Volume 1 • Issue 2 • 2020
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The present paper deals with cuneiform tablets in the British Museum’s Kuyunjik Collection that were in all likelihood found in Babylonia, not in Nineveh. Following a brief and preliminary overview of the corresponding material, a fragment from this group is published for the first time. It is suggested that it may belong to an administrative record from Ur III Girsu.
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This article starts with the observation that the Hittite 3sg.pret.act. form šipantaš, šipandaš (OH/MS) ‘(s)he libated’ can hardly be analysed as consisting of a tarna-class inflected stem šipant/da– + the 3sg.pret.act. ending -š, since the OH/MH verbal paradigm of ‘to libate’ contains no other tarna-class inflected forms. It is therefore argued that šipantaš, šipandaš should be analysed as consisting of the consonantal verbal stem šipant- + -š, which implies that the a in šipantaš, šipandaš is an empty vowel. In order to explain the spelling -ntaš, -ntaš vs. the spelling -nza, which is commonly used to note down the sequence /-nts/ < PIE *-nts, it is argued that -ntaš, -ndaš denotes /-ntːs/, the regular outcome of a PIE sequence *-nds.
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Reexamination of Anatolian seals bearing legends in Hieroglyphic Luwian with revision and improvement of the readings presented in former editions.
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It is very improbable that Ahhiyawā, a kingdom only attested in Hittite sources, is an adaptation of a Greek *Akhaiwā postulated by Forrer and that it was designating a great Mycenaean power not manifest otherwise. There is no ground to identify the earlier attested Āhhiyā with Ahhiyawā, and it is also not possible to localize it. The much later attested Hiyawa in and for Plain Cilicia will not be derived from Ahhiyawā, and not be imported by imagined Greeks. It may be first attested by Hiya[, the name of a town in the 14th c. BC, which was probably located in Plain Cilicia too.
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The geology, geomorphology and hydrography of the area around Grd-i Tle played an important role in the choice of location and the subsequent development of the settlement. The exceptionally abundant Saruchawa Spring as well as the fertile plains and gentle slopes around it made the settlement an important one on the Rania Plain. Grd-i Tle is located on the alluvial plain of the Qashan and Saruchawa Streams, at the foot of the Makook Ridge where several alluvial fans cover the plain at the mountain front. The fertile toe area of the fans and the alluvial plains have long been irrigated by the water of the Saruchawa Spring through a system of canals. The geomorphological position of the spring allows the irrigation of large areas around the tell. The raw materials used in the construction of the 28-metre-high tell with a volume of 1,716,496 m3 were available from nearby sources in considerable quantities. The building material for mud bricks came from the streams’ floodplain near the tell. The morphological and lithological examination of the stones from the site and its broader area indicates that the stones for construction were collected from the coarse sediment of the upper part of the alluvial fan nearby Grd-i Tle.