāhūdu and its environs. Also, the Murašû archive depicts individuals active in this so-called land-for-service system.Footnote ²¹ Due to these migratory flows, not only the onomasticon is diverse: many toponyms in this region are non-Akkadian or Akkadian – West Semitic hybrids as well. They may refer to Aramaean tribes, eponymous forefathers, or places of origins in Syria or the Levant.Footnote ²² Finally, Aramaic epigraphs are quite well-attested in these archives.

During the Achaemenid period, the southern region functioned as a passageway between the Persian heartland and the Empire’s western provinces. Through the Kabaru Canal the Babylonian waterways were directly connected with Susa, the Persian capital in Elam. Except for thus being of geopolitical importance, this area hosted travellers from Babylonia and far beyond who began the last stage of their trip to the capital here, upon changing boats in the settlement of Bāb-Nār-Kabari.Footnote ²³

Spelling and Normalisation

The normalisation of West Semitic names written in Babylonian Akkadian, for which no academic standard has been formulated, is challenging. First, it is not always straightforward whether a name is Akkadian or Aramaic; for instance, ^Iba-ni-a can be read as Akkadian Bānia and as West Semitic Banī, a hypocoristic form of the sentence name ‘DN-established’. Second, there are many ways to approach the transcription of Aramaic names, based on the question of whether an attempt should be made to reconstruct the characteristics of an Aramaic name and, if so, to what extent. This could pertain to relatively straightforward issues, such as phonemes not represented in Akkadian (for instance, the gutturals) or those rendered differently (for instance, /w/ written /m/, as visible in the Judean theophoric element Yāma). However, it also relates to features such as vowel quality, vowel length, and stress, which are often not easy – or are downright impossible – to reconstruct due to incongruity of the writing systems and the inconsistency in which Aramaic names are converted into Akkadian.Footnote ²⁴ Therefore, taking the Akkadian spelling as a point of departure and including only the most basic features rendered by it in a relatively consistent manner is my preferred modus operandi for transcription.

At the same time, some degree of harmonisation is necessary as, for instance, the spelling of the perfect in the Aramaic name DN-natan shows: ^IDN-na-tan-nu/-ni/-na (the final CV-sign merely indicates that the previous syllable is stressed). Abstraction on the basis of the Aramaic verbal form avoids a plethora of names that are in fact orthographic varieties. Moreover, although vowel length is not included in transcription when uncertain, a frequent and clear trend is taken into account: as the final long vowel of the perfect 3.sg. m. of verbs ending in ˀ/y/h is nearly always represented, the transcription of, for example, ^IDN-ba-na-ˀ is DN-banā. These examples demonstrate that there will always be a margin of error and that a hybrid transcription is inevitable – something that does not seem unfitting in view of the sources.Footnote ²⁵

Typology of Aramaic Names

Naming Practices

As regards naming practice, it is striking that Babylonian theophoric elements appearing in the Aramaic onomasticon are not the ones prominent in contemporaneous Babylonian names. For instance, hardly any Aramaic names in the Murašû documentation contain the theophoric element Enlil, while this Babylonian deity enjoyed immense popularity in the Nippur area at the time.Footnote ⁶² This also is the case for Enlil’s son Ninurta (attested only once) and for Marduk, Nergal, and Sîn. Babylonian gods that are found in greater numbers in Aramaic names are Nabû, who takes second position after Tammeš in Nippur’s Aramaic onomasticon, as well as Bēl and Nanāya. Interestingly, Nabû primarily appears in patronyms, which indicates a decline of his prevalence.Footnote ⁶³

In feminine names, a tendency of different order stands out. Although suffixes -t, -at, -īt, and -ī/ē are attested, there seems to have been a strong preference for feminine names ending in -ā:Footnote ^{64 f}Barukā ‘Blessed’ (^fba-ru-ka-ˀ), ^fGubbā ‘Cistern’ (^fgu-ub-ba-a), ^fḪannā ‘Gracious’ (^fḫa-an-na-a), ^fNasikat ‘Chieftess’ (^fna-si-ka-tu₄), ^fDidīt ‘Favourite’ (^fdi-di-ti), and ^fḪinnī ‘Gracious’ (^fḫi-in-ni-ia).

Tools for Identifying Aramaic Names in Cuneiform Sources

Various Aramaic verbs have surfaced in the examples. A more extensive – although not exhaustive – overview of verbs commonly attested in Aramaic names is presented in Table 8.1.

Nouns that regularly appear in nominal sentence names are presented in Table 8.2.Footnote ⁶⁵

Nouns that typically appear in compound names are given in Table 8.3.

The outline of elements of which Aramaic names may consist (presented in the section ‘Typology of Aramaic Names’) and these tables may give a taste of what such names could look like. If one suspects a name to be Aramaic, either the indices of Reference ZadokRan Zadok (1977, 339–81) may be checked, or Reference Zadok, Stökl and WaerzeggersZadok 2014, which includes attestations from later publications as well (the latter in a searchable PDF). As names have not been transcribed, use the Akkadian spelling for a search.

Introduction to the Language and Its Background

The Name Material in Babylonian Sources

Introduction

There is a very restricted number of anthroponyms which can be defined as Phoenician and fringe Canaanite (practically, Moabite and Ammonite) in Neo-Babylonian and Late Babylonian sources. Footnote ¹ No more than twenty-three individuals bore Phoenician names, with various degrees of plausibility. There is only one individual among them whose name is not strictly speaking purely Phoenician, as it ends with the Akkado-Aramaic gentilic suffix (Ṣūrāya ‘Tyrian’, a man of undoubtedly Phoenician extraction; see [33]). In addition, there are two Moabites and one Ammonite.

The sample is not only very small but also very dispersed, as it covers over 300 years and originates from almost all the Babylonian regions and documentation centres.Footnote ² Relying on such a limited sample, which is almost entirely reconstructed (the only person explicitly said to be Phoenician is the aforementioned Tyrian), necessitates maximum contextualisation – namely, thorough analysis and evaluation of the pertinent prosopographical pool.

The main criteria for distinguishing Phoenician names from other Canaanite corpora, in the first place the onomasticon of the Old Testament, are (1) phonological, viz. the shift of á to ó, and (2) theological: the Phoenician onomasticon preserved the old Canaanite theophoric elements (with several individual modifications), whereas most of the theophoric anthroponyms of the Old Testament contain Yhw and kinship terms. Like Hebrew, the residual onomastica of Moab and Ammon lack the shift of á to ó, whereas their main theophoric elements differ from the other Canaanite onomastica due to the popularity of their main local gods, viz. Moabite Kemosh and Ammonite Milkom. Of course, the distinction and delimitation among the various Canaanite dialects, as well as between Phoenician and Aramaic, is not always clear-cut. Cases where disambiguation is not possible are discussed where applicable.

Classification of the Phoenician Anthroponyms

Due to the limited number of Phoenician names attested in the Babylonian text corpus, we offer only a very basic classification of their structure here, viz. twenty-two compound and non-compound names (respectively, thirteen and nine names each). This sample represents the names with a high degree of plausibility; the maximum is thirty-four names, which are all classified herein. One of the simplex names can be regarded an isolated predicate [17]. Both members of the only purely Phoenician filiation (father and son [12, 13]) have the same initial component.

Moabite Anthroponyms

Only two Moabite personal names are attested in the Babylonian text corpus so far. In a deed concerning an Egyptian slave woman, two brothers (Sîn-qitri and Itti-Nabû-balāṭu) bear the Moabite patronym [35] Kamuš-šarru-uṣur (^Idka-mu-šú-šarru-uṣur) ‘Kemosh protect the king!’.Footnote ⁸⁴ The same text mentions the Phoenician Abdu-Ḫmūnu, discussed earlier [12]. The second Moabite anthroponym is [36] Kamuš-il ‘Kemosh is god’ (^Ika-mu-šu-i-lu, ^Ika-am-mu-šú-DINGIR.MEŠ). The person bearing this name is recorded as the father of Ḫanṭušu, a witness in Susa in 505 BCE.Footnote ⁸⁵

An Ammonite Anthroponym

The only Ammonite name attested in the Babylonian text corpus so far is [37] Milkūmu-šarru-uṣur (^Imil-≪ki≫ku-mu- …) ‘Milkom protect the king’, who is recorded in a text dated to Nabonidus.Footnote ⁸⁶ This person’s presence in Babylonia accords well with the assumption that Ammon was transformed from a vassal kingdom to a Babylonian province in c. 582 BCEFootnote ⁸⁷ (i.e., one generation earlier). The Neo-Babylonian Empire pursued the Assyrian policy of deporting members of the local elite as well as experts following such an administrative transformation.

Statistical Evaluation and Some Conclusions

The percentage of bearers of names deriving from Phoenician and fringe Canaanite in the abundant prosopographical record from first-millennium Babylonia is negligible. Almost half of the thirty-four Phoenician names are undoubtedly such, the other half is optional – that is, either Phoenician or belonging to other Northwest Semitic dialects, mostly fringe Canaanite or Hebrew; two are alternatively Arabian.

Most individuals bearing these names have filiations. All the filiations are two-tier: a son’s and a father’s name are combined. Two-tier filiation is typical of foreigners in the Babylonian documentation, where only Babylonian urbanites bore three-tier filiations (son, father, and remote ancestor). This is an indication that the Phoenicians did not marry members of the segregated urbanite elite. Like other foreigners, they assimilated to the less prestigious classes of the Babylonian society. However, members of these classes did not necessarily form a poorer layer of the Babylonian society: a clear case in point are prominent members of the palatial sectors and entrepreneurs lacking family names.

Eleven individuals are recorded without filiations. There are several reasons for this omission. One anthroponym [4] is derived from a toponym, where no patronyms are expected. Slaves or people having a title (as in [5, 17]) bear an identifier and therefore do not need to be presented with a paternal name which is an additional, superfluous, identifier. Filiations are not required in non-legal documents, which supplies the context of several attestations [6, 8, 16]. Ṣūrāya [33] is mentioned in a deed where only recurrent and homonymous individuals are listed with their paternal names. Another one is recorded in a deed without witnesses [2].

Only one purely Phoenician filiation is attested [12, 13]. All the other filiations are mixed – that is, with members bearing Akkadian or West Semitic, mostly Aramaic, names. This is expected in first-millennium Babylonia where people bearing Akkadian and Aramaic names belonged to the local scene. Cases where the father bore a Phoenician name but the son had a local (Akkadian or Aramaic) anthroponym are recorded in the earliest occurrences (624 and 617 BCE [9, 15]) and in 548 BCE [1] (i.e., about one generation after the deportations of the Phoenicians by Nebuchadnezzar II). These are clear cases of acculturation that, to some extent, hint at assimilation. The earliest inverted case – a father with an Akkadian name and a son with an undoubtedly Phoenician anthroponym – is from 556 BCE [25]. Such cases are also encountered slightly later in the reign of Nabonidus [21], one or two generations after these deportations. The Akkadian names are either typical of members of the palatial sector or very common.

