duddušḫiyalla-

This title is attested in an instruction text for the palace gatekeeper in a Hittite and Hattian bilingual list as well as in a contract of Tudḫaliya IV. with the king of Tarḫuntašša preserved on the famous bronze tablet.

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Checked against the photographs in the Konkordanz (Mainzer Fotoarchiv).

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There is contextually no clue vis-à-vis the function of the ^LÚduddušḫiyalla-, except that it denotes a functionary at the court (rendered in Hattian as ^LÚduddušḫial), and, therefore, it is left untranslated (HEG T,D:443f., Otten 1988a:41, Tischler 2008a:206, Miller 2013a:91). A possible etymological connection with Hitt./Luw. duddu- ‘to have mercy’ is tempting, but does not shed immediate light on the function of the title; see under Origin.

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The noun is built with the Luwian suffix -alla- c. (for its genuine non-mutated stem formation, see now Sasseville 2014-2015a).

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Regarding the origin of the title duddušḫiyalla-, van Brock 1962a:139f. distances herself from the suggested Hattian origin of the word, which, as she points out, is by no means cogent, because a loan in the other direction is also possible. She suggests instead a Hurrian origin by comparing the morphematic sequence -ušḫi- with the ones of other Hurrian words in ḫuprušḫi- und aḫrušḫi- (followed by Pecchioli Daddi 1982a:118). Goedegebuure 2008a:146 pleads instead for a Luwian origin based on the Luwian suffix -alla- c. This does not guarantee that the base *duddušḫi(ya)- is Luwian in origin, but it may certainly be argued that -alla- is derived from a Luwian adjective in -i(ya)-, in turn built on the neuter plural of a non-attested s-stem *dudduš-ḫ (cf. the reanalyzed suffix -ašḫa-). In this case, the ultimate base duddu- may be cognate with Hittite and Luwian duddu- ‘to have mercy’, although it cannot be proven as long as the semantics of the agent noun remain obscure.

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