![Tell Fekheriyeh statue](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Tell_Fekheriyeh_statue.jpg)
Hadad-yith'i (
Old Aramaic
Old Aramaic refers to the earliest stage of the Aramaic language, known from the Aramaic inscriptions discovered since the 19th century.
Emerging as the language of the city-states of the Arameans in the Levant in the Early Iron Age, Old Aramai ...
',
Neo-Assyrian
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...
: ') was governor of
Guzana
Tell Halaf ( ar, تل حلف) is an archaeological site in the Al Hasakah governorate of northeastern Syria, a few kilometers from the city of Ra's al-'Ayn near the Turkish border. The site, which dates to the 6th millennium BCE, was the fir ...
and Sikani in northern
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
(c. 850 BCE). A client king or vassal of the
Assyrian empire
Assyrian may refer to:
* Assyrian people, the indigenous ethnic group of Mesopotamia.
* Assyria, a major Mesopotamian kingdom and empire.
** Early Assyrian Period
** Old Assyrian Period
** Middle Assyrian Empire
** Neo-Assyrian Empire
* Assyrian ...
, he was the son of Sassu-nuri, who also served as governor before him. Knowledge of Hadad-yith'i's rule comes largely from the statue and its inscription found at the
Tell el Fakhariya
Tell Fekheriye ( ar, تل الفخيرية) (often spelled as Tell el-Fakhariya or Tell Fecheriye, among other variants) is an ancient site in the Khabur River basin in the Al Hasakah Governorate of northern Syria. It is securely identified a ...
.
[ Known as the Tell el Fakhariya bilingual inscription, as it is written in both ]Old Aramaic
Old Aramaic refers to the earliest stage of the Aramaic language, known from the Aramaic inscriptions discovered since the 19th century.
Emerging as the language of the city-states of the Arameans in the Levant in the Early Iron Age, Old Aramai ...
and Akkadian, its discovery, decipherment and study contributes significantly to cultural and linguistic understandings of the region.[Fales, 2011, pp. 563–564.]
Statue & inscription
The life-size basalt statue of a male standing figure carved in Assyrian style was uncovered by a Syrian farmer in February 1979 at the edge of Tell el Fakhariya
Tell Fekheriye ( ar, تل الفخيرية) (often spelled as Tell el-Fakhariya or Tell Fecheriye, among other variants) is an ancient site in the Khabur River basin in the Al Hasakah Governorate of northern Syria. It is securely identified a ...
on a branch of the Khabur River, opposite Tell Halaf
Tell Halaf ( ar, تل حلف) is an archaeological site in the Al Hasakah governorate of northeastern Syria, a few kilometers from the city of Ra's al-'Ayn near the Turkish border. The site, which dates to the 6th millennium BCE, was the firs ...
, identified with ancient Guzana. Most stone statues discovered and documented as belonging to the Neo-Assyrian period
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...
depict either the kings of Assyria or its gods. The statue of Hadad-yith'i, lacking in royal marks or insignia, is one of only three known stone statues from this period bearing images of figures of lesser rank or reverence.
Based on the stylistic features of the statue, it has been tentatively dated to the mid-9th century BCE, though it could be as old as 11th century when considering the archaic traits of several graphemes used in the Old Aramaic script.[
The name of the inscription's commissioner is recorded as Adad It'i (Hadad Yith'i), and dedicates the statue to the temple in Sikanu of the storm god ]Hadad
Hadad ( uga, ), Haddad, Adad (Akkadian: 𒀭𒅎 '' DIM'', pronounced as ''Adād''), or Iškur ( Sumerian) was the storm and rain god in the Canaanite and ancient Mesopotamian religions.
He was attested in Ebla as "Hadda" in c. 2500 BCE. ...
, a deity worshipped throughout Syria and Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
at the time.[Cathcart, 1996, p. 141.]
The statue bears the most extensive bilingual inscription in Akkadian and Aramaic, and is the oldest Aramaic inscription of such length.[Van de Mieroop, 2015, p. 241.]
The inscription also contains a curse against those who would efface Hadad Yith'i's name from the Hadad temple, invoking Hadad not to accept the offerings of those who did so.[Levine, 1996, p. 112.]
