this issue
previous article in this issuenext article in this issue

Document Details :

Title: The Name of the Author of ŞIRZI: a Text Collation
Subtitle: Notes on the Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions
Author(s): DILLO, Martien
Journal: Bibliotheca Orientalis
Volume: 70    Issue: 3-4   Date: 2013   
Pages: 332-360
DOI: 10.2143/BIOR.70.3.2998052

Abstract :
This article presents a text collation of the Hieroglyphic Luwian inscription of ŞIRZI in the region of Malatya, discovered in 1936. In 1955, Bossert identified the text as a building inscription, dating it to the eighth century BC. His interpretation of the text was, however, not followed by Hawkins in his edition of the Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions, Volume I ‘Inscriptions of the Iron Age’ (2000). Bossert understood the inscription to be a commemoration of the construction of a road in connection with ancient mining, whereas Hawkins analysed the text as an inscription of king Sa(?)tiruntiyas of Malatya, celebrating some kind of local construction. He remarked that it would be of considerable interest to identify the word designating this construction. In this paper a number of new readings of the first seven clauses of the inscription are proposed, as well as comments to the collated words. The name of the author of the text is now to be read as Runti(runti)ya and a new interpretation of the construction is suggested: it was most likely related to the hunt of wild animals and may have been a kind of enclosure, possibly with a ‘look-out tower(?)’. In addition, a phonetic reading of the Luwian word that Bossert interpreted as ‘smelting-furnace(??)’, but which Hawkins understands as ‘milk(??)’, as pasmi(?)wa- is proposed.

Download article