As stated earlier, there are also cases where the other member of the filiation has a West Semitic name. Such cases are recorded in 547 and 503 BCE [3, 24]. The paternal name of [19] (^Ibi-ˀ-ú-e) is too short for an unambiguous linguistic affiliation; it may be common West Semitic. The last-recorded filiation has members with Akkadian and Aramaic names [28].

Exceptionally, an individual with an Egyptian name has a Phoenician paternal name (421 BCE [23]). An analogous case from 489 BCE is [20], where a common Canaanite anthroponym is combined with an Egyptian paternal name. Two waves of Egyptian deportees arrived in Babylonia, notably due to Nebuchadnezzar II’s western campaigns around 600 BCE and the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses about 80 years later. An influx of Egyptians into Babylonia continued in the late-Achaemenid period. Phoenicia itself, like the whole coast of the southern Levant, was under Egyptian cultural influence. The purely Phoenician filiation from 524 BCE [12–13], slightly less than forty years after Nebuchadnezzar II conquered Tyre, is a remarkable but isolated case of keeping Phoenician identity during two generations. However, there is no telling when their ancestors arrived in Babylonia. Still, there is a possibility that both members enjoyed a long life-span, in which case the father arrived as early as 600 BCE. Like in their motherland, several Phoenicians in Babylonia are related to individuals with Egyptian names. On the whole, within few generations the Phoenicians intermarried with non-urbanite Babylonians and assimilated.

Very few Phoenicians occupied prominent positions (at least two [1, 17]), but most of them are recorded in a rural milieu, notably the earliest ones: the individuals from Duqulān [14, 26, 29, 34], the Tyrian from Yāhūdu [33], and the shepherds [2, 11]. Several Phoenicians were absorbed by the temples. As expected, some played the passive role of witnesses, like most individuals who are recorded in deeds from the Neo-Babylonian and Late Babylonian periods.

The Ammonite person [37] has an Aramaic paternal name (‘Hammatean’; i.e., North Syrian). One of the Moabites has an Aramaic given name [35]. The other Moabite has a West Semitic anthroponym common in first-millennium BCE Babylonia [36].

Introduction

The term ‘Arabian’ in cuneiform sources is primarily geographic, covering a range of toponyms, ethnonyms, and anthroponyms ultimately stemming from the arid regions to the west and south of Mesopotamia. As such, the term encompasses a wide array of languages, some known and attested independently in the Arabian epigraphic record, such as Sabaic and Taymanitic. In other cases, the cuneiform sources constitute our only evidence for the shadowy vernaculars of North Arabia and the Syrian Desert in the first millennium BCE. During this period, Arabia was home to several independent writing traditions that made use of variants of the South Semitic alphabet, a sister script to the Phoenico–Aramaic script. There thrived a rich writing culture in the south-western corner of the Peninsula, in what is today Yemen. Four principal languages are encountered in the epigraphic record: Sabaic, Minaic, Qatabanic, and Hadramitic (Reference Stein, Weninger, Khan, Streck and WatsonStein 2011). The oases of North and West Arabia also boasted their own scripts and dialects: Dadanitic (at Dadān, mod. al-ˁUlā), Taymanitic (at Taymāˀ), and Dumaitic (at Dūmat, mod. Dūmat al-Jandal) (Reference MacdonaldMacdonald 2000). These materials provide important comparanda when trying to identify Arabian names in cuneiform transcription and in trying to locate their source.

Historical Background

Beginning in the Neo-Assyrian period, contacts between Arabians and Mesopotamian states begin to increase. The Neo-Assyrians carried out several military campaigns against the inhabitants of northern Arabia, specifically targeting the oasis city of Adummatu, mod. Dūmat al-Jandal (Reference Eph‘alEph‘al 1984, 20–53). At the same time, these sources record a growing presence of Arabians in Babylonia (Reference Eph‘alEph‘al 1974). A number of inscriptions in the South Semitic alphabet – written on seals and clay tablets – have also been discovered in the environs of Babylonia, independently attesting to the presence of Arabian groups in the region (Reference SassSass 1991, 43–68).

Principles for Distinguishing Arabian Names in Babylonian Sources

Arabian names in Babylonian sources are usually identified on the basis of linguistic features that distinguish them from Northwest and East Semitic. One of the most salient isoglosses is the preservation of word-initial w, which has merged with y in the Northwest Semitic languages, and the presence of a non-etymological word-final u – what is termed wawation (Reference Al-Jallad, Donner and Hasselbach-AndeeAl-Jallad 2022). Arabian names are also identified based on their association with groups of people labelled ‘Arabian’ in the sources, as well as on the basis of etymology (Reference ZadokZadok 1981, §1). The number of Arabian anthroponyms, tribal names, and toponyms in first millennium BCE Babylonian sources is comparatively small but nevertheless attests to the growing presence of Arabians in southern Babylonia and the importance of Arabia in trade and other external affairs of the country.

Toponyms

In 552 BCE, Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, campaigned in North Arabia and conquered several oasis settlements. The Harran stele (Reference SchaudigSchaudig 2001, 486–99; Reference Weiershäuser and NovotnyWeiershäuser and Novotny 2020 no. 47) furnishes us with the longest list of Arabian toponyms:

• ^urute-ma-a: This refers to the North Arabian oasis town of Taymāˀ, attested in the local Taymanitic inscriptions as tmˀ (Reference EskoubiEskoubi 1999, 239–41; Reference HayajnehHayajneh 2001, 81–95). It is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as תֵּימָא (Jeremiah 25:23).

• ^uruda-da-(nu): Dadān was an important oasis to the southwest of Taymāˀ, also mentioned in Jeremiah 25:23 as דְּדָן. The town boasted its own script and writing tradition (Reference MacdonaldMacdonald 2000; Reference KootstraKootstra 2023). The name is attested both in the inscriptions of Taymāˀ and Dadān as ddn.

• ^urupa-dak-ku: This renders fadak, an Arabian oasis southwest of Dadān, located near the modern site of al-Ḥāˀiṭ, and which carries the same name today (Reference Hausleiter and SchaudigHausleiter and Schaudig 2016, 236–7). It is unclear whether the plosive p in cuneiform transcription is a faithful representation of the town’s name or whether the use of pa- was simply an approximation of the spirantised f, characteristic of Arabic today. A cuneiform inscription of Nabonidus has been discovered at this site, possibly mentioning the name of the settlement as p[a-dak-ku] (Reference Hausleiter and SchaudigHausleiter and Schaudig 2016).

• ^uruḫi-ib-ra-a: This appears to render the name of the oasis of Khaybar, which is about 60 kilometres as the bird flies southwest of Fadak. The spelling, however, does not match its current name, which goes back at least to the seventh century CE. Like te-ma-a, it appears that the oasis’ name in the middle of the first millennium BCE was Ḫibrāˀ.

• ^uruiá-di-ḫu: This oasis lies about sixty kilometres south of pa-dak-ku and is known today as al-Ḥuwayyiṭ, but locals apparently still know the uninhabited site as yadīˁ (Hausleiter and Schaudig, forthcoming). The anthroponym ydˁ is common in the Ancient North Arabian inscriptions and may suggest that the town bore the name of a person (Reference HardingHarding 1971, 663).

• ^uruiá-at-ri-bu: The final site on Nabonidus’ campaign is today the most well-known and important of these settlements, yaṯrib, the capital of Mohammad’s state and the site of his burial. The cuneiform spelling is a faithful transcription of the Arabian name. It is next attested in an undated Nabataean inscription from the area of al-ˁUlā (Reference Al-TheebAl-Theeb 2002 no. 163), and finally in Islamic-period sources, where its name was officially changed to al-Madīnah.

Ethnonyms

The Arabians mentioned in cuneiform sources belong to several social groups, ranging from the macro-identity, arab, to tribes and smaller clans and families.

• ^lú/kura-ra-bi: The term ‘Arab’, which first appears in Neo-Assyrian documents, is an umbrella label covering the inhabitants of the ‘distant desert’ of North Arabia, and sometimes elsewhere. Not all whom this title encompasses identified as a self-conscious community or were necessarily speakers of a language we would call Arabic (Reference MacdonaldMacdonald 2009). By the eighth century BCE, Arabian groups had settled in southern Babylonia, in the territories of Bīt-Dakkūri and Bīt-Amukāni (Reference Eph‘alEph‘al 1974). A settlement called Ālu-ša-Arbāyi ‘City of the Arabians’ was located near Nippur (Reference ZadokZadok 1977, 224–7). It seems clear that arab was a macro-label encompassing several ethnic/social groups, as evidenced by the compound name te-mu-da-a ar-ba-a-a, which could refer to an Arabian, belonging to the tribe/clan of Thamūd (Reference ZadokZadok 1977, 224–7).

• ^uruqi-da-ri: Reference ZadokZadok (1981, 66) suggests a connection between this toponym, which is attested in a Neo-Babylonian document from Nippur (BE 8/1 65), with Neo-Assyrian qid-ri-na, an Arabian settlement in Bīt-Dakkūri possibly named after the large Arabian confederacy of Qedar. The name is attested in the Bible (Gen 25:13; 1 Chron 1:29), and a Qedarite king, Gušam son of ˁAmru, offered a votive bowl to the deity hnˀlt ‘the Goddess’ at Tell al-Maskhūṭah in the Nile Delta (Reference RabinowitzRabinowitz 1956). The vocalisation in cuneiform transcription – alongside the spelling of the name in the Tell al-Maskhūṭah bowl as qdr – suggests an original pronunciation of qidar rather than qaydar.

• ^lúsa-ba-ˀ, ^lúša-ba-ˀ-a-a: This term transcribes the name of one of the four principal states of South Arabia, sabaˀ, mentioned in the Bible as שְׁבָא (e.g., Gen 25:3). Some have suggested that the references to the Sabaeans in cuneiform texts are in fact to a trading outpost in the Ḥigāz, perhaps near Dadān, rather than to the kingdom itself (Reference Macdonald and AvanziniMacdonald 1997; Reference RetsöRetsö 2003, 135). The spelling of the name with sa in a Neo-Babylonian fragment in contrast to ša- in the southern Babylonian inscriptions from Sūḫu (Reference Zadok, Berlejung and StreckZadok 2013, 317; Reference DietrichDietrich 2003, 4) may suggest that the initial sibilant was not identical to either sound and was therefore approximated in different ways depending on the scribe.

• ^lúta-am-da-a-a: Ran Zadok has connected this name with the famous Arabian tribe Thamūd (Reference Zadok, Berlejung and StreckZadok 2013, 317), attested already in Neo-Assyrian records. A close linguistic match may be found in the Jordanian toponym wādī ṯamad, in the area of Madaba. The form ṯmdn is attested once in Safaitic (KRS 2271) and would correspond to the anthroponym ^Itam-da-nu, which Zadok suspects is linguistically related to the tribal name (Reference Zadok, Berlejung and StreckZadok 2013, 317). The Arabic meaning of the root ṯmd is ‘to dig a well or channel’, and is comparable to the meaning of nbṭ, which later gives rise to the ethnonym nbṭ ‘Nabataean’.

