āliš

In Hittite transmission, the word occurs only twice, in two duplicate manuscripts of the ritual for the infernal deities (NS).

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Checked against the photographs in the Mainzer Fotoarchiv. – The alleged attestation of a-la at KUB 35.127 iii 6 cited in CLL:8 must probably be read as íd (see Wegner 2002a:191).

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The lexeme appears as the first word of an address of the ancient infernal gods, who are summoned to judge the case of the lord of the house: a-a-li-iš ma-am-ma-aš ^Da.nun.na.ke₄. While most scholars leave āliš mammaš untranslated (Otten 1961a:128f., CHD L-N:139, CLL:8, HW 2nd ed. A:58, Miller 2008a:213, Collins 1997a:168-171), Melchert (pers. comm.) has recently voiced the suspicion that mammaš simply represents the nom./voc. sg. of the baby talk word for ‘mother’ combined with an epithet ‘distant, foreign’ (cf. CLuw. āla/i- ‘other’). Alternatively, an etymological relationship with the name of ^DA-a-la, the consort of ^Dkal, is possible. For the proposal of a Hurrian origin, see HW 2nd ed. A:58.

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1. Laroche (in DLL:26) supposes that āliš is a compound member in personal names, whereas āliš is now thought to be a Hurrian word (Zehnder 2010a:74f.; mentioned in Richter 2012a:11).

Otten 1961a:153 claims that āliš mammaš is of non-Hittite origin and considers Luwian to be the source (followed in CLL:8). In contrast, HW 2nd ed. A:58 (cited in Richter 2012a:16) doubts this and prefers a Hurrian epithet for the infernal deities. More cautiously, CHD L-N:139 does not take a stance, and none is taken here either.

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