tbeś

Hapax in an inscription from Sinuri of unknown content and date (Deroy 1955a:316).

[Zs.S.]

gen. sg. ?

]?tbeś

C.Si 1, 2

The attestation follows Adiego 2007a:349, checked against the photograph in Robert 1950a:Pl.I. The segmentation of the word is unclear: line 2 consists only of the signs ‹tbeś›, which thus can both represent a fully preserved word (as Hajnal 1995b:17f. claims) and the continuation of the last word of the previous line (as Adiego 2007a:309, 441 claims), which is, however, broken off. The unclear meaning (see the discussion below) does not help to decide it. The grammatical definition is based on the circumstance that until now -ś is only known as a gen. sg. ending.

[Zs.S.]

Hajnal 1995b:17f. claimed that tbeś means “er machte, errichtete” (being a cognate of Lyc. tuwe- ‘to place’, see s.v.), because he translated C.Si 1 ¹adymδš : yrik̑ñ : t[-]rsi : [...?] ²tbeś as “Adümδš machte die(se) üriχ- (evtl. Stele) trsi (??)”. However, Hajnal’s translation is pure invention, he did not present a single argument for it and in fact, the meaning of all of these words is unknown, except that yrik̑ seems to be a personal name (see s.v. adymδš and Adiego 2007a:424, 434) and thus, Hajnal’s translation must be excluded (cf. also Simon forthcoming n. 12).

Alternatively and without referring to Hajnal, Adiego 2007a:309, 441 suggested that we are dealing with an onomastic formula: t[-]rsi [...]tbeś ‘T[-]rsi, (son) of […]tbeś’ (cf. already Melchert apud Hajnal 1995b:18 n. 15, not quoted by Adiego) and he compared […]tbeś with the Carian personal name Qutbe / Κυατβης (Adiego 2007a:408 with refs.). While this is entirely possible, it cannot be proved at the moment due to the fully unclear context and words, as per above (see also the discussion s.v. adymδš about the possible structural interpretation). The presumable gen. sg. ending implies either a substantive (an adjective in agreement seems lacking) or a personal name.

[Zs.S.]