marani-

The word is only attested in a LNS manuscript of a festival-ritual from Kizzuwatna (now booked under CTH 500 in the Konkordanz, formerly assigned to CTH 628) as an epithet of the goddess Ningal/Nikkal, who appears mostly in texts with a Kizzuwatnean-Hurrian background and has probably been introduced to the Hittites via Hurrian mediation (cf. Imparati 1998a:356f.)

[A.B.]

nom. sg. c. ?	⸢⸣ma-ra-ni	KUB 59.60 rev. iii 4	(CTH 500, LNS)
	ma-ra-ni	KUB 59.60 rev. iii 5

The attestations follow Otten 1992a:39, Groddek 2004d:103 and HW (2nd ed.) Ḫ:537 (under the lemma hauni-); cf. van den Hout 2007a:250. The transliteration has been checked against the photo of the Mainzer Fototarchiv. The form is apparently uninflected and appears in a logographic sequence. If it is an uninflected epithet, it belongs to the subject of the sentence and accordingly has the function of a nom.sg.c., cf. under Meaning.

[A.B.]

The word has not been translated yet, the dictionaries that list the lexeme at most indicate that it is an epithet; cf. Ünal 2007a:205; Ünal 2016a:182 (not included in HEG, HED, CLL, Laroche 1959a, CHD, EDHIL, Tischler 2008a and Tischler 2016a).

The context of KUB 59.60 rev. iii 2–5 (transliteration is based on the photo of the Mainzer Fotoarchiv, and in addition the hand copy and the transliterations and restorations of Otten 1992a:39; Groddek 2004d:103 and HW (2nd ed.) Ḫ:537 under the lemma hauni- have been taken into account) shows:

(2)[… ]x x nu-wa a-pu-u-uš az-zi-ik-kán-du (3)[…]⸢d⸣nin.gal a-bi ama ki.min (4)[… d]nin.gal ḫa-ú-ni ⸢⸣ma-ra-ni ki.min (5)[…]x ḫa-ú-ni ma-ra-ni ⸢ki.min⸣

(2)[… ]“and they shall feast (3)[… the deit]y Ningal of father and (of?) mother, likewise (4)[… the deit]y Ningal ḫauni ⸢⸣marani, likewise (5)[…] ḫauni marani, likewise”

The verb in line 2 introduces a sequence of deities that shall eat, and hence Ningal ḫauni marani is one of them and represents the subject of the sentence. The marked word marani appears paired with ḫauni (with unknown meaning, cf. under the lemma ḫauni-), both are apparently uninflected and presumably epithets. The parallelism between lines 3 and 4 makes it clear that these are indeed epithets of the deity Ningal/Nikkal, however the beginning of line 5 does not show if there is another deity involved.

With regard to the meaning of this word, one can only speculate whether it is somehow connected to the Anatolian root mar-/mer- ‘to vanish’. However, it is more likely to assume a Hurrian origin for this word, based on a Hurr. root mar- (see under Origin), for which Richter 2012a:243 considers the meaning ‘to purify’ (?), but note that Richter 2016a:455 points out that there is probably more than one root with the same or similar form and different meanings.

[A.B.]

Otten 1992a:39 assumes that ḫauni and marani are probably Luwian because of the gloss markers. He points out the appearance of the Hittite designation LÚ.(MEŠ)tapri- in line 12 and 17 of the same column and its Luwian base taprit- (cf. under the respective lemma ) which is generally assumed to be a loan from Hurrian tabri- ‘chair’. He concludes that the entire portion of this text belongs to the Hurrian-Luwian sphere. Although van den Hout 2007a:205 listed it under ‘marked Luwian words’, it is not included in the list of Luwianisms by Melchert 2005a.

There are two options for the root of this word, it is either Anatolian or Hurrian. For the first possibility, the verbal base attested in mer-/mar- ‘to disappear’ (cf. CHD L–N:293–205) is considered mainly because of its semantics. There is also a Hittite suffix -an- that forms neuter action/result nouns from verbal bases (cf. Hoffner & Melchert 2008a:55), which would lead to a form *maran. An alternative solution could be a connection with Luw. ma-a-ra-an[(-) (without meaning, cf. CLL:139) in KUB 35.39+KUB 9.6 rev. iii 9, but the form is fragmentary and the first vowel is long. A third option in order to connect the word with other Anatolian lexemes would be the Palaic form maran (cf. under the respective lemma).

However, all of these options are not very probable since marani appears to be uninflected (as is LÚ.(MEŠ)tapri- in the same text) and it is accordingly an i-stem. Loanwords from Akkadian or Hurrian usually appear as i-stems in Hittite texts (cf. Hoffner & Melchert 2008a:53). There is a Hurrian verbal root mar- (cf. Nozadze 2007a:238f., Richter 2012a:243, not yet in Laroche 1980a) that is also part of names and epithets (cf. Richter 2016a:455). For the sequence -an- Wilhelm 2008a:88 lists two root complements: one forms causatives, and the function of the second one is unknown. Subsequently this complemented root *maran- could either have been nominalized with the suffix -i- (cf. Wilhelm 2008a:88 with examples) or formed an individualized noun with the suffix -ni- (cf. Wilhelm 2008a:89; Wegner 2007a:47). Since the form is written with a single <n>, the first option is preferred. To conclude, it is likely that the uninflected form marani is not a Luwian but a Hurrian word.

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