sfarwa-

This lexeme occurs twice in two inscriptions excavated at the cemetery of Sardis, one of which is poetic and one in prose, and both are datable to the 5^th or 4^th century BCE.

[I.Y.]

The translation ‘monument’, proposed in Meriggi 1935a:101, n. 69 fits both attestations of the noun under discussion, as pointed out in Gusmani 1964a:203. While the context LW 10.19 leaves open a number of different interpretations, the other context clearly suggests the function of sfarwa- as a burial or dedicatory installation. The sentence LW 11.1-2 ešt mruwaad šarištrosλ sfarwad astrkoλ wãnτas wicν areλ contains three subjects in asyndetic coordination, each of which is associated with its own indirect object (Schürr 2003b:118). Since the other two subjects, mru(waa)- ‘stele’ and wãnτa- can be assigned to burial installations on independent grounds, the third subject, sfarwad, must belong to the same or a related semantic field. An independent confirmation of this hypothesis comes from the sequence sprb, which is once used in the Aramaic and Lydian bilingual LW 1 as an equivalent of Lydian wãna- ‘grave’. In all probability, this is the Aramaic transliteration of Lyd. sfarwa- (Lipiński 1975a:157f.).

The very different interpretation ‘oath, vow’ has gained popularity among Indo-Europeanists in recent decades. It was first proposed in Gusmani 1975d:171 and accepted by various scholars. It fits the context of LW 10.19, but the main rationale behind it appears to be the comparison with the reflexes of the Germanic root of swarjan ‘to swear, curse’. It should be noted, however, that this root is not attested elsewhere within Anatolian, whereas, in formal terms, the closest match of Lydian sfarwa- is Hitt. šuwaru- ‘heavy’. Therefore the proposed alternative cannot be regarded as preferable even from the purely comparative perspective, while the semantic considerations adduced in the previous paragraph make it simply unacceptable. Other implausible interpretations are referenced in Gusmani 1964a:203.

[I.Y.]

Synchronically, this is an a-stem. A historical u-stem *sfaru- is likely, but hardly provable.

[I.Y.]

For the lemma head see PAnat. *su̯er-.