zaganin

The sole attestation of the lexeme is found in the Zarpiya ritual (NS).

[E.R.]

acc. sg.

za-ga-ni-in

KUB 9.31 ii 27

(CTH 757, NS)

The reading follows Otten 1953a:47, who, after collation, explicitly states that there is a space between the final sign -in of the preceding word and initial za- of zaganin. Accordingly, za-ga-ni-in is accepted in recent publications (see e.g. Melchert 2003c:151 n. 20, CLL:274, Görke 2015a, HEG S:717, Tischler 2008a:230). For previous readings, see DLL:112, Schwartz 1938b:351, Carruba 1968a:15, Starke 1990a:53.

[E.R.]

Checked against the handcopy.

[E.R.]

The lexeme constitutes the middle part of a tripartite accusative object in the context of a request directed at the gods: “Eat sheep and bovines! Do not eat the human zagan(i)- duwin(i)-!” (for the general structure of the passage, see already Sommer & Falkenstein 1938a:85f.). Unfortunately it is unclear for each of the words whether they have substantival or adjectival force and whether one of them is the head and the others are attributes of the syntagma or whether they are three coordinated nouns (note that DUMU.NAM.U₁₉.LU-in can be a noun, i.e. zit(i)- or the like, or an adjective in -i(ya)- based on the same).

Accordingly, scholars hesitated when it came to assigning a meaning to zaganin. Carruba 1968a:15 guessed ‘die knappe (? oder sa^!nin “gute”?) Speise’; Melchert 2003c:151 n. 20 considered and immediately discarded an etymological relationship with inzagān(za), which he translated as ‘inhumations, things inhumated’ at the time and which would imply a meaning ‘terrestrial’ for zaganin. Instead, he preferred a connection with šakan- n. ‘oil, fat, flesh’, which is both phonologically highly problematic and contextually implausible, because the fat and nutritious human would rather stimulate the gods’ appetite. Overly optimistic, Rieken 2007a:295 tentatively accepted ‘terrestrial’.

Although a derivational relationship with inzagan- is still tempting, the scholars are far from reaching a consensus regarding its meaning (see under inzagan-). As a consequence, such a connection would be of little help and no semantic assignment is attempted here.

[E.R.]

With the part of speech of zaganin unclear, several options exist for the stem formation. The word can be either a mutated noun zagan(i)-, or an adjective zagana/i- with i-mutation, or a relational adjective zagani(ya)-.

[E.R.]

No etymology possible.

[E.R.]