Anthroponyms

Introduction

Ancient Egyptian is an autonomous branch of the Afroasiatic language family.Footnote ¹ The Egyptian language shares a common origin with cognate Afroasiatic languages in Proto-Afroasiatic. Yet certain aspects of Egyptian vocabulary, phonology, and morphology differ from those of the other Afroasiatic languages (Semitic, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic). The exact position of Egyptian within the Afroasiatic language family is still being determined – Egyptian shares a number of characteristics with Chadic in particular.Footnote ²

The time period considered in this chapter (750–100 BCE) was a tumultuous time in Ancient Egyptian history. During this period, Egypt maintained trade relations and diplomatic contacts with foreign powers, and was also involved in inter-regional military conflicts. The country was incorporated into the Persian Empire by Cambyses. This first Persian period was followed by a brief rule of indigenous dynasties and a second Persian conquest before Alexander the Great invaded, and Egypt passed into the hands of the Ptolemaic dynasty after his death. This resulted in a higher number of free and unfree Egyptians living abroad than in earlier periods of Egyptian history.

Aside from significant political upheaval, this period also featured new developments in Egyptian writing. All forms of the Egyptian script reflect one underlying language – Ancient Egyptian – although the relationship that each form bears to the spoken language differs (see the section on ‘Spelling and Normalisation’). While hieroglyphs on temple or tomb walls are the iconic representations of Ancient Egyptian writing in modern popular culture, in reality information about mundane and practical elements of Egyptian life was usually recorded on papyrus documents or ostraca (limestone flakes or pottery sherds). In earlier periods of Egyptian history forms of the ‘hieratic’ script were used for cursive writing. But from the end of the 26th dynasty (664–526 BCE) onwards a script called ‘Demotic’ became the dominant cursive script, used particularly in (private) legal and administrative documentation. Demotic was eventually replaced by a script called ‘Coptic’, which became dominant from the third century CE onwards. Coptic uses the Greek alphabet, with a number of additional letters that reflect Egyptian phonemes not found in Greek. It is the only form of the Egyptian script that consistently shows vowels.

Egyptian Names in Babylonian Sources

Typology of Egyptian Names

The following discussion pertains to characteristics of Egyptian names and naming practices that are relevant for the time period covered in this chapter. In Babylonian sources we encounter Egyptian names that can be classified into several types. Broadly speaking, there are ‘complex’ names that form (verbal or non-verbal) clauses and ‘simple’ names that do not.

Naming Practices

In Egyptian texts from the first millennium BCE, filiation is commonly indicated by the construction ‘X, son (of) Y, his mother (is) Z’ and ‘X, daughter (of) Y, her mother (is) Z’. In cuneiform texts the mother’s name is omitted.

Two further aspects of Egyptian naming practices may be relevant to the identification of Egyptian names. First, Egyptians often bore ‘family names’ that skipped a generation. ‘Papponymy’ – naming a child after the grandfather (or grandmother) – was common, which complicates the identification of individuals in texts with multiple family members. In Egyptian texts, like-named relatives could be distinguished by the addition of a descriptor such as ‘(the) elder’ (ꜥꜢ or pꜢ ꜥꜢ) or ‘(the) younger’ (ḫm or pꜢ ḫm) that followed directly after the name: for instance, *PꜢ-di҆-Ḫnsw pꜢ ꜥꜢ sꜢ PꜢ-msḥ, ‘*PꜢ-di҆-Ḫnsw (“The one whom Khonsu has given”) the elder, son of PꜢ-msḥ (“The crocodile”)’. One can wonder how (pꜢ) ꜥꜢ, which includes the enigmatic phonemes ayin and aleph, would be realised in cuneiform writing. To my knowledge these descriptors are not yet attested along with Egyptian names in Babylonian sources, but there are examples of Greek renderings of Egyptian names, where descriptors were interpreted as a part of the name.Footnote ³⁵

Second, in Egyptian sources Egyptians are seen bearing nicknames or shortened names, as well as multiple names. An example of the former is Rwrw, derived from I҆r.t=w-r-r=w and similar name patterns, which has its own entry in name collections.Footnote ³⁶ Bearing multiple or secondary names was an old Egyptian practice that was revived during the first millennium, when people could take on a ‘beautiful name’ in addition to their first name. These names were often basilophorous,Footnote ³⁷ and could be completely different from a person’s first name: for example, a man Ḥr-sꜢ-I҆s.t ‘Horus, son (of) Isis’ also bore the ‘beautiful’ name Psmṯk-m-Ꜣḫ.t ‘Psamtek (is) in the Ꜣḫ.t’.Footnote ³⁸ Under Ptolemaic rule in Egypt, Egyptian people involved in the Ptolemaic administration or army could take on a Greek name in addition to their given name. Some used their double names in different circumstances: the Greek name or both the Greek and Egyptian name in contexts of administration and bureaucracy, and in formal legal documents; the Egyptian name in informal and personal contexts.Footnote ³⁹ A similar practice may underlie the two names of the man Pati-Esi ‘The one whom Isis has given’, who also bore the Iranian name Bagadāta.Footnote ⁴⁰

Spelling and Normalisation

Identifying possibly Egyptian names in cuneiform material and linking them to known Egyptian names is not an easy task. This has three causes. First, the exact conversion rules of some Egyptian phonemes are not entirely clear. An overview of established correspondents of Egyptian signs to cuneiform writings can be found in the section on ‘Tools for Identifying Egyptian Names in Babylonian Cuneiform Texts’. The Egyptian signs Ꜣ and i҆/j are enigmatic and the discussion about their interpretation is ongoing. They seem to reflect different phonemes or glottal stops, or remain unrealised, depending on their position in a word or name. Second, while cuneiform writing shows vowels, the Egyptian script does not do so as a rule, although some phonemes such as w, i҆/j, and y function as semi-vowels or indicate the presence of a vowel of unknown quality. It is thus prudent to first focus on discerning consonants when trying to identify an Egyptian name. Third, the Egyptian script is archaising. Even in the cursive scripts, which were closer to the spoken language than monumental hieroglyphs, scribes often tended to maintain the traditional writing of a word even when consonants had undergone a sound change or were lost altogether.

Egyptian vocalisation can in part be reconstructed with the aid of spellings of Egyptian words in other scripts. In the first millennium BCE, these are found in Greek texts from Egypt and in the Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform material. An additional source used for the reconstruction is Coptic, the version of the Egyptian language and script that follows Demotic. However, Coptic texts appear centuries later than the Greek and Akkadian ones and must be used with some caution when reconstructing earlier phonemes.

Egyptology uses a transliteration system to transliterate both hieroglyphic and cursive scripts. Because the Egyptian script does not reflect vowels and is archaising, this transliteration also does not directly reflect the pronunciation of words. It is rather an artificial tool and ‘code’ to indicate how a researcher reads and interprets the signs that also allows those who are not specialised in a particular language phase to understand the reading.

Egyptological transliteration generally follows the archaising writings of names in Egyptian sources. Thus, the Egyptian name element meaning ‘belonging to’, both written and transliterated as Ns-, was in reality vocalised as *Es/Is- or *S- at the end of the first millennium BCE. This can be deduced from Greek writings of, for example, the name Ns-Mn as Έσμινις or even Σμιν (DN 674).Footnote ⁴¹ The Babylonian rendering ^Isa-man-na-pi-ir (Dar. 301:2, 9), transcribed Samannapir, thus reflects the Egyptian name Ns-Wn-nfr ‘He who belongs to Onnophris’,Footnote ⁴² which had become (I҆)s-Wn-nfr in pronunciation (in Greek Σοννωφρις), also showing the correspondence of Egyptian -w with Babylonian intervocalic -m(a) (which was realised as [w] in pronunciation).

The common name I҆r.t-n.t-Ḥr-r.r=w ‘The eye of Horus (is) against them’ presents a similar difficulty. It appears as Ίναρως in Greek, and has been identified as Babylonian Inaḫarû, written ^Ii-na-ḫa-ru-ú.Footnote ⁴³ In pronunciation, I҆r.t-n.t had apparently been reduced to only ‘ina-’. An alternative writing of the name in Egyptian exists: I҆n-i҆r.t-Ḥr-r.r=w (DN 72). The additional element I҆n perhaps reflects an attempt to show the real vocalisation.

Egyptological name collections and text publications list names in transliteration which reflect the writing of the name in Egyptian. Thus, a conversion of the syllables recorded in the cuneiform version of the name to the equivalent graphemes in the Egyptological transliteration must be made in order to identify a name. The DN provides some assistance here: when known, the Greek and Coptic writing of a name are given (Fig. 12.1).

Figure 12.1 Example of an Egyptian name with additional Greek and Coptic writings.

(DN 165; reproduced with the kind permission of Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag)

The Egyptological transliteration of the name in the entry of the DN is PꜢ-ꜥẖm, with alternate writing as PꜢ-ꜥḫme, etc. We can see that the name is also included in Ranke’s ÄPN under PꜢ-ꜥšm (Bd. I 103: 15).Footnote ⁴⁴ To the right of the name in transliteration, there are examples of the name in Greek and Coptic. Combining the three writings in Egyptian, Greek, and Coptic, we can deduce that the defining phonemes of the name are p-ẖ/ḫ-m. The vowel o is not written in Egyptian, but it is clearly realised in pronunciation, as it appears in the Greek and Coptic writings. The Greek and Coptic writings also consistently show a vowel a at the start of the word, which suggests that this vowel was also pronounced (and was not a ∅ as aleph and ayin may sometimes be; see Table 12.2). It is the defining phonemes, and secondarily the vowels, that should be considered when comparing cuneiform writings of Egyptian names for identification.

Tools for Identifying Egyptian Names in Babylonian Cuneiform Texts

Table 12.2 gives an overview of Egyptian graphemes, their corresponding (reconstructed) phoneme(s), and the known correspondents of these phonemes in Neo- and Late Babylonian. The information in this chart is based on correspondences between Egyptian and Akkadian that have been established in the literature (for this, see the ‘Further Reading’ section).

Additional suggestions for reconstructions of phonological values and correspondents by Reference AllenJames P. Allen (2013) and Reference TakácsGabor Takács (1999) are included in the table notes.Footnote ⁴⁵ For further study of correspondents between Egyptian and Akkadian and other Semitic languages, these works are recommended.Footnote ⁴⁶

Introduction

The terms ‘Anatolian’ and ‘Anatolian languages’ have two different meanings in the present context: a genetic one and a geographical one. Anatolian as a genetic term refers to a branch of the Indo-European language family consisting of the following nine languages (the dates in brackets show the range of their attestation): Hittite (20th–early 12th c.), Palaic (16th–13th c.), Luwian (20th–early 7th c.), Lydian (end 8th/early 7th–3rd c.), Carian (8th–4th/3rd c.), Lycian (Lycian A) (5th–4th c.), Lycian B (Milyan) (5th/4th c.), Sidetic (5th–3rd c.), and Pisidian (1st–3rd c. CE). Hittite, Palaic, and Luwian were written in the Hittite version of cuneiform writing; Luwian was also written in a locally developed hieroglyphic writing. All other languages were written in locally adapted forms of the Greek alphabet. Anatolian as a geographical term refers to all languages once spoken in Anatolia, many of which either belonged to other branches of the Indo-European family (Phrygian, Thracian, Armenian) or were not Indo-European at all (Hattian, Kaškean, Hurrian, Urartean, and the Kartvelian languages). These languages are not treated here.Footnote ¹ Accordingly, throughout this chapter ‘Anatolian (languages)’ refers to this specific branch of Indo-European.

