murẽ(n)-

This lexeme is found in the inscription of the inscribed pillar of Xanthos, dated contextually to shortly after the ascension of Artaxerxes II in 405-404 BCE and stylistically to around 400 BCE (Borchhardt & Eichner 1997-1999a:19f.).

[D.S.]

abl./instr.

murẽnedi

TL 44c.57 (Xanthos)

For the grammatical assignment cf. under Meaning. Shevoroshkin 2014a:231 suggests the existence of verbs in -ẽne-^(di), adducing, beside murẽnedi, qelẽnẽti (TL 55.8), which is very speculative, since a verbal form is assured for none of the two examples.

[D.S.]

Gehrisch 2018a:82 reads mur(ei) and ẽnedi as two words by restoring two elided vowels, which is not possible, since only one vowel can be elided. Furthermore, her persistence in reading the name of the city Myra in this example is completely ad hoc and contextually unsupported.

[D.S.]

The word murẽnedi appears in a religious context in relation to tubur(i)- translated here as ‘vine (?)’:

pidritẽni : pirli : murẽnedi : tuburiz : uples^!iz : si=ke=tesi : arppaxus : ẽti : tm͂pewẽti (TL 44c.56-58)

‘He pidri-s for the pirli and for this oath within the tm̃pewẽti of Harpagos vines together with murẽnedi.’

It has already been observed that murẽ(n)- is likely etymologically related to mur(i)- and murei(je)- attested in the same context (DLL:122, Schürr 2016d:165). Since mur(i)- is translated here as ‘bunch, grape (?)’, the word murẽ(n)- probably means something similar, which would be supported by its co-occurrence with tubur(i)- ‘vine (?)’. Formally, murẽ(n)- can represent an n-stem built on mur(i)- just like Hitt. muri(ya)n- ‘bunch, grape’ beside muri- ‘id.’ (CHD L–N:333), which would lead a similar semantic interpretation, i.e. murẽnedi ‘with grape bunches’ (Sasseville 2021d). The syntactic function of the instrumental in this case would be comparable to the coordination of two nouns, i.e. ‘vines together with grape bunches’ = ‘vines and grape bunches’. For this function of the adnominal comitative instrumental in similar Hittite contexts, cf. e.g. 1 UDU GEŠTIN-it ši-pa-an-t[i] (KUB 35.5 ii 10) ‘He offers in sacrifice one sheep together with wine.’

[D.S.]