marrutti

The word is attested twice in a single Luwian fragment whose content is very difficult to grasp.

[E.R.]

3sg. pres. or dat./loc. sg. (?)	[m]ar-ru-ut-ti	KUB 35.124 ii 3’	(CTH 770, NS)
	mar-ru-ut-ti	KUB 35.124 ii 4’	(CTH 770, NS)

Melchert (CLL:141 and DCL:s.v.) draws attention to the form mar-r[u- in KUB 35.101 Vo. 1 (CTH 754, MS), but due to the lacuna assigning a part of speech is difficult. The word may be a verb, in which case it might be identical with maruwāi- (marruwa-).

[E.R.]

Checked against the photographs in the Mainzer Fotoarchiv.

[E.R.]

For the semantic interpretation, see under Stem.

[E.R.]

Given the assured existence of a verb of Luwian origin maruwāi- (marruwa-), whose meaning in the past was thought to be ‘to redden’ and is now instead taken to be ‘to darken, blacken’ (see s.v.), marutti was considered a present tense form of that verb with Luwian inflection; cf. DLL:69, Oettinger 1979a:385 (both translate ‘to be(come) red’ following Güterbock 1956b:116, n. b; see also under marwai(ya)-), HED M:90 (who translates ‘to be(come) dark, to darken, to be(come) black’).

However, the preterit forms in the immediate context speak against the interpretation of marrutti as a 3sg. pres. form; cf. HEG L-M:151, CLL:141, DCL:s.v. Therefore, we cannot be sure that marrutti is indeed a verbal form, and the two lexemes are kept distinct in HHw:102 and Ünal 2007a:435, while CHD  L-N:202 still lists it under mar(ru)wa-. In either case, the stem of this word and its relationship with the verb maruwāit remain obscure.

[E.R.]

*This lemma was written together with the trainee Marco Ammazzini.