It is important to note that some of these languages were more closely related to each other within the Anatolian branch and are subsumed under the term ‘Luwic’: these languages are Luwian, Lycian A, Lycian B, Carian, Sidetic, and Pisidian.Footnote ² The term ‘Luwic’ is also used when the material cannot be unambiguously classified within these languages, typically in case of widespread onomastic elements, isolated words, or references to local, otherwise unknown languages; this affects the evaluation of the name material in Babylonian sources, too.Footnote ³

The aforementioned date ranges give an impression of the disappearance of these languages and a preliminary answer to the question of which languages should be taken into consideration when evaluating names attested in Babylonian sources. Nevertheless, this is partly misleading, for two reasons. First, the dates refer to the end of the textual transmission of these languages. However, onomastic material and references to local spoken languages continue, occasionally even up to the sixth century CE. Due to a lack of investigations, it is hard to tell whether these names reflect living languages. From a Babylonian point of view, the most important issue is that one can still expect Luwian names well after the early seventh century BCE.Footnote ⁴

Second, as will be discussed, Anatolia is a distinct onomastic area with strict rules that hardly changed throughout the millennia, and since the languages in cuneiform and hieroglyphic transmission are much better attested than those in alphabetic transmission, it is these languages that frequently provide the missing comparanda to the Anatolian names in Babylonian transmission.Footnote ⁵

Anatolian Name Material in Babylonian Sources

The Structure of the Anatolian Names: A Short Overview

Independently from the specific languages, Anatolia had its own, typically local naming practices, quite different from the other regions of the Ancient Near East and continuous through the millennia without notable changes. The latter feature is especially helpful in identifying Anatolian names since we can use the far-better-attested cuneiform and hieroglyphic material too. Noteworthy features specific to the Anatolian naming area include the complex system of the so-called ‘Lallnamen’ (‘elementary names’) and the compound names with some standard elements that are extremely widespread. In general, Anatolian names other than the ‘Lallnamen’ are transparent, meaningful names built on Anatolian material, which obviously makes their identification easier.

Anatolian names fall into two categories: ‘Lallnamen’ and non-elementary names. ‘Lallnamen’ are ‘elementary names’ since they are not built on meaningful words but on syllables of the simplest shapes.Footnote ¹⁵ These syllables are not completely freely chosen, as Table 13.1 illustrates.Footnote ¹⁶

There are five types of non-elementary names: non-compound names (known in German as ‘einstämmige Vollnamen’), compound names (‘zweistämmige Vollnamen’), abbreviated names (‘Kurznamen’), sentence names (‘Satznamen’), and hypocoristic names (‘Kosenamen’).

Non-compound names are built on appellatives, toponyms, and divine names. In the case of the appellatives, stems and their derivatives are equally attested. Typical examples include Muwa ‘Might’ / Muwattalli ‘Mighty’, Piḫa ‘Splendour’ / Piḫammi ‘Resplendent’, Ḫantili ‘First’, *Imrassa/i-/(I)βrsi ‘(the one) Of the open country’. Names built on toponyms and ethnic names are derived by language-specific suffixes, for instance -ili- (e.g., Ḫattušili ‘(the one) Of (the city of) Ḫattuša’, Nerikkaili ‘(the one) Of (the city of) Nerik’), -uman- / -umna- (Ḫupišnuman ‘(the one) From (the city of) Ḫupišna’), and -wann(i)- (Urawanni ‘(the one) From (the city of) Ura’).Footnote ¹⁷ Names built on divine names can include a single divine name (e.g., Kuruntiya), a suffixed divine name, and even a double divine name (e.g., Arma-Tarḫunta). A specific group of divinities is especially popular in first-millennium names, including Arma, Iya, Runtiya, Šanda, and Tarḫunta (with regional phonological variants).Footnote ¹⁸

Compound names are created from nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Recurring, typical elements include kinship terms and divine names. Several types of compound names exist, the two most important ones being determinative compounds and possessive compounds (also known as bahuvrihis). The relation between the composing elements, the first member (M₁), and the second member (M₂) – the meaning of a determinative compound – is varied. One possibility is ‘M₂ is for M₁’, as in the name Tarḫunta-warri ‘Help to Tarḫunta’ with the typical element warra/i- ‘help’. Another possibility is ‘M₂ of/has the quality of M₁’, as in the name Arma-nāni ‘Brother of (the moon god) Arma’. A typical element is zida/i- ‘man’, especially in combination with divine names and toponyms; for example, Arma-ziti ‘Man of (the moon god) Arma’ and Ḫalpa-ziti ‘Man of (the storm god of) Aleppo’.Footnote ¹⁹ The second member is frequently a divine name: for example, Ḫalpa-runtiya ‘(belonging to) Runtiya of Aleppo’. A typical adverb is šr ‘up, above’, as, for instance, in the name Šr-quq ‘Super-/Hyper-grandfather’. In a further typical construction M₂ is a past participle; a frequent version is X-piyamma/i- ‘Given by X’.

The meaning of the possessive compounds is ‘Having the M₂ of M₁’ (thus the meaning is not ‘Having M₁ and M₂’). An extremely widespread type has muwa- as its second member, with the meaning ‘Having the might of M₁’: the first member can be a divine name, toponym, appellative, adjective, or even an adverb. Some examples are Šauška-muwa ‘Having the might of Šauška’, Ḫalpa-muwa ‘Having the might of (the storm god of) Aleppo’, and Piḫa-muwa or Pariya-muwa ‘Having might beyond (surpassing might)’. Yet another widespread type has wasu- as its second member, with the meaning ‘Having the favour of M₁’: for example, Ḫalpa-wasu ‘Having the favour of (the storm god of) Aleppo’.Footnote ²⁰

Abbreviating names represents a widespread practice among the elder Indo-European languages. In fact, abbreviated names are a subtype of the compound names since they are created by the abbreviation of the second member of a compound name. The abbreviation is limited only by the constraint that the first consonant (group) must be preserved (see the well-known example Hera-kles vs. Patro-kl-os [abbreviated from Patro-kles]). This immediately shows that the abbreviation does not change the meaning of the name and does not turn it into a hypocoristic name. There are reasons to assume that the practice of abbreviation was known in Anatolia, too: names with the ‘shortening’ muwa- > mu- (e.g., Ḫalpa-mu) are well attested, although further investigation is needed as to whether they represent contracted forms (then with a long vowel, i.e., mū- [for a possible case in Babylonian transmission see n. 20]) or abbreviated names (then with a short vowel). The names with -piya- have a debated morphology, but as M₂ from the participle piyamma/i- ‘given’ (e.g., Tarḫunta-piya ‘Given by Tarḫunta’), they might also belong here.

As for the sentence names, although their precise meaning and origin are quite debated (they are supposed to be created after Hurrian and/or Akkadian models), this does not influence their identification, as they are built from the usual elements as well as from verbs; thus, their Anatolian origin is easily recognisable. A typical example is Aza-tiwada ‘The sun god favours’ or ‘Favour (him), sun god!’.

Finally, the relatively rarely attested hypocoristic names require a language-specific diminutive suffix, such as Luwian -anna/i- (e.g., Zidanna/i ‘Little Man’, ^dU-ni /*Tarḫunni- ‘Little Storm-god’).

Introduction to the Language and Its Background

The Greek language belongs to the Indo-European linguistic family. It is attested from the second half of the second millennium BCE to the present day. Conventionally, it is divided into three main phases: the ancient period, from the first attestations to the end of the Roman Empire; the Byzantine period, from the end of the Roman Empire to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 CE; and the modern period, from 1453 CE to date. For our purposes only the ancient phase will be taken into consideration.

The earliest attested dialect is Mycenean Greek, written on clay tablets using a syllabary known as ‘Linear B’, adapted from the syllabary (Linear A) used to express the language of Minoan Crete, which is still undeciphered. With the collapse of the Mycenean civilisation (c. 1200 BCE), the Linear B script disappeared during the so-called Greek ‘Dark Age’, from which writing was not preserved. Writing was re-introduced between the end of the ninth and the beginning of the eighth centuries BCE, now using an alphabetic system derived from the Phoenician alphabet.

The new alphabetic writing was used until the Hellenistic period on a number of different writing materials (wood, marble, bronze, and lead, as well as clay, ostraca, wooden boards, parchment, and papyrus scrolls) to express different dialects of the Greek language (Ionic and Attic, Arcado–Cypriot, Pamphylian, Macedonian, the Doric group of dialects, the Aeolic group, and literary dialects; e.g., that of Homeric poetry). Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, a new supra-regional dialect – the koiné – evolved from Attic as the lingua franca of the empire. The ancient phase of the Greek language is conventionally said to end in the year 394 CE, at the time of the division of the Roman Empire.

All along its mature phase, the Greek alphabet includes twenty-four discrete letters. The Greek language is inflectional, like Akkadian, and includes five cases: the nominative (for the subject), the genitive (for the possessive relationship), the dative (for the indirect object, plus other syntactic functions; e.g., instrument and cause), the accusative (for the direct object), and the vocative (for addressing people). Greek personal names are usually transliterated into Babylonian in the nominative. Although Greek names are in general rendered into Babylonian with their own Greek nominative endings, Babylonian nominative case endings may sometimes replace the equivalent (masculine or feminine) Greek ones.

The Name Material in the Babylonian Sources

Naming Practices

In Greek sources, individuals are identified by a personal name and the patronym (i.e., the father’s name), which can either be expressed in the genitive or as an adjective (usually ending in -ιδης). The use of the patronym is crucial for identification. The demotic (i.e., the name of the dēmos the individual belongs to) and/or the ethnicon are commonly added to the patronym when the individual is referred to in documents stemming from a place other than the one from which he originates.Footnote ⁹

In the Hellenistic sources from Uruk, which make up the bulk of the material under consideration here, Greek names transliterated into Babylonian may occur as single names or as part of a full onomastic chain. Kings are usually identified by their first name only (see ‘Royal Names’ section of this chapter). Conversely, ordinary individuals are seldomly identified by their first name only. This may happen in exceptional circumstances, such as the identification of the neighbours in a property description or in the captions of seal impressions (but in this last case, full names are commonly preserved in the witness list of the same document).

Commonly, a complete onomastic chain is recorded. The following options are possible:

1. a. Greek name/Greek patronym/(Greek grandfather’s name)

2. b. Greek name/Greek patronym/(Babylonian grandfather’s name)/Babylonian family name

3. c. Greek name/Babylonian patronym/(Babylonian grandfather’s name)/Babylonian family name

4. d. Greek name/Babylonian patronym/Babylonian grandfather’s name/(Babylonian great-grandfather’s name).

