milta-
‘illness (?)’
- Language
- Cuneiform Luwian
- Grammar
- subst, n.
- ID
- 1264
1. Individual Anatolian Languages
1.1 Cuneiform Luwian
milta-
‘illness (?)’1.1.1Transmission
The lexeme is a hapax attested in a birth ritual.
[E.R.]
1.1.2Forms
| nom./acc. sg. n. | mi-el-ta-an-za[ | KUB 35.88 iii 14´ | (CTH 766, NS) |
1.1.3Graphic Features
Checked against the photographs in the Konkordanz.
[E.R.]
1.1.4Meaning
The context describes a scene in which Kamrušepa combs down (and away) the negative milta- of a new-born child. The following list of diseases of various body parts seems to be a further explication of milta-. Therefore, the tentative translation of Yakubovich, pers. comm., as ‘illness(?)’ (in contrast with more general ‘(an evil)’ in CLL:147) is very plausible. [+ Friedrich 1955a:45 (fn. 8) notes that milta- hardly denotes the comb itself, as Laroche 1954a:124a had suggested earlier, unless it were a loan from Akk. mušṭu (mulṭu) ‘comb’. The loan word hypothesis is repeated by Beckman 1983a:229 (fn. 25), who has to read an abl. mi-el-ta-an-za-[ti] in order to make this meaning work (‘With the combs let him (the child) be combed!’), but then he has to supply a verb for the list of diseases by textual emendation. In addition, the preverb in ‘shall be combed down’ speaks for the illness as subject, rather than the child. No translation given in DLL:71 and CLL:147.]
[E.R.]
1.1.5Stem
In principle, in interpretation as both an -(a)- stem milt(a)- and an -n- stem miltan- is possible, but the former type is much more frequent than the latter and therefore adopted here.
[E.R.]
2. Reconstruction
2.1Reconstruction ‘illness’
For the Luwian word milta- ‘illness’, one could reconstruct different tentative forms, e.g. *mēl- + -to- or *mēlT- + -o-, *mi̯elT- + -o-. Yakubovich (pers. comm.) suggests reconstructing a root *meldh- ‘mild, soft’ (IEW:719) derived with the suffix *-ó-, which requires that Luwian *-e- became -i- in pre-tonic position. This sound law however lacks any solid basis and is not accepted by the present author. A lengthened e-grade *ē, on the other hand, would yield Luw. -i- more securely and is thus preferable, i.e. PAnat. *mēlT- ‘illness’. A cognate of this root is possibly found in Pal. meldaki-, whose semantics however cannot be verified.
[D.S.]