/ahha/

This lexeme is attested 239 times across all regions and from the second half of the 13^th to the early 7^th century BCE.

[A.P.]

The above table offers a representative selection of attested spellings, excluding broken attestations.

[A.P.]

The meaning of this adverb is only approximately rendered with ‘away, back’, but has been generally clear for a long time, see Meriggi 1934a:96 and earlier Forrer 1932a:40, who notes explicitly the graphemic and linguistic relationship between /ahha/ and /irh(i)-/.Obviously, both scholars read the words differently, viz. /arha/ and /arha-/ resp., and Forrer 1932a interpretes the noun erroneously as ‘leader’. Likewise clear is its multivalent status as an adverb, a postposition, and particularly as a preverb. The postpositional use is infrequent, and /ahha/ governs the abl./instr. in those instances, cf. TELL AHMAR 2, §19: *a-wa/i-ta “CAELUM”-ti ARHA (DEUS)TONITRUS-za-sa (LOQUI)tá-tara/i-ia-tú, approx. /a=wa=an=tta tippasadi ahha Tarhunzas tadariyaTu/, meaning ‘(The storm-god) Tarhunt shall curse him from heaven’ (cf. Hawkins 2000a:228, Melchert 2013a:309).

As a preverb, /ahha/ can mean ‘away’, e.g. in KARKAMIŠ A11b+c, §30: za-pa-wa/i-tá URBS+MI-ni-i-na *a-mu kwa/i+ra/i-i ^IMAGNUS+ra/i-TONITRUS-ta-sa-za INFANS.NEPOS-sa-za (“*314”)ha-sá-ti-i ARHA CAPERE-ha, approx. /zan=ba=wa=tta …-nin ammu kwari Urattarhuntassanz hamsanz hassadi ahha lahha/, translating as ‘Since I took away this city of Uratarhunza’s grandsons by force’ (cf. Hawkins 2000a:104). Its other, related, function as a preverb is to strengthen the meaning of a verb that describes a damaging action, e.g. in KARKAMIŠ A1a, §9: (*349)á-la-ta-ha-na-ha-wa/i(URBS) ARHA DELERE-nú-wa/i-ha, approx. /Allattahanan=ha=wa ahha marnuwahha/, meaning ‘I destroyed (the city of) Allattahana utterly’ (cf. Hawkins 2000a:88). Similarly with the verb /ad-^(ti)/ ‘to eat’, e.g. in SULTANHAN, §33a: á-ta-ha-si-zi-pa-wa/i-na DEUS-ni-i-zi ARHA á-tà-tu-u, approx. /antaHassinzi=ba=wa=an massaninzi ahha adantu/, meaning ‘The gods shall eat up his entrails’ (cf. Hawkins 2000a:466).

[AH.B.]

Indeclinable, the word shows the typical /-a/ ending of such adverbs, cf. /anta/ ‘in(to)’ and /sarra/ ‘on, up’ etc. In contrast to many other adverbs both in Luwian and Hittite, /ahha/ does not have a corresponding form in /-n/. Already Forrer 1932a:40 noted that the adverb probably represents a lexicalisation out of the paradigm of the noun /irh(i)-/ ‘border’,Forrer 1932a assumes it to be an old locative, but the modern understanding of Luwian grammar suggests a dat./loc. sg. as the more likely source. which he read as “/arha-/”; for the undeniable, but phonologically complex relationship between the two words, see Yakubovich 2012a:326-330 and Melchert 2013a.

[AH.B.]

1. /ahhattil(i)-/

The attestations of this word are broadly strewn across the Ištanuwa festival and rituals or the Kuwatalla and Tauriša traditions (from MS onwards).

[E.R.]

Checked against the photographs in the Mainzer Fotoarchiv.

[E.R.]

Since Laroche 1957a:180 n. 5 and Laroche 1958a:113 n. 53, āḫḫa has been regarded as the functional equivalent of Hitt. māḫḫan ‘as, like; when, how’ (see also DLL:23, HW:423, Rosenkranz 1978a:95 and Rosenkranz 1979a:220, CLL:4, Melchert 1992b:46 n. 13, Melchert 1994a:243f., HEG L-N:86, HHw:11, EDHIL:539, Melchert 2013a), based on the interpretation of a-an dingir^MEŠ-in-zi a-aḫ-ḫa na-a-ta-at-ta ta-ta-ar-ḫa-an-du (KUB 35.39 iii 26f.’) as “let the gods crush him like reeds!” A decade ago, Yakubovich 2012a:327 challenged this understanding and suggested as a possible alternative “may the gods crush completely his nadatta”, nadatta being a body part resembling a reed tube (throat or penis) and āḫḫa the functional and etymological match of Hitt. ārḫa ‘away, forth, entirely’. The combination -an ... nātatta can then be interpreted as a partitive apposition (thus considered by Yakubovich 2012a) or, more likely, a depictive adjunct (“let the gods crush him entirely (as if he were) reeds”). In fact, it is not very likely that the word for ‘as, like’ is preposed to its governed noun (cf. the postposition Hitt. iwar ‘as, like’). Other arguments for āḫḫa ‘away, forth, entirely’ put forward by Yakubovich 2012a are the frequent combination with local particle =tta and verbs of placing or motion, the compounded preverbs in Hieroglyphic Luwian, and the compound CLuw. āḫḫašā- ‘to abandon’ (see under Lemma).

Melchert’s (Melchert 2013a) attempt to defend the earlier comparative translation ‘as, like; when, how’ failed to adduce conclusive arguments for it as the only meaning of āḫḫa (an attitude now withdrawn in an e-mail from May 2^nd, 2021) or an additional one. Instead, two homonyms are unlikely, since the syntactic position of the adverb/preverb āḫḫa is too variable and would unavoidably lead to ambiguous structures.

[E.R.]

The adverb āḫḫa goes back to a local case form in -a built from *ārḫ- ‘boundary’ (with secondary assimilation to *āḫḫ-; see under origin).

[E.R.]

1. āḫḫašā-

There is no reason to assume that āḫḫa is a borrowing from Hittite (thus considered in Melchert 2013a). First, the assimilation of -rḫ- > -ḫḫ- is indeed attested in Luwian sporadically, even in the same root, viz. in the verb *irḫui-^(ti) > eḫḫui-^(ti) ‘to make one’s own, to make belong to one’s inner circle’, as pointed out by Yakubovich 2012a:326 (now confirmed in Mouton & Yakubovich 2019a:217f.). Secondly, a regular assimilation in the adverb āḫḫa alone would be easily explicable by the typical erosion process in the course of grammaticalization, particularly in the case of a function word.

[E.R.]

HW 2nd ed. A:259-287