owdown^? > wdwn

Attested in one or two graffiti in the tomb of Montuemhat in Thebes, from around the mid-7^th c. BCE (during the rule of Psammetichus I).

[Zs.S.]

acc. sg. ?	wdwn	E.Th 13
	owdown[?	E.Th 10

The attestations follow Adiego 2007a:392, 426, checked against the photograph in Leclant 1951a:Tab. LXIV Fig. 37 (E.Th 13), but this was not possible in the case of E.Th 10, since this inscription has never been published properly. The segmentation of wdwn is assured by word-dividers and owdown[^? is preceded by qtblo (see s.v.). Epigraphic interpretations (cf. Adiego 2007a:99 with refs.), only partially published, indicate either an illegible sequence after ‹owdown› or a ‹b›, and accordingly, it is not known if we are dealing with the entire word. Note also that since the meaning of both inscriptions is completely opaque, it cannot be excluded that owdown[^? is not identical to wdwn, although this is generally assumed (Janda 1994a:182; Hajnal 1995b:26f. [with further discussions on the different spellings]; Adiego 2007a:392 [“hardly seems to be separated”], 426).

[Zs.S.]

Janda 1994a:182f. cautiously argued for a substantive in acc. sg. since the final nasal is formally identical to the acc. sg. ending, suggesting a meaning ““Weihung, Inschrift, Gebäude” o.ä.”. While the meaning ‘Weihung’ can certainly be excluded as we are dealing with graffiti in Montuemhat’s tomb, his formal identification seems correct, even if nothing more can be told about its meaning due to the unintelligibility of these inscriptions.

Nevertheless, Hajnal 1995b:26f. claimed that we are dealing with a 3pl. verb, since in E.Th 13 it follows the subject (a person with patronym) and is followed by another subject, again a person with patronym, and he also assumed plural subjects also in E.Th 10. He added that this verb “must” belong to the “Begriffsgruppe “anbringen (eine Inschrift)” o.ä.” and thus, entertained a derivation from Luw. tuwa- ‘to put, to place’ with the preverb “*ū-”. Slightly later (Hajnal 1998a:85) he defined the form as preterite and translated it as “sie stellten hin / brachten an (sc. das Graffito)”.

However, Hajnal’s proposal must be excluded on multiple grounds:

1. The position of wdwn has no consequences: the rules of Carian word order are still unknown and even if all other words of E.Th 13 should be identified as personal names, as Hajnal did, an elliptic construction without any verb is still possible.
2. While the phrase preceding wdwn is indeed a personal name and a patronym (dbiks kbjomś), there is no evidence for the same in the phrase sbaśbśτ ewm following it: sb° can indeed be the proclitic conjunction ‘and’ (see s.v.), but aśbśτ ewm cannot be a patronym and a personal name, since such personal names are not known (cf. also Adiego 2007a:357, 365 [with alternative explanations to ewm]), their word order should be on the other way round (Hajnal’s solution, chiastic word order is petitio principii), and aśbśτ is not a genitive singular of *aśbśt: contra Hajnal’s claim (Hajnal 1995b:27 n. 35), the gen. sg. of the -t stems is not -τ, but -tś, see e.g. šarwljatś (E.Me 3).
3. E.Th 10 also does not show any plural subjects: Hajnal identified the sequence a^?qśbaqewmśemoτqtblo preceding owdown[^? as two personal names with patronyms, a^?qśbaq ewmś and ‹ś›emoτ qtblo. However, personal names such as a^?qśbaq, ewm, and ‹ś›emoτ are not known yet (cf. Adiego 2007a:353, 365 [with alternative explanations to ewm], 415; qtblo may indeed be a personal name, see s.v.), the word order in ‹ś›emoτ qtblo is incorrect (cf. above) and ‹ś›emoτ is not a gen. sg., since contra Hajnal’s claim, the gen. sg. of the -t stems is not -τ, but -tś, as per above.
4. Finally, ‹-n› can hardly be a 3pl. verbal ending, since *-nt- became ‹δ› in Carian and, accordingly, the 3rd pl. present ending is -δi (Kloekhorst 2008a:139‒141) and Simon 2020d argues that the Carian 3rd pl. preterite verbal ending is -δa.

Furthermore, Janda 1994a:182f. compared wdwn / owdown[^? with the sequence ουδουν in line 2 of a badly preserved grave stela inscription from Pisidia (published in Brixhe, Drew-Bear & Kaya 1987a:144f., No. 19). Adiego 2007a:426 admits the “striking resemblance”, but rightly adds that both contexts are unclear and thus, “this comparison cannot be taken further”. In fact, the situation is worse: already the publishers remarked that it is not possible to determine the language of the inscription from Pisidia due to its state (but it was classified as Pisidian in Adiego 2012b:24 No. 30) and Brixhe has even excluded it from his Pisidian corpus (Brixhe 2016a:87, followed by D. Sasseville in this dictionary). Nevertheless, the parallel sequence is there and, accordingly, further research is needed regarding their connection.

Finally, its similarity to Cilician οὐδών ‘a kind of felt-shoe made of goat-hair’ (see s.v.) must be coincidence.

[Zs.S.]