sarl

Hapax in a Carian-Egyptian bilingual stela from Memphis, ca. 6^th ‒ 5^th c. (O. Masson & Yoyotte 1956a:22).

[Zs.S.]

nom. sg.

sarl

E.Me 5

The attestation follows Adiego 2007a:411, checked against the photograph in O. Masson & Yoyotte 1956a:Pl. II. As pointed out already by Adiego 2007a:38 following D. Schürr, the photograph clearly identifies the last letter as ‹l› instead of the previously assumed ‹a›. Nevertheless, he consistently adds a question mark (Adiego 2007a:38, 411). Its segmentation is assured due to word-dividers.

[Zs.S.]

Since we are dealing with a tomb stela, the name of the owner of which is known, Hajnal 1998a:89, the only one who attempted a meaning (cf. Adiego 2007a:411), assumes that it refers to a second interred person as well who would most probably be the wife and thus, he attributes the meaning ‘wife’ to sarl (or as he falsely read it, sara) and cautiously (“zumindest versuchsweise”) connected to Hittite išḫaššara- ‘lady, mistress’ via “*sḫsorā-”. Setting aside that his derivation is phonologically ad hoc (there is no evidence for a change *sḫ > s assumed by him [see the discussion s.v. ýasδ] and *ā leads to o in Carian, Adiego 2007a:258) and based on a false reading (as per above), sarl cannot refer to the wife on contextual grounds: as we will see below, it is coordinated with ue referring to the stela.

This word is attested in the following inscription: psmškwneitś | ue | nariaś | śuγliq |sarl. Although the stele shows an Egyptian inscription as well, the only equivalency is provided by the name of the deceased, Psmtk-^cwj-Njt, which appears in the Carian part in gen. sg. as psmškwneitś. The first part of the inscription is relatively clear despite the unsettled question of the precise meaning of ue and naria. The first is probably a demonstrative pronoun (or, alternatively, a secondary variant of the word for ‘stela’, see the discussion s.v.) and the second is a (military) title (a personal name, i.e. a patronym in this case, is not probable, see the discussion s.v.). This leads to ‘This is (the stela) / The stela of Psmškwneit, the naria …’. As for śuγliq, it is obviously identical to the word śuγli meaning ‘from (the city of) Souangela’ (Adiego 2007a:415, contra Hajnal’s morphologically impossible “patronymische Angabe”, Hajnal 1998a:88f.) and although Adiego 2007a:415 claimed that its exact analysis is “unclear”, there is in fact according to our current knowledge only one possibility to interpret the segment °q: the conjunction =q ‘and’ (see already Hajnal 1998a:88, cf. s.v.). Due to its position and meaning, śuγli seems to qualify sarl. A zero ending implies either nom. sg. or dat. sg. The conjunction =q, however, can coordinate śuγli sarl only with ue, identifying them as nom. sg. Although this clarifies the general structure of the inscription (‘This is (the stela) / The stela and the Souangelaean sarl of Psmškwneit, the naria’), it does not solve the problem of the meaning of sarl, except that it is a substantive.

[Zs.S.]