Aramaic by Holger Gzella

Author:Holger Gzella [Gzella, Holger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

A wall relief with a building inscription from Hatra (H106), possibly a Medusa, to be dated around the middle of the second century CE. (Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, Gernot Wilhelm.)

Most of the written sources are brief and uncomplicated commemorative and dedicatory inscriptions, sometimes just graffiti, written on statues of men and women, objects, and walls. In them, the people who commissioned them ask for blessings and continued remembrance for themselves and their loved ones and sometimes curse their enemies. The patterns are more conservative than in Palmyra, where people were apparently more inclined to creatively reinterpret traditional forms. Various texts relate who contributed to the construction of a building, usually a temple, for his own well-being and that of those close to him. Here is an example that is a bit more elaborate than most of the other inscriptions of this type:

I, [Gadday], son of Ab[igad, son] of Gadday, son of [A]bigad, son of Kabir[u], of the clan of Rpashmesh, supported for Shmesh, the great god, the benefactor, the house of the exalted nobles (or: the exalted house of the joyful one) of Saggil, the great temple, which (the god) Barmaren built for Shmesh, his father, for my life and for the life of all who love me.23

This text gives us a peek into the underlying tribal organization of this society that persisted after the nomadic tribes were increasingly integrated into urban structures after the second century CE. The name of the god of fortune, Gad, recurs in several generations of the patron’s ancestry, expressing a name-giving tradition in this family. Besides the extensive genealogy, the clan affiliation is explicitly mentioned, and the ties of loyalty are underscored by the wish that others may share in the well-being that Gadday expects as reward for his contribution to the temple’s construction. The sun god Shmesh and his son Barmaren are among the main deities of Hatra; it is remarkable that the latter is presented as the founder of his father’s temple: the gods, too, are connected through ties of benefaction.

The inscriptions from Hatra, Assur, and surroundings generally betray a quite private (that is, nonpublic) character, drawing from a pool of standard patterns and fixed expressions that were also in use elsewhere, such as “Remembered be …,” “This is the statue of …,” or “For the life of …” This aligns them with the larger tradition of Aramaic formulae throughout the Near East. Every now and then, the formulation does show some originality, such as in this prayer to the gods, with which the person who commissioned it emphatically asks everyone who can read it to think of him with affection—apparently, he was very fond of the idea that his reputation would live on:

Remembered and blessed before the god B‘elshmen and before all the gods be Neshra‘qab, functionary(?) of (the god) Barmaren, and Gaddayhab, for good and for beauty. And whoever erases it: may B‘elshmen remove his nest and offspring from him. And (may) the invocation of (the god) Saharu (be) against the days

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