armτa-

This lexeme is attested once in the text of an official agreement found in the precinct of Artemis in Sardis and datable to the 5^th or 4^th century BCE.

[I.Y.]

nom. sg.

armτa(s)

LW 22.10 (Sardis)

From the purely morphosyntactic viewpoint, this form can be alternatively analyzed as the nom. sg. c. of an adjective. See further the semantic discussion below.

[I.Y.]

The earlier interpreters took this form as an adjective modifying kawe- ‘priest’.  For a while, the interpretation ‘of the Moon-god’ was dominant (Gusmani 1964a:62), although it was doubted already in Carruba 1969a:72f. n. 34 on the grounds that there are no synchronic references to the Moon-god arm- in Lydian. The alternative was offered in Schürr 2006b:1585f., where Carian armon ‘interpreter’ and Lycian armanaza- ‘id.’ are adduced for comparison, and the translation ‘prophet’ is proposed for Lyd. armτa-. This suggestion is syntactically fitting, and the collocation kawe=k pakilliš armτa=k can now be translated as ‘and the priest of Bacchus and the armτa’, both individuals functioning as arbitrators in the agreement LW 22. Schürr 2006b’s interpretation ‘prophet’ derives a degree of support from a possibly root etymology of armτa-, see the discussion of its stem formation below. On the other hand, the comparisons offered in Schürr 2006b is also compatible with the translation of Lyd. armτa- as ‘herald’. For the semantic shift ‘herald’ vs. ‘interpreter’, cf. Hitt. tarkummā(i)-^(mi), tarkummiye/a- ‘to announce, interpret’, which ultimately represents the source of Akk. ta/urgumannu- ‘translator, interpreter’ (Starke 1993a). The hypothesis that Lyd. armτa- is equivalent to Gk. ἱεροκῆρυξ ‘sacred herald’, put forward in Sasseville 2018c:130 n. 2, is based on the phrase μετὰ τοῦ ἱέρεω καὶ τοῦ ἱεροκήρυκος ‘with the priest and the sacred herald’ found in a Greek inscription from Miletus, which is reminiscent of the collocation kawe=k pakilliš armτa=k. Accordingly, the Anatolian cognates of the occupational title armτa- are more certain than its precise lexical meaning.

[I.Y.]

The stem is derived with the help of the suffix -τa-, on which see Gérard 2005a:87f., Sasseville 2017a:127 n. 13. If the historical or synchronic meaning of the noun is ‘prophet’, its derivation from ‘moon’ remains possible, since the Moon is cross-culturally regarded as a probable source of paranormal behaviour, cf. Engl. lunatic.

[I.Y.]