It is generally believed that type a. identifies individuals who are ‘ethnically’ Greek. It is, however, difficult to ascertain the ethnic identity of the individuals with Greek names, as the sources only specify it in two cases: Poseidōnios, son of Metrodōros (or Myrtolos?), is labelled ‘the Greek’ (in YOS 20 70:8´), while Diophanēs, son of Stratōn, grandson of Kidin-Anu, is called ‘the Urukean’ (in BRM 2 55:15–16).Footnote ¹⁰

Acculturation is frequently invoked as the reason for the choice of a Greek name within traditional Babylonian families. Reference Langin-Hooper and PearceStephanie M. Langin-Hooper and Laurie E. Pearce (2014) recently demonstrated that, at least in some cases, the attribution of a Greek name to the offspring of Babylonian families may result from maternal-line papponymy naming practices; that is, a mother would preserve her own family’s cultural heritage by naming one of her sons after his maternal grandfather (who, in this case, bore a Greek name).

Spelling and Normalisation

Rendering Greek names with the Babylonian script was not an easy task. Babylonian scribes were confronted with two interconnected challenges: first, rendering a name whose spelling was designed for an alphabetic script by means of a mixed logo-syllabic system; second, adapting phonemes specific to the Greek language to the Babylonian phonetic system – for example, the vowel o, which does not exist in Babylonian, was usually replaced by u. Moreover, in the koiné, some of the phonemes of the Greek language (e.g., the diphthongs) were no longer pronounced as they were written.Footnote ¹¹

According to Julien Monerie,Footnote ¹² when writing Greek names with the Babylonian script, the scribes, who always rendered them syllabically, more frequently resorted to the names’ pronunciation rather than faithfully transcribing their standard written form. Furthermore, the more a name came into use, the more the scribes became familiar with it and tended to harmonise its spelling, also adapting it to Babylonian. These processes and the constraints, inherent to the differences between the two systems, explain why various spellings often occur for one and the same name.

It is thus difficult, if not impossible, to establish a full and mechanical set of conversion rules for Greek names into the Babylonian writing system. The most comprehensive and recent attempt in this regard is that by Julien Reference MonerieMonerie (2014), to which the reader is referred for details. Suffice it here to lay out the most important correspondences generally applied to the reconstruction (see Table 14.3).

In order to identify Greek names in Babylonian writing, it also proves useful to list their most typical endings or second elements (see Table 14.4).

Socio-Onomastics

As we have observed, the diffusion of Greek names in Babylonian is linked to the more general matter of the contacts between the Greek world and Mesopotamia, and the debate on the significance of the Greek presence in Babylonia in the first millennium BCE. While early contacts are already attested in the sources at the time of the Assyrian expansion to the west in the eighth century BCE, it is with the annexation of Babylonia by Cyrus in 539 BCE, and especially following Alexander III’s conquest, that the Greek presence in the region becomes more than intermittent.Footnote ¹⁴

Greek individuals (kings, officials, and ordinary men) as well as Babylonians bearing a Greek name begin to appear in the sources. The corpus consists primarily of masculine names; among them are royal names, used to identify the ruling kings and as part of the common onomastic repertoire. A very small percentage of the Greek onomasticon is represented by feminine names. It is in the Hellenistic period that an official of the city of Uruk is known to have received another, Greek name next to his Babylonian one, directly from the king. More and more Greek names are incorporated in the corpus of personal names in Uruk alongside traditional Babylonian ones, identifying both individuals of likely Greek origin and Babylonians.Footnote ¹⁵

Introduction

When the Teispid king Cyrus conquered Babylonia in 539 BCE, Mesopotamia found itself governed by two Iranian dynasties (Teispids and Achaemenids) for more than two centuries. This foreign rule has led to the presence of many Iranian names in texts drafted in the local vernacular, Babylonian.

The new rulers spoke Old Persian, a language belonging to the Old Iranian family. In fact, Old Iranian is the global name for a group of languages, of which Old Persian and Avestan are the best-known ones, others being Median and Old Eastern Iranian (Avestan). Avestan is the language in which the sacred books of the Zoroastrian religion were written. Accordingly, the textual corpus of this language is relatively extended, but, despite the large number of Avestan texts, the language itself has no importance for the current article, as there are practically no Avestan names and/or elements in Babylonian texts.

Old Persian is a southwest Iranian language (Reference Schmitt and WoodardSchmitt 2004, 739; Reference Isebaert and TavernierIsebaert and Tavernier 2012, 299) and most likely the mother tongue of the Achaemenid elite. It is the principal language of the Achaemenid royal inscriptions, the other languages being Babylonian, Elamite, Egyptian, and Aramaic. Accordingly, Old Persian was the royal Achaemenid language par excellence. It was written by means of a deliberately designed cuneiform writing system, containing thirty-six phonemic signs, eight logograms, two-word-dividers, and various number symbols (Reference Schmitt and WoodardSchmitt 2004, 719; Reference Isebaert and TavernierIsebaert and Tavernier 2012, 304).

Finally, the Median dialect is a northwest Iranian language (Reference Schmitt and WoodardSchmitt 2004, 717). It is exclusively attested in the Achaemenid royal inscriptions and in the reconstructed Old Iranian material from the ‘Nebenüberlieferung’ (i.e., reconstructed Iranian proper names and loanwords; Reference TavernierTavernier 2007, 4). There are no extant Median texts, so it remains impossible to know with which writing system it would have been written. Interestingly, most Iranian names in Babylonian appear in a Median shape (e.g., *Bṛziya- and not Old Persian Bṛdiya-, *Miθrapāta- and not Old Persian *Miçapāta-). An explanation for this may be that the Babylonians adopted the Assyrian manner of rendering Iranian names. This Assyrian manner was the direct result of the contacts between Median people and the Neo-Assyrian Empire which had no linguistic contacts with the Persian-speaking tribes situated more to the south (Reference Brandenstein and MayrhoferBrandenstein and Mayrhofer 1964, 12).

This chapter will discuss the Old Iranian names in Babylonian texts from the Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid, and post-Achaemenid periods. Quite expectedly, the major part of Old Iranian names occurs in texts dated to the Achaemenid period, when Babylonia was in Iranian hands. Currently, the chronological distribution of the names is as follows, though we must bear in mind that new texts will reveal more Iranian names and, because of this, the numbers presented herein will certainly be modified in the future.

• In pre-Achaemenid Babylonian texts a total of fifteen Old Iranian names are attested, two of which are Median (Cyaxares, Astyages) and two Teispid (Teispes, Cambyses I). Most names are recorded in tablets written under the Neo-Babylonian Empire; only one name is attested in the period when Babylonia was under Neo-Assyrian rule.

• In Achaemenid Babylonian texts, we find 393 complete Old Iranian names and four hybrid names.

• In post-Achaemenid Babylonian texts, a total of sixty-one Old Iranian names are attested, of which twenty-three date to the Alexandrine and Seleucid period and thirty-eight to the Arsacid period.

From a methodological point of view, this chapter will use Tavernier’s categorisation of Old Iranian personal names in Babylonian documents (Reference TavernierTavernier 2007, 3–5). This categorisation divides the names into five groups, of which the most important ones are:

• Directly attested names: this category consists of anthroponyms attested in the Babylonian versions of the Achaemenid royal inscriptions. As we know the Old Iranian original name through the Old Persian version of these inscriptions, it is easy to compare the original form of the name and its rendering in Babylonian. An example of a directly attested name is Dādṛšiš, a derivation from darš- ‘to dare’, which is written d-a-d-r-š-i-š in Old Persian and ^Ida-da-ar-šú in Babylonian.Footnote ¹

• Semi-directly attested names: this category is closely connected with the previous one and contains two sub-groups. The first group appears in texts other than the Babylonian versions of the Achaemenid royal inscriptions (e.g., documentary texts) and thus lacks a direct Old Iranian equivalent. The Achaemenid royal names, occurring on many documentary texts and written in one of the target languages, are a good example of this category. Accordingly, it is possible that the same name or word belongs to both categories one and two. The second group consists of anthroponyms, of which an Iranian original is attested in the Achaemenid royal inscriptions, but which show slight differences with that original. Such a difference is mostly a dialectal one (e.g., Old Persian Ṛtavardiya- [category 1] vs. Median *Ṛtavarziya- [category 2]), but also contracted equivalents of forms of category 1 are attested (e.g., OP Vahyazdāta- [category 1] vs. *Vēzdāta- [category 2]).

The directly and semi-directly transmitted Iranica provide the key to the transpositional systems between the source language (Old Iranian) and the target language (Babylonian). The largest group, however, are the indirectly attested Iranica (‘Nebenüberlieferung’) – that is, personal names that are reconstructed based on their reflections in Babylonian. As they are reconstructed names, the semi-directly and indirectly attested anthroponyms are marked conventionally with an asterisk (*). In this chapter the names are rendered in their Old Iranian shape, not in their Babylonian denotation. In general, Old Iranian names appear in their ‘naked’ form (without any case endings), but sometimes it is necessary to list them in their nominative form, as this nominative is what the Babylonian spellings render and is different from the ‘naked’ form. For instance, *Suxra- is the ‘naked’ form of *Suxra; Cincaxriš and *Ṛtā(h)umanā are the nominative forms of, respectively, Cincaxri- and *Ṛtā(h)umanah-. ‘Naked’ forms are always accompanied by a hyphen, whereas nominative forms appear without a hyphen. Unless otherwise stated, text references to the name attestations can be found in Reference TavernierTavernier 2007.

Iranian Name Material in the Babylonian Sources

Spelling and Normalisation

Generally, the Babylonian scribes rendered the (in their eyes) foreign Iranian names quite accurately; they wrote what they heard. Only final vowels can appear as (C)u in Babylonian, due to the tendency to use the Babylonian final nominative vowel.Footnote ⁴ The use of u, however, is probably a scribal convention, since Babylonian final vowels were no longer pronounced in the Achaemenid period, just like their Iranian counterparts.

Socio-Onomastics of Iranian Names in Babylonian Sources

One of the most conspicuous aspects of Iranian names in Late Babylonian sources is that the functions of persons bearing Iranian names reflect the political situation of that time. This pattern can be traced in cuneiform documents from the Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid, Alexandrinian, Seleucid, and Arsacid periods.

The oldest attestation of an Iranian non-royal name in a Babylonian document is that of *Agnifarnah- who, in the middle of the seventh century, was an official of the Neo-Assyrian king Assurbanipal (PNA 1/I, 56). Unfortunately, no more information is available on this person. In the Neo-Babylonian period, not that many individuals bearing Iranian names are attested. In addition, not much is known of them. Ethnographically interesting is that *Bagadēna- ‘Possessing the religion of Baga’ is called an Elamite (Babylon 28178 B r. ii 7, 592/591 BCE; in Reference WeidnerWeidner 1939, 929 and Pl. 3). The same goes for *Marza- ‘Frontier area’ (Babylon 28178 B r. ii 14). The unfortunately broken name *[…]zāta- is also interesting, as this person, attested in a text from c. 595/594–569/568 BCE (reign of Nebuchadnezzar II), is called an ‘envoy of Parsumaš’ (VAT 16287:28´). Finally, in 539 BCE, not long before Cyrus’ conquest of Babylon, *Bagayāza- (name for a child born during the bagayāza-feast) is a royal official of Nabonidus (YOS 6 169:20, 231:24). A female slave named *Amatavāta- ‘Having the strength of Ama’ is sold by Rakal to Iltabiya, two persons with Semitic names, in a document from 561 BCE (ROMCT 2 3:2; reign of Amīl-Marduk).

