Dennis Pardee - Canaanite dialects

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C H A P T E R 5
CANAANITE DIALECTS
D E N N I S P A R D E E
1. HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
The term
Canaanite
has two primary usages: (i) to designate the dialects of Northwest
Semitic spoken in the region called
Canaan
in the second half of the second millennium
BC; and (ii) to differentiate the “Canaanite” dialects of the first millennium, primarily
Phoenician and Hebrew, from other Northwest Semitic languages spoken in Canaan after
c.
1000 BC, primarily the Aramaic dialects. The principal feature defining Canaanite is the
so-called
Canaanite shift
, that is, Proto-Semitic
¤
a
realized as
o
(e.g., Hebrew
.
ob
“good”
corresponds to Aramaic
.
ab
).
For the Canaanite of the second millennium BC, there are two primary sources: (i) the texts
written in Akkadian, the lingua franca of the time, by Canaanite scribes and which contain
both Canaanitisms and explicit glosses, i.e., words written in cuneiform script as a gloss in
the local language on a preceding Akkadian word; (ii) the
Proto-Canaanite
inscriptions, that
is, inscriptions written in archaic linear script and apparently recording the local language.
Some controversy surrounds what “Canaan” meant, both politically and geographically,
in the second millennium BC (Na’aman 1994). In the second half of the millennium, the
term was used to designate the area of Asia under Egyptian control, including a number of
city-states. It comprised an area stretching roughly from what is today northern Lebanon to
the border of Egypt, perhaps including some of the arable lands of Transjordan. The term is
already attested in the first half of the millennium (eighteenth-century BC texts from Mari)
in regard to cities located in the same general area, and there is no reason to doubt that the
geographical extent of Canaan was already similar to that known several centuries later. The
origin of the term is, however, still unclear.
On the possibility of dividing Canaanite into
North Canaanite
and
South Canaanite
, with
the former comprised by Ugaritic, see Tropper 1994 and Pardee 1997c.
For the Canaanite of the first millennium BC and later, there are nearly continuous
bodies of inscriptions beginning shortly before 1000 BC. In the case of Phoenician, these
inscriptions are found from Anatolia to Egypt to Mesopotamia during roughly the first
half of the millennium, then throughout the western Mediterranean as late Phoenician and
Punic until the latter dies out well into the Christian era. In the case of Hebrew, a long series
of dialects is attested from the tenth century BC down to the present. Canaanite languages
distinct from Hebrew and Phoenician were also spoken in Transjordan during the first
millennium BC, i.e., Moabite, Ammonite, and Edomite. The sources for these languages are
very sparse and they cease in the Persian period, replaced by Aramaic; there are thus few data
by which to determine how long they survived as living languages.
103
 104
The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia
Because separate articles are devoted to detailed presentations of Hebrew and Phoenician,
this article will deal with the earlier manifestations of Canaanite.
2. WRITING SYSTEMS
The two principal bodies of evidence for Canaanite in the second millennium BC correspond
to two writing systems.
2.1 CUNEIFORM
The greater number of data come from Canaanite features in Akkadian documents that
date for the most part from the early fourteenth century. For the description of Akkadian
cuneiform as a writing system, see
WAL
Chapter 8,
§
2.
The vast majority of these documents, which total nearly four hundred, were discovered
at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt (see
WAL
Ch. 8,
§
1.1). They represent the international corre-
spondence directed to Egyptian pharaohs of the early fourteenth century, from as far away as
Hattusas, the capital of the Hittite empire (north-central Anatolia), and Babylon (southern
Mesopotamia). The Akkadian of these letters varies according to the local scribal schools;
that used by the scribes of the various cities of Canaan is so marked by local features that
it has been described as a scribal “code,” a hybrid language that, though basically Akkadian
and thus incomprehensible to speakers of the local language, would have been understood
only by Akkadian speakers trained in its use (Moran 1987:27; 1992:xxi–xxii; Rainey 1996,
II:1–16, 31–32).
The Canaanite substratum may be derived by triangulation between the written forms,
normative Akkadian of the period, and later Canaanite. The primary difficulties with this
derivation are two: (i) problems stemming from the writing system itself, which permits
multiple values for a given sign; and (ii) the very process of describing an unknown language
by assumed parallels from other languages that are only attested half a millennium and more
later. These difficulties are palliated in part by the presence of explicit glosses: an Akkadian
word or a Sumerian logogram of known meaning may be followed by one or two oblique
wedges (German
Glossenkeil
is the technical term for such a wedge) and then by a Canaanite
word. The most famous of these is perhaps
SU : zu-ru-u
˘
in
EA
287:27, where
SU
is the
z
@
ro
ac
, Aramaic
d
@
ra
c
, and Arabic
dira
c
and illustrating the shift of
¤
a
to
o
(Sivan 1984: 29),
and perhaps of
¤
d
to
z
(Sivan 1984: 41).
As fraught with difficulties as the above described derivational process is, we know
much more about Canaanite from these Akkadian texts than we do from the so-called
Proto-Canaanite inscriptions. That is because the latter are far fewer in number and poorly
preserved.
2.2 PROTO-CANAANITE
The problem of the Proto-Canaanite inscriptions is directly linked with that of the
Proto-
Sinaitic
inscriptions. The latter are a group of inscriptions, numbering about thirty, dis-
covered near Egyptian turquoise mines in the Sinai, dated variously to the eighteenth
or fifteenth centuries BC, which have been only partially deciphered but which seem
to represent a form of early West Semitic (for a recent overview with bibliography, see
Pardee 1997b). Corresponding to these texts are a group of about twenty texts discovered
logogram for “hand/arm” and
zu-ru-u
˘
is the Canaanite gloss, corresponding to Hebrew
 CANAANITE DIALECTS
105
in southern Canaan and spread over about five centuries, from the seventeenth century BC
to the twelfth (Sass 1988, 1991).
