/kummaiya-/, PURUS.MI-

This lexeme is attested three times in Karkamiš and Commagene, and its attestations fall between the late 10^th or early 9^th century and the early 8^th century BCE.

[AH.B.]

First identified by Laroche (Laroche 1956b:154) as the Luwian equivalent of Hitt. šuppi- ‘pure, sacred’, the meaning of this lexeme has long been clear, although the HLuw. attestation of this word are all used as nouns, very likely meaning ‘pure sacrifice’ vel sim. An adjective of this meaning and related nouns and verbs are a mainstay of ritual language, and their various equivalents are well-attested in those Anatolian languages with texts including descriptions of rituals and related material. Yet due to the rather different genres making up its corpus, HLuw. provides comparatively little evidence for the word family around ‘pure, sacred’.
In fact, the HLuw. contexts prove problematic concerning the present lexeme, the most basic one attested of the family, because all three attestations occur in somewhat difficult contexts. In the attestation from ANCOZ, the word constitutes the first fully readable word of the inscription, i.e. the syntactic context is largely unclear; it may be that it is, after all, an adjective following its noun (apparently a form of /piya-/ ‘gift’, see the discussion in Hawkins 2000a:346f.), but HLuw. adjectives usually precede their nouns, i.e. in the absence of further supporting evidence, this analysis is less likely. The attestation in TÜNP 2 is part of the only mostly legible clause in an extremely fragmented inscription, yet /kummaiya/ is coordinated with another noun, so the interpretation as a noun seems secured. In the KARKAMIŠ inscription, the context again suggests that /kummaiya/ is a noun in itself instead of an adjective with a case mismatch with its head noun or a reversed genitive construction, which has led Hawkins 2000a:98 to put forward the idea that the signs may have to be read in a different order. As an alternative, Yakubovich (Dec 2018, pers. comm.) proposes that /kummaiya-/ may be the uninflected stem used as the first member of a compound, meaning ‘sacrificial temple’ vel sim.

[AH.B.]

The lexeme is a secondary formation derived with the suffix /-i(ya)-/ from a base /kumma-/ (Melchert 2003b:197; Melchert 2012a:211), which is unattested in HLuw., but present in the CLuw. corpus. Within the HLuw. corpus, all three attestations of this word appear to be used as nouns. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that these are nominalisations of adjectives, showing neuter gender. As for the original adjective, i-mutation is common for adjectives with this suffix, and adjectival common gender would be expected to show this stem allomorphy.

[AH.B.]

1. /kummayalla-/