With the arrival of Iranian dominance in Mesopotamia, this pattern continues and the attested persons with Iranian names reflect the society of that time. For instance, several Achaemenid princes appear in the archive of the Murašû family with whom they did business, including *Haxiyabānu- (420–419 BCE), *Arbarēva- (419 BCE), *Ṛšita- (421–417 BCE), and the well-known prince Ṛšāma-, who was satrap of Egypt during the reign of Darius II and who also appears in Aramaic and Egyptian texts (Reference StolperStolper 1985, 64–7). Most Iranians attested in Babylonian sources belong to the higher social strata and could also own slaves, as demonstrated by *Ārmati-, the owner of a slave named Nabû-ikṣur (TMH 2/3 171:6). Many Iranians are only known because they are mentioned as the father of a contracting party or of a witness. Some servants or slaves with Iranian names are also mentioned: *Arbamiθra- (FuB 14 17–18 no. 7:3, u.e. 2), servant of *Šātibṛzana- (Iranian name); *Īsgu- (BE 9 13:4), slave (qallu) of *Ṛtabara- (Iranian name); *Armaka- (AMI NF 23 175:2), servant of Tattannu (Babylonian name).

Some of the high-ranking individuals with an Iranian name attested in cuneiform texts from the Achaemenid period can be identified with people figuring in Greek classical works. For instance, Ctesias (apud Photios, §§ 38, 39, 46, and 48) tells us about Menostanes, son of Artarios. This Artarios was satrap of Babylon and brother of Artaxerxes I. When Artaxerxes I died, Menostanes, who had served the late king, became commander for the throne claimant Sogdianus, but when Darius II finally took power, Menostanes died shortly afterwards. This Menostanes can easily be identified with *Manuštāna- from the Babylonian Murašû archive; his father Artarios appears as Artareme (*Ṛtarēva-) in the same archive (Reference StolperStolper 1985, 90–1).

An interesting case is *Ṛtaxšara-, who occurs in thirteen texts (443–418 BCE) of the Murašû archive (Reference StolperStolper 1985, 91–92) and who is probably identical to the Paphlagonian eunuch Ἀρτοξάρης, who supported Darius II and became an influential person at his court. That he occupied a high rank within Babylonian society is clear from the fact that eight subordinates of him occur in the Murašû archive: Bazuzu (son of Bēl-bullissu), Bēl-ittannu, Il-yadīn (son of Yadaˁ-Yāma), Lâbâši (son of [… -it]tannu), Marduk-ibni, Nergal-aḫu-ittannu, Nidinti-Šamaš (son of *Kṛtaka-), and Pamūnu. Mostly these persons are called ardu of *Ṛtaxšara-, but some of them also have other titles. Two were foremen (šaknu) of a so-called ḫaṭru: Bazuzu was foreman of the ‘scouts of the left flank’ and possessed a seal as well as a golden signet ring, whereas Pamūnu was foreman of the ‘šušānus of the storehouse/treasury’. He too owned a seal and a golden signet ring. Marduk-ibni was an accountant of *Ṛtaxšara-. In two instances Nidinti-Šamaš is called a paqdu (bailiff). In any case, all but one of the subordinates of this high-ranked official also bore the title ardu ‘servant, subordinate’. Only Itti-Bēl-abni, attested in a text from 443 BCE (BE 9 4), was a slave (qallu). Nevertheless, they nearly all had a seal, which again corroborates their rather high social position.

Within one family, people could have names belonging to different languages. In BE 10 59, a certain Bēlšunu (Babylonian), son of *Dēfrāda- (Iranian), appears. The inverse direction is found in BE 9 39, where *Hadābāga- is the son of Iddin-Nabû. In the text Camb. 384 a person with an Iranian name, *Naryābigna- ‘Having the attacking power of a hero’, is described with an Elamite gentilic (^lúe-la-mu-ú).

One late-Achaemenid, imprecisely dated document (K 8133; in Reference StolperStolper 1994, 627) has a very large concentration of individuals bearing Iranian names who did not make up an isolated community but who engaged in transactions with Babylonians (or, at least, people with a Babylonian name). Not fewer than twelve Iranian names occur in this lease of oxen to a person named Iddin-Nabû. The lessor has an Iranian name. The other Iranians are witnesses, together with at least two Babylonians. It is interesting to see that one witness with a Babylonian name (Nidinti-Bēl) has a father with an Iranian name (*Gauniya-, a hypocoristic of *Gauna- ‘Hairy’). Possibly the father had adopted an Iranian name in the hope of a career in the Achaemenid administration.

As can be expected, the number of Iranian names drops significantly after the conquest of Babylonia by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE. In the Alexandrinian Empire as well as in the following Seleucid period, Greco-Macedonian political power reduces the number of officials with Iranian names. Some officials are attested: for example, *Nababṛzana- ‘Furthering his family’, a chiliarch (CT 49 6:2; 327 BCE); *Vindafarnah- ‘Finding divine glory’, a governor (308–307 BCE); *Aryapā- ‘Protecting the Aryans’, a commander (AD -144:16´; 145 BCE). A high military commander – a general, in fact – was *Ṛtaya-, who organised a census in Babylon and Seleucia in 145 BCE (AD -144:36´).

People with an Iranian name and a Babylonian patronym also appear in the Seleucid period. In 262 BCE, *Kṛmāniya-, son of Iddināya, appears in a letter from Bēl-ibni, the chief administrator (šatammu) of the Esagil temple in Babylon (CT 49 118:6).

In the Arsacid period the number of Iranian names attested in cuneiform Babylonian texts rises again, when the Iranian-speaking Arsacids take control in Babylonia. Many of the Iranian names, however, are names of kings or members of the royal family. Interestingly, the son of the king of Elymais also bears an Iranian name: *Varya- (spelled ^Iur-ˀ-a and ^Iur-ri-ˀ-a; AD -124 B:21´; 132–125/124 BCE). Military officials appear sometimes – for example, three generals: *Miθradāta-, ‘Given by Mithra’ (AD -107 r. 15´; 107 BCE), *Miθrāta- (AD -90:15´, 32´; 91 BCE), and *Aspastāna- ‘He whose place is with horses’ (AD -87 C r. 32´; 87 BCE). Interesting also is the high priest *(H)urauda- ‘Having a beautiful growth’, who appears in a document dated to 107 BCE (LBAT 1445:2–3).

In the post-Achaemenid period, contrary to the Achaemenid period, various double names are attested. An example is *Bagâ, ‘whose other name is Nikanōr’ (BaM 15 274:12; Reference ZadokZadok 2009, 137 no. 167).

Introduction to the Language and Its Background

Elamite was the main language of south-western Iran between approximately the twenty-third and fourth century BCE and developed more or less contemporaneously with neighbouring Sumerian and later with Akkadian. Elamite remains, to our current knowledge, an isolated language that is not fully understood (Reference Tavernier, Álvarez-Mon, Basello and WicksTavernier 2018; Reference Stolper and WoodardStolper 2004). Since we are dealing in this chapter with a language that has no linguistic ties with the Mesopotamian languages, one should highlight the fact that Elamite onomastic conversions into Babylonian texts are actually transcriptions of Elamite personal names into Akkadian. Even though this chapter will treat mainly Elamite names deriving from Neo-Babylonian sources, the general outlines for the conversion of Elamite names into Akkadian do not only apply to Neo-Babylonian texts, but also to Neo-Assyrian texts.

Due to the limited amount of Elamite textual sources, we are not always able to fully reconstruct the Elamite anthroponyms attested in Neo-Babylonian texts. Even if we can identify an Elamite variant, there are still numerous lacunas in our understanding of Elamite phonology and grammar. Jan Reference Tavernier and KoganTavernier (2010, 1059–60) has given four main reasons for this lack of knowledge:

1. (1) First, Elamite was written in a Sumero–Akkadian cuneiform script that was not designed for the Elamite language. This means that the script lacks characters to express specific Elamite phonemes. The Elamites either simplified the orthography of their words or used a combination of cuneiform characters to write down their language as correctly as possible.

2. (2) Second, due to the isolated status of the Elamite language, comparative linguistic material for the study of Elamite is nearly absent. This restricted text corpus, including the lack of bilinguals (Elamite–Akkadian) for the early to mid-first millennium BCE, is partly the result of limited archaeological exploration in the Iranian provinces Khuzestan and Fars.

3. (3) Third, there might have existed several Elamite dialects of which we are not aware. The territory of the Elamite kingdom was a long strip divided into the lowlands of Susiana, the highlands of Fars, and some more isolated mountainous Zagros regions, such as Izeh, which bordered areas that were inhabited by other language groups (e.g., Indo-Iranians, Arameans, etc.). These other languages doubtlessly had an influence on Elamite phonology.

4. (4) Fourth, there is a diachronic development in the phonological system. The transcriptions of Elamite proper names and words in non-Elamite texts, mostly Akkadian texts, can therefore be quite useful to get a better understanding of Elamite phonology.

The Elamite Name Material in the Babylonian Sources

Typology of Elamite Names Rendered in Neo-Babylonian

Ran Zadok already stated in his Elamite Onomasticon (Reference Zadok1984, 49–50) that, since the Elamite language is not yet fully known, a typology of Elamite personal names will remain preliminary as well. With our current knowledge of Elamite onomastics, the composition of Elamite names seems very similar to Babylonian names, or more generally Akkadian names.

Typically, Elamite names are compound names consisting of two elements (Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 49–59; Reference Zadok1991, 231). The most common typologies of Neo-Babylonian renderings of Elamite names are:

1. 1, Substantive + substantive: Imba-daraˀ ‘Helper of Huban(?)’ (^Iim-ba-da-ra-ˀ, YOS 7 30:11); Ištar-ḫundu ∼ Neo-Elamite Šutur-Nahhunte ‘The justifier Nahhunte’ (iš-tar-ḫu-un-du, ABC 1 ii 32)

2. 2, Substantive + adjective: Šutar-šarḫu ‘The proud righteous one’ (^Išu-tar-šar-ḫu, BRM 1 82:17)

3. 3, Substantive + pres. active participle: Adda-ten ‘Father being favourable’ (^bead-da-te-na, MDP 9 110 r. 4, MDP 9 167:4, MDP 9 172 r. 11, MDP 9 181:3; ^bead-da-te-en, MDP 9 73:2–3)Footnote ²

4. 4, Substantive + verb: Atta-luš ‘Father […]’ (at-ta-lu-uš; -š: first conj. 3.sg.; Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 26 nr. 132)

Elamite names consisting of three elements are, like in Semitic onomastics, also attested but they occur more rarely. As for the Neo-Babylonian renderings, one has, for instance, the Elamite name Huban-haltaš ‘Huban received the land’ (ḫum-ba-ḫal-da-šu, ABC 1 iii 27, 33), consisting of a divine name + substantive + verb. The first element is the god Huban, the second element is the noun hal ‘land’, and the third element taš is a verbal form ta+š ‘he installed’ in the first conjugation 3.sg. (-š), meaning ‘Huban installed the land’. Or taš could be read tuš ‘he received’ with the system of vowel changes, and then the name translates ‘Huban received the land’. The final -u is an Akkadian nominative marker.