Name, meaning, root
Hadad Yis'i (Yith'i) is an Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
name, and the Akkadian version of the name in the bilingual inscription is transcribed as Adad It'i.[Millard & Boudreuil, Summer 1982.] That the Aramaic has an "s" in place of the "t" in it'i, becoming yis'i is an indication of how the name was vocalized in Aramaic.[
The second part of the king's name is a derivation of an ancient ]Semitic root
The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or " radicals" (hence the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowel ...
meaning "to save", so that the translation of the full name into English is "Hadad is my salvation".["The second element contains the same base as certain ancient names in Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Old South Arabic. This is y-sh-' in Hebrew, seen in Joshua (=Jesus) meaning to 'to save'. Thus the name means 'Hadad is my salvation.'" (Millard & Boudreuil, Summer 1982.)]
This name is significant in Semitic studies because it establishes beyond a doubt the existence of Aramaic personal names based on and derived from the root yt', meaning "to help", or "to save".[Lipinski, 1975, p. 40.] Prior to this decipherment, and that of another Aramaic inscription discovered in Qumran, scholars thought that this verbal root ישע, often identified as the root for the names Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
and Joshua
Joshua () or Yehoshua ( ''Yəhōšuaʿ'', Tiberian: ''Yŏhōšuaʿ,'' lit. 'Yahweh is salvation') ''Yēšūaʿ''; syr, ܝܫܘܥ ܒܪ ܢܘܢ ''Yəšūʿ bar Nōn''; el, Ἰησοῦς, ar , يُوشَعُ ٱبْنُ نُونٍ '' Yūšaʿ ...
, existed only in Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of ...
, and did not exist in Aramaic.[Fitzmyer, 2000, pp. 123 – 125.][ More discoveries and decipherments of ancient Semitic inscriptions have since uncovered dozens of other examples based on this ]proto-Semitic
Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical reconstructed proto-language ancestral to the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic ''Urheimat''; scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant (m ...
root morpheme (yṯ'), the earliest of these being from 2048 B.C in the Amorite
The Amorites (; sux, 𒈥𒌅, MAR.TU; Akkadian: 𒀀𒈬𒊒𒌝 or 𒋾𒀉𒉡𒌝/𒊎 ; he, אֱמוֹרִי, 'Ĕmōrī; grc, Ἀμορραῖοι) were an ancient Northwest Semitic-speaking people from the Levant who also occupied lar ...
personal name ''lašuil''.[Aitken & Davies, 2016. Also note: "The Aram. name hdys'y (Akk. adad-it-'i) in ll. 1, 6 and 12 of the Tell Fekheriye bilingual inscription, probably of the mid-ninth century, can plausibly be associated with the root yṯ'/ישׁע (see initially Abou-Assaf et al. 1982: 43-44, 80: more recent bibliography in Millard 2000: 154). ישׁע is a loan-word in Aramaic found in the Prayer of ]Nabonidus
Nabonidus (Babylonian cuneiform: ''Nabû-naʾid'', meaning "May Nabu be exalted" or "Nabu is praised") was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from 556 BC to the fall of Babylon to the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great in 539 ...
(Milik 1956:413) and in the targum
A targum ( arc, תרגום 'interpretation, translation, version') was an originally spoken translation of the Hebrew Bible (also called the ''Tanakh'') that a professional translator ( ''mǝturgǝmān'') would give in the common language of the ...
(Sokoloff 1990: ad loc.). Aramaized forms of two Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of ...
names are found in the Elephantine papyri
The Elephantine Papyri and Ostraca consist of thousands of documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of Elephantine and Aswan, which yielded hundreds of papyri and ostraca in hieratic and demotic Egyptian, Aramaic, Koine Greek, Latin and Co ...
(Noth 1928:154–55, 176).
See also
* Tell el Fakhariya
Tell Fekheriye ( ar, تل الفخيرية) (often spelled as Tell el-Fakhariya or Tell Fecheriye, among other variants) is an ancient site in the Khabur River basin in the Al Hasakah Governorate of northern Syria. It is securely identified a ...
* Tell el Fakhariya bilingual inscription
References
Bibliography
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* Grayson, Albert K. (1991). Assyrian civilization. J.Boardman et al., 194-228.
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* Millard, A., (2014) Context of Scripture Online. Editor in Chief: W. Hallo. BrillOnline, Retrieved 6 December 2014.
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* Roobaert, Arlette (1996) "A Neo-Assyrian Statue From Til Barsib." British Institute for the Study of Iraq 58: 83. Retrieved 27 November 2014.
*
* {{cite journal, journal=Bibliotheca Orientalis , volume=68 , issue=5–6, date=September–December 2011, author=Zukerman, Alexander , title=Titles of 7th Century BCE Philistine Rulers and their Historical-Cultural Background
Syrian politicians
Ancient history