cẽqra-

This lexeme is attested twice, once in the text of an agreement found in the precinct of Artemis in Sardis, and once in a likely votive inscription from the Lower Hermos valley. Both inscriptions can be dated to the 5th or 4th century BCE.

[I.Y.]

The form cẽqraḍ can alternatively be read as cẽqra=ḳ (Gusmani 1964a:90). This, however, does not change the morphological analysis of the noun under discussion, because the combination of cẽqrad and =k ‘and’ would yield cẽqra=k by a standard morphophonemic rule (Gérard 2005a:77).

[I.Y.]

The noun cẽqra- is treated in considerable detail in Schürr 2011a:75-78. The dedicatory inscription LW 43 apparently informs us that a certain Manes sponsored a stele as (?) a cẽqra- of the god Qλdãn-. In the agreement LW 22 cẽqra- appears in apposition to qira- ‘property’, but the šiwraλm(i)- official of Artemis appears to be in charge of it. To this one must add that Artemis is referred to as ‘the Lady of the cẽqra-’ in the poetic inscription LW 11 (cf. caqrla-). It seems to follow from the combination of these attestations that cẽqra- represents a special type of property designated for the gods. This semantic interpretation agrees well with the proposed etymology of cẽqra- (cf. below). The adjectival analysis of cẽqra- as ‘sacrosanct’ (Gusmani 1964a:90) is less likely given the existence of the adjectival derivative caqrla-.
As plausibly argued in Schürr 2006b:1582 the noun cẽ-qra- represents a historical compound with the final element qira- ‘property’. With regard to the first member of this compound, one can think of the comparison with cẽn(i)- ‘to designate’, which would yield the expected meaning ‘designated property’. For the syncope of post-tonic open syllables in Lydian see Gérard 2005a:49. There are no reasons to think that the creation of this compound predates the separation of Lydian from the other Anatolian languages.

[I.Y.]

Synchronically, this is a barytone neuter a-stem.

[I.Y.]

1. caqrla-

For the second member of the compound see PAnat. *ku̯ḗr-/*ku̯ér-.