Neo-Babylonian renderings of Elamite names consisting of one element, other than hypocoristica, are to our knowledge not attested.

Babylonian Orthography of Elamite Names

Elamite–Babylonian Onomastic Conversion Rules

When looking for Elamite personal names in the Mesopotamian textual records, three features of Neo-Elamite phonology and orthography that may influence the Akkadian rendering of Elamite words should be kept in mind: the reduction of consonants, consonant shifts, and vowel alterations.

Socio-Onomastics

This brings us to the ethno-sociological context of Elamite names that were written in the Neo-Babylonian texts. Who were the Elamites mentioned in those Neo-Babylonian texts? To which social class did they belong, and what were their professions? Only a few clusters of Neo-Babylonian documents, such as the Babylonian chronicles or the Bēl-ibni archive, contain multiple Elamite personal names and can give us some insight in the ethno-sociological context.

Since the Babylonian chronicles record specifically the regnal years and succession of the Babylonian kings and their royal neighbours, only names of Elamite kings from the reign of Huban-nikaš I (743–717 BCE) to the accession of Urtak (675–664 BCE) are described. The chronicles target a specific group within the Elamite upper class of the population, namely the king as the highest political authority within the Neo-Elamite kingdom.

Since the governor Bēl-ibni was positioned in southern Babylonia to monitor Elamite political activities at the Elamite–Babylonian border (Reference de Vaande Vaan 1995), his archive mentions several Elamite kings: Indabibi (mng. unknown), Huban-nikaš II ‘Huban has blessed’, Tammaritu (mng. unknown), and Huban-ḫaltaš III; additionally, various Elamite royal officials concerned with foreign policies are noted, including the palace herald Ummanšibar ‘Huban, the worshipper’, the chief of the šarnuppu-officials Umḫulumaˀ ‘Huban is connecting(?)’, Huban-nikaš, son of Amedirra (a West Semitic name), and the borderland sheikhs Undadu (hypocorism of (Huban)-untaš ‘(Huban) installed me(?)’) of the zilliru-people and Atmanu (possibly from Atta-menu ‘Father is authority’) of B/Manānu.Footnote ⁸ So, based on the official governmental character of the Bēl-ibni archive, it seems that the individuals with Elamite names occurring in these Babylonian texts were either highly ranked Elamite officials or specialised professionals, and Babylonian–Elamite borderland sheikhs with a mixed identity (Elamite–Aramean–Babylonian).

Interestingly, three seemingly unrelated Neo-Babylonian documents (an adoption contract and two loans of silver) give a rather exceptional insight in Babylonian–Elamite social relations. This adoption contract of a girl (OIP 122 1), drafted in Sumuntunaš (Western Elam) and found in Nippur, was dated to the 15th regnal year of Ḫallutuš-Inšušinak II. A loan of silver (VS 4 1), drafted in Elam and presumably found in Babylon, is linked to the archive of Iqīša, son of Bēl-nāṣir, of which all contracts are dated to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BCE). Another loan of silver (PTS 2713) was drafted during the first regnal year of Ḫallutuš-Inšušinak II at Bīt-Hullumu (i.e., in the vicinity of the Sumuntunaš). What is special about these Neo-Babylonian documents is that the date formula referred to an Elamite place of writing and used the reign of the Elamite king Ḫallutuš-Inšušinak II (c. 598/93–583/78 BCE) as the year reference. Hence, these contracts must have been drawn up by a Babylonian community living (in the case of the adoption contract) or trading extensively in the western border region of the Neo-Elamite kingdom.Footnote ⁹

As for the ethno-sociological profile of Elamite names in the Neo-Babylonian texts, we can thus roughly distinguish two groups. One group of Elamite kings and high officials active in Elamite–Babylonian bilateral relations was mentioned in official Neo-Babylonian state documentation. Another group are Elamites (including the hybrid and hypocoristic names) occasionally mentioned in dispersed Neo-Babylonian private archives, generally in connection with Babylonian trading activities or communities in the western Elamite Susiana region.

Introduction

Sumerian, which most scholars treat as an isolated language, is the first identifiable language written in cuneiform.Footnote ¹ By the end of the third millennium BCE it was no longer used as a vernacular language, but it continued to be used for the next two millennia, until the end of cuneiform culture, as a scholarly, literary, and religious language. This does not imply that the ‘real’, ‘living’ Sumerian tongue of the third millennium BCE perished and was replaced by an ‘artificial’, ‘dead’ language. Sumerian remained ‘alive’ and ‘real’ for another 2,000 years, perhaps not as a mother tongue but certainly as a language with a crucial and defining importance for the Mesopotamian scholarly and religious milieu. Many (perhaps even most) of the verbal religious performances in Mesopotamia in the second and first millennia BCE were conducted in Sumerian, whether they were based on the kalûtu corpus of Sumerian lamentations that constituted the regular temple cult or on the many Sumerian incantations included in the āšipūtu corpus which consisted of the purification and therapeutic rituals for temples and individuals. These corpora were not only performed but also studied. The scribal curriculum of the second and first millennia BCE began with lexical lists consisting of Sumerian or Sumero–Akkadian correspondences, and Sumerian remained an important part of scribal education and scholarly lore during advanced study.Footnote ²

Therefore, although the number of Sumerian personal and family names recorded in Babylonia in the first millennium BCE is tiny, their existence points to the cultural importance Sumerian held for the bearers of these names, especially if they were priests or scholars. Sumerian in the first millennium BCE was not only a language that scholars and priests knew from their training and liturgical repertoire, but also a source of identity for its users.

Sumerian Onomastic Material in Babylonian Sources

Although Akkadian names in Babylonia during the first millennium BCE extensively use logograms that originate in the Sumerian language, actual Sumerian names in this period are practically non-existent. In fact, only one Sumerian personal name is attested in first-millennium BCE Babylonia: the ceremonial name of the daughter of Nabonidus, whom he dedicated as a priestess in Ur.Footnote ³ Otherwise, there are a few Sumerian family names in first-millennium BCE Babylonia.

Introduction

Residual languages, which were productive in the onomasticon of first-millennium Babylonia, are in the first place Kassite and Urartian.Footnote ¹ Other such languages cannot be identified by name, but it is likely that other dialects, which originated in the central Zagros and the Armenian plateau respectively, also left traces in the pertinent corpus. On the other hand, Elamite, which is an unaffiliated language (like Kassite), cannot be defined as a residual language as it has a rich and variegated corpus lasting for about 2,000 years (see Chapter 16). The Neo-Babylonian anthroponyms from the early first millennium BCE and the period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire originated in the Semitic-speaking core, namely Mesopotamia, the Levant including Egypt, and the Syro-Arabian desert as well as in the neighbouring plateaus of Iran and Anatolia. The pertinent geographical horizon became much wider in the ensuing periods of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian Empires and includes also central Asia and the regions east of the Iranian plateau, as far as the Indus, as well as Greece. Nevertheless, the percentage of non-Mesopotamian names in the much smaller Neo-Assyrian corpus is much higher than in the abundant Neo- and Late Babylonian corpus. This is due to two factors. First, the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions have a wide geographical scope and enumerate many anthroponyms and toponyms. Second, much of the Neo-Assyrian documentation stems from palatial archives, where lower social strata and deportees are amply represented, whereas most of the Babylonian documentation from the long sixth century BCE belongs to archives of the Babylonian urban elite, with negligible representation of other social strata. In late-Achaemenid and Hellenistic-Parthian Babylonia, the percentage of foreigners is only slightly higher than in the preceding period.

The special relationship between Babylonia and Assyria is a longue durée phenomenon. First, Babylonia and adjacent regions were under a long Assyrian conquest, albeit with various degrees of control. Then, the conquest of most of the eastern Jazirah, including a section of Assyria proper, by Babylonia followed the demise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. These circumstances compel us to compare the onomasticon of the Neo-Babylonian sources with that of the Neo-Assyrian corpus, which is partially contemporary. This comparative task is greatly facilitated by the completion of the Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (1–3, Helsinki 1998–2011, henceforth: PNA). On the other hand, the excerption and evaluation of the abundant Neo- and Late Babylonian onomastic material is far from complete and thus far devoid of a comparable and updated instrumentarium.

Kassite Names and Related Material

Kassite is an extreme case of a residual language because it is not recorded in any texts. What remains are only a restricted number of names (anthroponyms, theonyms, and toponyms) and very few appellatives. Therefore, the reconstruction of Kassite anthroponymy (practically a list of name elements) is fraught with difficulties and necessarily contains doubtful material. Much of the discussion that follows is inevitably exploratory; an effort will be made to clarify the context that encourages the assignment of anthroponyms to the Kassite language.

The Kassites, whose dynasty exercised the longest rule over Babylonia, in the latter half of the second millennium BCE, became an inseparable part of the Babylonian elite (unlike the Gutians, whose ephemeral rule and partial control of Babylonia perpetuated them as the emblematic ‘other’). Hence, the Kassite names in post-Kassite and later Babylonia are, in the first place, family names referring to clans of the elite of the Babylonian temple cities. Commonly attested family names of Kassite origin are Mar/štuk(āta), Tunâ (Reference ZadokZadok 1979, 170), Šabbâ/Šambâ, Gaḫal (cf. Gaḫal-Marduk (in next paragraph)), as well as, perhaps, Ašgandu/Šugandu.Footnote ² The following family names are rarely attested: Šagerīya (^Išá^!-ga-e-ri-ia, UET 4 24:8´, provided that the ZA- of the copy is an error for ŠÁ),Footnote ³ presumably Gibindu (^Igi-bi-in-du, BM 27746:33´, from Borsippa) and Šatarindi (^Išá-ta-ri-in-di, FLP 1556:14, in Reference DillardDillard 1975, 253, from Sippar),Footnote ⁴ and perhaps Ḫullunu (^Iḫul-lu-nu, CTMMA 3 90:20, from Babylon) and Zannētu (^Iza-an-né-e-tú, VS 4 63:10, from Babylon).

