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Ordeal By Oath at Nuzi
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
Extract
In 1926 Gadd, publishing the first considerable collection of tablets from Nuzi, came upon the phrase ana ilāni ana našê which, as he rightly saw, referred to ordeal by oath; accordingly he translated it ‘to make oath before the gods’, suggesting in a note that the verb was našū ‘to swear’, which he explained as a secondary formation from nīš ilim ‘an oath by God’.
This suggestion indeed makes good sense in Gadd's passage and elsewhere in these texts and is at first sight philologically plausible; but close examination shows it to be untenable on several grounds. Hitherto nīšu in nīš ilim has been explained as meaning literally ‘lifting up’, sc. of the hand in solemn asseveration, and hence metaphorically swearing (an oath)’ and so ‘oath’; but the Bab. nīšu is always represented in this phrase by the Sum. MU, which means not našū ‘to lift up’ but (i) nēšu ‘to live’ and (ii) zakāru ‘to declare, swear’ and so on, whence it seems that nīš ilim zakāru must originally have meant ‘to make mention of the life of the god’, that is ‘to swear by the life of the god’. Again, in Gadd's phrase našū often has both a direct and an indirect object, whether god or man; when either is a man, it is clear that the verb cannot denote swearing.
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- Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1940
References
page 132 note 1 In R.A. XXIII. 105-6, 28 29 (s. n. on 107).
page 132 note 2 For which, however, the Sum. ŠU-IL LA —Bab. nīš qāti(m) is normally used.
page 132 note 3 Deimel, Sum. Lex. under MU.
page 132 note 4 Cf. Ungnad, in Orient, VI. 356–7Google Scholar.
page 132 note 5 The common Hebrew phrases ‘as Yahweh liveth’ and ‘as God liveth’ (2 Sam. ii. 27; Jb. xxvii. 2) may be cited in illustration of such an expression.
page 132 note 6 Cf. Driver and Miles, A.L. 90-2, 100, 104.
page 133 note 1 For našê, as elsewhere.
page 133 note 2 Namely, of Wantiya and Šaštae.
page 133 note 3 Namely, of Akabšenni.
page 133 note 4 Possibly a-na Ú(!)-[zi-bu], as suggested by the following clause stating that Uzibu did not carry out the order of the judges.
page 134 note 1 Namely, of Ennamati.
page 134 note 2 An awkward conflation of ašar ilāni ittūr and ilāni ana šībūti (ana) našê lā imgur.
page 135 note 1 Namely, to Ḫutiya.
page 135 note 2 The first restoration is favoured by the order of the words (i.e. by putting the direct before the indirect object); but the second is perhaps preferable, as Pfeiffer's text shows an obviously incorrect but erased ašar (which the scribe ought ex hypothesi to have corrected to ana) before ilāni.
page 135 note 3 for imma(n)guru and therefore in the pret. tense of the IV. i. theme.
page 136 note 1 A periphrasis for ‘let them be taken’.
page 136 note 2 Clearly DINGIR-a-nu (= Ilānū) DINGIR-MEŠ (= ilāni) is an error for a-na DINGIR-MEŠ (= ilāni), caused partly by the displacement of a-na DINGI R-a-nu (= Ilānū) before iqtabû and partly by the accidental similarity of the words.
page 136 note 3 Clearly again an error for DINGIR-MEŠ (= ilāni).
page 136 note 4 Namely, of Ennamati.
page 137 note 1 The verb is not adāru ‘to fear’ but tāru ‘to return’, as the various forms show (for tāru makes itūr in the I, i and ittūr in the I, ii theme, while adāru makes īdur in the I, i and ītadur in the I, ii theme, in the pret. tense; in the I, i theme confusion owing to the uncertainty in the writing of d/t is possible, in the I, ii theme it is not possible); also adāru is very unlikely to take the ventive -a found in ittūra and similar forms. Further, while adāru normally takes the direct object in the acc. case, it is equally the rule that tāru must be followed by a preposition (s. Driver and Miles, A.L. 466).
page 137 note 2 Subar, ziellikuḫlu = Bab. šību (s. Gordon, ibid. 315).
page 137 note 3 Namely, of Teḫibtilla.
page 137 note 4 This ana ilāni confirms the restoration of ⟨ana⟩ ilāni in the previous clause.
page 137 note 5 Presumably i-na-ck is an error for i-la-ak, even thougn it ought to be il-h-ikin the pret. tense.
page 138 note 1 e.g. Schorr, , U.Ab.Z.-Pr. 257 5–7, 296 6-9, 299 4-5, 304 7-11; cf. 265 4-7Google Scholar.
page 138 note 2 Inaccurately written for ana tūmamītim tddinu.
page 138 note 3 Schorr, op. cit. 260 4-6.
page 138 note 4 e.g., ibid. 298 25-36 (where the party refusing the challenge loses the case).
page 138 note 5 e.g., ibid. 261 17-21.
page 138 note 6 e.g., ibid. 261 17-21, 305 11-13.