A “new” Semitic designation of ‘snake’

A“new” Semitic designation of ‘snake’ Václav Blažek Masaryk University, Brno ABSTRACT This brief etymological study presents arguments for the reconstruction of Proto-Semitic *ṣarʕ- ‘akind of (poisonous?) snake’, which is attested in two of the most archaic Semitic languages, Akkadian and Eblaite, and in one representative of the Modern South Arabian languages, Soqotri. Indirect traces appear in Hebrew and Geez. KEYWORDS Semitic, zoonym, etymology, semantics, pattern 1. In the second volume of their Semitic Etymological Dictionary, devoted to animal names, A.Militarev and L.Kogan include nine terms for ‘snake’, including cases where the meaning vacillates between ‘snake’ ~ ‘lizard’ ~ ‘worm’. These are: 10.*ʔapʕaw-; 63. *batan-; 95. *hVwVy-; 99. *ḥVm(V)ṭ-; 200. *šibb-; 204. *š/ŝVmm-; 207.*šVpp-; 215.*ŝarap-; 227. *tVnnVn-. However, the following term is missing there: Akkadian ṣēru(m) / ṣīru(m) / ṣerru(m) ‘snake’ (CAD-Ṣ: 148-50; AHw: 1093; CDA: 336), which is derivable from *ṣarʕu(m)1 in acomparable manner to Akkadian zēru(m), zīru, Old Assyrian zar’um ‘seed’ (cf. Akkadian zarû(m) ‘to scatter, sow’, Old Assyrian zarā’uid.; CDA: 445-46), further Eblaite ša-la-um /zar(a)ʕum/ ‘seed’ (otherwise Krebernik 1983: 26), Hebrew zɛraʕ ‘seed, offspring, descendants’, Tigre zärəʔ ‘grass’ etc. (DRS: 800; HAL: 282), all from *zarʕu(m). 2. The closest cognates of Akkadian ṣēru(m) / ṣīru(m) / ṣerru(m) ‘snake’ and ṣirtu ‘female snake’ (CAD-Ṣ: 148-50, 209) appear in Eblaite ṣe2-er-tum /ṣertum/ id. (Sjöberg 1996: 17) and za-rí-um /ṣāriHum/ ‘snake-enchanter’ (Krebernik 1983: 28). 3. AWest Semitic counterpart may be identified in one Young Babylonian list of synonyms, where ṣa-ar-ú, i.e. ṣar’u, is glossed as ṣe-[ru], i.e. Akkadian ṣēru ‘snake’ (CAD -Ṣ: 115; AHw: 1086). 4. There are probably cognates in aderivative with ageminated second radical √ṣ-rr-ʕ: Geez ṣərnəʔ ‘poisonous snake’, perhaps more exactly ‘disease caused by apoisonous snake’, from *ṣərrəʔ < *ṣərrəʕ; cf. Hebrew ṣāraʕat ‘skin disease’,2 Akkadian ṣernettu, ṣennettu ‘askin disease’ < *ṣarraʕtu (Leslau 1987: 564; HAL: 1057; CDA: 336). 1 Orel— Stolbova (1995: 116) derived Akkadian ṣēru(m) ‘snake’ from Proto-Semitic *ṣV[ʕ/] Vr-, but neither internal reconstruction nor external cognates support this origin. 2 On the equivalence of the patterns qātala and qattala, see Zaborski 2005. OPEN ACCESS 20 CHATREŠŠAR 2/2020 5. Among modern languages, the Modern South Arabian language Soqotri has di-ʕáṣer ‘lizard’, which may be related by metathesis of ʕ and ṣ–r, with di translated as ‘celui qui, ce que’ (Leslau 1938: 321, 119). The semantic closeness of the meanings ‘snake’ and ‘lizard’ may be illustrated by the Akkadian expression imduḫallatu = kallat MUŠ ‘ lizard = bride of the snake’ (CAD Ṣ: 150). 6. Summing up, the preceding material allows us to reconstruct the Proto-Semitic zoo nym *ṣarʕ- ‘akind of (poisonous?) snake’. Acknowledgements The article was written under the auspices of the Research Fund of Masaryk University, nr.2817. REFERENCES AHw = von Soden, W. (1981) Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, Band III, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. CAD  = Gelb, I.J.— Landsberger, B.— Oppenheim, A.L., eds. (1962) The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago: The Oriental Institute. CDA = Black, J.— George, A.— Postage, N., eds. (2000) AConcise Dictionary of Akkadian, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. DRS = Cohen, D., ed. (1999–2012) Dictionnaire des racines sémitiques, II-III (secondé par J.Lentin pour DRS III), Leuven: Peeters. Fronzaroli, P. (1984) Eblaic lexicon, in: P.Fronzaroli (ed.), Studies on the Language of Ebla, Firenze: Istituto di linguistica edi lingue orientali, Università di Firenze, 117–157. GAG = von Soden W. (1995) Grundriss der akkadischen Grammatik3, Roma: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico. HAL = Koehler, L.— Baumgartner, W., eds. (2001) The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testamentum. Leiden— Boston— Köln: Brill. Krebernik, M. (1983) Zu Syllabar und Orthographie der lexikalischen Texte aus Ebla, Teil 2: Glossar, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 73/1, 1–47. —. (1996) The linguistic classification of Eblaite: methods, problems, and results, in: Cooper,J.S.— Schwartz, G.M. (eds.), The Study of the Ancient Near East in the Twenty-First Century. The William Foxwell Albright Centennial Conference, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 233–249. Leslau, W. (1938) Lexique soqoṭri (sudarabique moderne), Paris: Klincksieck. —. 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