Several family names are hybrid, namely Akkado–Kassite, such as Gaḫal-Marduk (^Iga-ḫúl-^dTU.TU, PNA 1/II, 419), Nazi-Enlil (^Ina-zi-^d50, Reference NielsenNielsen 2015, 282), and Nazūa (^Ina-zu-a, BE 8/1 112:6). The latter is based on Kassite nazi ‘shadow, protection’ followed by the hypocoristic suffix -ūa, similar to Middle Babylonian Nazūtum (^Ina-zu-ú-tum) with -ūt (Reference BalkanBalkan 1954, 74; cf. UET 7 67 r. 5). The same suffix is attached to kil- in the personal name Gilūa.Footnote ⁵

On the whole, the Kassite family names form no more than 3.33 per cent of the 300 family names referring to the system of Babylonian urbanite clans. These 300 family names were coined during the early first millennium BCE and many of them are archaic (see Chapter 3).Footnote ⁶ Two early Neo-Babylonian family names, which are not attested later, are (if they are not paternal names) Pilamdi (^Ipi-lam-di, NMA 3 i 6, iii 6; see Reference PaulusPaulus 2014, 639–40)Footnote ⁷ and Kandar-Šamaš (^Ikan-dar-šam-ši, MZŠ I 2 r. 6; see Reference PaulusPaulus 2014, 674).Footnote ⁸ The former is presumably Kassite and the latter is hybrid, as its predicative (initial) element seems to be Kassite while its theophoric element is Akkadian.

Most of the pertinent given names, namely Iddin-Šīḫu (^ISUM-ši-ḫu), Kadašman-Enlil (^Ika-dás-man-^d50), and Naˀdi-Šīḫu (^Ina-di-ši-ḫu), are also hybrid (Akkado–Kassite).Footnote ⁹ Such may also be Nazīya (^Ina-zi-ia, Reference TallqvistTallqvist 1905, 160), in view of its hypocoristic suffix which is very common in Akkadian and West Semitic. A hybrid filiation is early Neo-Babylonian Kaššȗ-šumu-iddin (^Ikaš-šú-ú-MU-SUM.NA), son or descendant (DUMU) of Nazi-Marduk (^Ina-zi-^dAMAR.UTU, NMA 1 i 18, vi:1; see Reference PaulusPaulus 2014, 624, 629).

Purely Kassite names are only Kurigalzu and Nazi-Maruttaš (Reference NielsenNielsen 2015, 184; Reference BrinkmanBrinkman 1998, 191b), which were originally royal names and therefore survived in the first millennium BCE, like the royal name Ḫammurapi,Footnote ¹⁰ probably as prestigious anthroponyms. The Kassite character of Kiligug (^Iki-il-li-gu-ug, Nbk. 26:3; cf. NA ^Iki-li-gu-gu, PNA 2/I, 616) cannot be ascertained.Footnote ¹¹ The same applies to ^fInzayītāy > ^fInza’ītâ (^fin-za-ˀ-id-da or [^fin-za-(ˀ)-i]t-ta-a), rendered ˀnzyty in Aramaic (BE 8/1 53:7, l.e.). Apparently this female name ends in a cluster of feminine hypocoristic suffixes (-ay-īt-ay). It seems that it is based on Kassite inz-, which is extant in NA ^Iin-zi-i (see, cautiously, PNA 2/I, 559; cf. Reference BalkanBalkan 1954, 153), ^fin-zi-a-a (with a different interpretation, PNA 2/I, 559), and ^fen-zu-u (provided the reading is not Bēl-lēˀi, PNA 1/II, 397). Similarly, early Neo-Babylonian Pakaštu (^Ipa-kaš-tu, BRM 1 17:12), which has a late Old Babylonian forerunner (^Iba-ka-aš-ti; cf. Zadok 1999–2000, 355a), might be Kassite.Footnote ¹²

The bearers of Kassite anthroponyms and family names were an integral part of the Babylonian urban elite. The hybrid names are the product of interference onomastics which is devoid of any ethnic significance, while the purely Kassite names are merely inherited fossils. It is noteworthy that the name of Nebuchadnezzar II’s daughter, ^fKaššāya, is based on the designation ‘Kassite’, another example of this prestigious class of names. The number of Kassite given names dwindles sharply after the end of the post-Kassite period.

The rare family name Lullubāya (^Ilul-lu-ba-a-a, recorded only in Babylon) and Nikkāya (e.g., ^Inik-ka-a-a, attested in Babylon, Borsippa, and perhaps in Kish; see Reference Wunsch, Krebernik and NeumannWunsch 2014, 306–7) are gentilics of regions in the Zagros and its piedmont respectively.

Urartian Names

Urartians are recorded in Babylonia during the early period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and in the late-Achaemenid periodFootnote ¹³ – that is, with a considerable temporal gap. One individual is homonymous with the much earlier Urartian king Menua (c. 810–785/780 BCE; cf. Reference SalviniSalvini 1993–7). Minua (^Imi-nu-ú-a, BE 8/1 101:12) acts as the first out of four witnesses in a deed dated to the first year of Bardia (c. 522 BCE). Unlike the other witnesses, Minua is recorded without a paternal name. Naraggu (^Ina-rag-gu, BE 8/1 87:4, 527 BCE) may be compared with Neo-Assyrian ^Ina-ra-ge-e, an Urartian name (not Elamite, as cautiously suggested in PNA 2/II, 930).

Atypical Names

Atypical names are dubbed ‘noms apatrides’ by Emmanuel Reference LarocheLaroche (1966, 239–46). They may belong to any dialect. In many cases their analysis is not beyond the descriptive-taxonomic level. Such names are Nenê and Nenēa (^Iné-né-e, ^Ine-né-e-a, PNA 2/II, 940; both variants are (also) borne by people from Babylonia, the latter with a hypocoristic suffix).

The following names have a reduplicated second syllable:Footnote ¹⁴ Bazizi (^Iba-zi-zi, Reference Wunsch, Krebernik and NeumannPearce and Wunsch 2014, 44b), Bazuzu (^Iba-zu-zu, Reference TallqvistTallqvist 1905, 23–4), Kiruru (^IKI-ru-ru, Cyr. 360:25),Footnote ¹⁵ and ^fBusasa (^fbu-sa-sa, Cyr. 135:9). The name Qazizi (^Iqa-zi-zi, CUSAS 28 44:18) was borne by a Judean. Ḫubaba (^Iḫu-ba-ba, CUSAS 28 2:13), also borne by a Judean, may alternatively render the equivalent of OT Ḥwbb. Igigi (^Ii-gi-gi, CTMMA 3 6:4) may be Elamite, and Kulūlu (^Iku-lu-lu) can be either Akkadian ‘Headdress’ (of deities and kings) or Elamite (see Reference WaerzeggersWaerzeggers 2014 no. 175 r. 13).

In early and later Neo-Babylonian texts the female name ^fSinūnu ‘Swallow fish’ (^fsi-nu-nu, CTMMA 3 52:6; see Reference NielsenNielsen 2015, 335) occurs. Neo-Assyrian ^Isu-nu-nu, which refers to a male person (PNA 3/I, 1159), looks like the same form with vowel harmony.

Gigīya (^Igi-gi-ia), ^fGigītu (^fgi-gi-i-tu₄), and ^fGugûa (^fgu-gu-ú-a; see Reference TallqvistTallqvist 1905, 63–4) consist of a reduplicated syllable and a hypocoristic suffix (cf. Neo-Assyrian Kusisî, spelled ^Iku-si-si-i, PNA 2/I, 643). The same applies to ^fGāgāya (^fga-ga-a; Reference TallqvistTallqvist 1905, 62), Zazāya (^Iza-za-a, CTMMA 4 6:5; cf. Neo-Assyrian ^Iza-za-a-a [etc.], PNA 3/II, 1439), Zizīya (^Izi-zi-ia, CTMMA 4 51:4), and Zuzū (^Izu-zu-ú, TEBR 6 57:3). They (except for the first name) may derive from Z–W/Y–Z like Zūzâ (^Izu-za-a, IMT 53:16) and Zūzānu (^Izu-za-nu, BE 8/1 110:15 and Reference JursaJursa 1995, 220), in which case their base would be with a long vowel.

Atypical family names are Šalala (^Išá-la-la or ^Išá-a-la-la) and Sagdidi (^Isag-di-di, with dissimilation ^Isag-di-ti, Reference Wunsch, Krebernik and NeumannWunsch 2014, 308–9). The former may alternatively be Akkadian (Ša-alāli; see Reference BakerBaker 2004, 284 ad no. 240:16). The fact that this family name is sometimes preceded by the determinative LÚ is not a decisive argument against the first alternative (as an atypical anthroponym) in view of the fact that LÚ interchanges with the ‘Personenkeil’ in Neo- and Late Babylonian family names. Besides, the common spelling of the family name is with -la, not -li. ^Isag-di-di, with the reading šak-, may refer to Elam. šak- ‘son’ (see Reference ZadokZadok 1984, 38:211, 45:251), in which case it would be the only Neo- or Late Babylonian family name of Elamite origin.Footnote ¹⁶

Early Neo-Babylonian Baḫiriru or Maḫiriru (^Iba/ma-ḫi-ri-ru, BRM 1 17:7; Reference NielsenNielsen 2015, 195) may end in a reduplicated syllable if the Babylonian scribe adjusted its final vowel to that of the Akkadian nominative. If this practice was applied to early Neo-Babylonian Ḫuḫuḫi (^Iḫu-ḫu-ḫi, Reference NielsenNielsen 2015, 139), then it consists of three identical syllables (*ḫu-ḫu-ḫu).

A rare type is exemplified by Neo-Assyrian Mesimesi (^Ime-si-me-si), which consists of two reduplicated syllables. The name has nothing to do with Arabic mišmiš (> modern Israeli Hebrew ‘apricot’), as claimed by Simo Parpola (PNA 2/II, 749), seeing that the latter consists of a single reduplicated syllable. The name can perhaps be compared to the Jewish Babylonian–Aramaic paternal name mšmš.Footnote ¹⁷

The sequence CV₁-CV₂- (+ hypocoristic suffix) is extant in the following names: Neo-Babylonian Nūnāya (^Inun-na-a, Reference NielsenNielsen 2015, 301) could be based on nūnu ‘fish’ (cf. Neo-Assyrian ^Inu-nu-a, PNA 2/II, 967). ^fŠūšāya (^fšu-šá-a-a-ˀ, BRM 1 5:8; see Reference NielsenNielsen 2015, 380) is perhaps based on šūšu ‘licorice’ as a nickname for a sweet child. Tūtia (^Itu-ti-ia, Reference TallqvistTallqvist 1905, 212) may be based on tūtu ‘mulberry’ (cf. Neo-Assyrian ^Itu-ta-ia, etc., PNA 3/II, 1337). The sequence tV-tV- is also extant in Neo-Assyrian ^Iti-ti-i, ^fte-ta-a-a, and ^fti-ta-a-a (PNA 3/II, 1323, 1327). Regarding Nanni, Nannia, and Nannûtu (Reference WaerzeggersWaerzeggers 2014, 393a), the last one is based on the divine name Nanna (cf. Reference NielsenNielsen 2015, 279), while the two preceding ones probably do not derive from Luwian nani ‘brother’ (for these names and ^Ina-na-te; cf. PNA 2/II, 925).