The state of preservation of these latter, Proto-Canaanite, inscriptions is even poorer
than is that of the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions. The identification of Proto-Canaanite as
a West Semitic script rests on (i) formal similarity with the earlier Proto-Sinaitic script;
(ii) the decipherment of a minority of these texts; and (iii) the formal evolution towards
Phoenician script. Because of these difficulties, the state of decipherment of these inscrip-
tions is even less advanced than in the case of the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions. The principal
text of one of the best-preserved of Proto-Canaanite inscriptions, that from ¨Izbet
.
ar
.
ah,
seems not to be Semitic in spite of the fact that it contains a Hebrew/Phoenician-type
abecedary. On the other hand, the well-known Lachish Ewer inscription has been very plau-
sibly deciphered as West Semitic (for an overview, with bibliography, see Pardee 1997a).
Unfortunately, the state of preservation of most of the other inscriptions and their broad
geographical and temporal spread make reliable decipherment in most cases impossible.
These inscriptions, to the extent that they are Semitic, are written in a purely consonan-
tal script, with no use of
matres lectionis
; and this feature coupled with the problems
posed by the paucity and state of the texts make it difficult to define the language rep-
resented. The presence of a Hebrew/Phoenician-type abecedary dating to
c.
1200 BC in the
֒
Izbet
.
ar
.
ah inscription may be seen as indicating, even if the actual text accompanying
the abecedary is in another language, that the script was used in other cases to write texts
in a language of the Canaanite type. This conclusion is borne out by the Lachish Ewer
inscription.
In addition to these texts from southern Canaan, there are a group of arrowhead inscrip-
tions discovered in southern Canaan and Phoenicia and a very limited number of archaic
Phoenician inscriptions from Byblos that seem to provide a bridge between Proto-Canaanite
and Phoenician. Unfortunately, the small number of texts and the states of preservation
again interfere in determining origins and filiations of the scripts as well as of the languages
represented.
Finally, there is at least one inscription in the Ugaritic cuneiform script that has been
identified as Phoenician in nature (see Ch. 4,
§
2.1).
3. GRAMMAR
From inscriptions that predate the abecedaries of the
֒
Izbet
.
ar
.
ah ostracon (twelfth
century BC), some fifteen Proto-Canaanite signs representing consonantal phonemes are
identifiable with some degree of certainty. As these match the Proto-Sinaitic data, as well as
the data from the later West-Semitic languages, it may be assumed that the original Proto-
Canaanite consonantal inventory was similar to, if not identical with, the Proto-Sinaitic
inventory and that the two groups of texts represent the same language, or two or more
languages/dialects descended from a common ancestor.
Virtually all other aspects of the linguistic description of Canaanite dialects are derived
from the texts written in Akkadian cuneiform. After a century of research, comprehen-
sive studies of these data have been produced by Sivan 1984 (phonology, morphology, and
lexicon of the Northwest Semitic words in western Akkadian texts of the fifteenth–thirteenth
centuries); Rainey 1996 (a study of the Akkadian of the Amarna texts, with special empha-
sis on Canaanite features, particularly verbal morphosyntax); and Moran 1987 and 1992
(comprehensive translations of the Amarna texts into French and English). Sivan spread his
net a bit wider than he might have done (see Huehnergard 1987); his work is thus useful
 106
The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia
as a collection of all data furnished by texts written in Akkadian on the various Northwest
Semitic languages from Antioch to the border of Egypt in the period covered, but it is
more difficult to use as a source for defining Canaanite. Rainey 1996, on the other hand,
is specifically a study of the Akkadian texts written by Canaanite scribes; its goal, however,
was not to present exclusively the extracted Canaanite data as a grammar of Canaanite, but
to present the larger picture, of which the Canaanite part is sometimes quite small. All the
relevant data are, however, gathered in these two works, accompanied by expert analyses
and extensive bibliographical information (including proper credit to earlier scholarship,
particularly Moran’s basic studies).
The following are some of the primary characteristics of Canaanite of
c.
1400 BC:
1.
The Canaanite shift of
¤
a
to
o
.
2.
A consonantal inventory that is smaller than that of Ugaritic and different from that
of Aramaic (e.g.,
¤
.
3.
A case system marked primarily by suffixed vowels, like that of Ugaritic (see Ch. 2,
§
4.2.2). Case-vowels have generally disappeared or acquired other functions in the
first-millennium Northwest Semitic languages.
4.
A verbal system of which the morphology and morphosyntax are very similar to those
of Ugaritic (see Ch. 2,
§
4.4). The first-millennium languages have evolved beyond this
stage, often retaining only remnants of the earlier systems.
5.
The probable absence of a S-causative stem (like Phoenician and Hebrew).
6.
Dissimilation of the vowel
a
in
YaQTaL-
verbal forms, giving
YiQTaL
, the so-called
Barth–Ginsberg Law
.
7.
Many details of the lexical inventory are known (Sivan 1984), but pieces of systems –
for example, primary verbs of movement – are missing, making comparisons with
later systems difficult.
One may speak of these features as defining Canaanite; it is likely, however, that constel-
lations of less important features characterized a number of local Canaanite dialects.
REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS
EA
=
text citation according to Knudtzon, J. 1915.
Die el-Amarna Tafeln mit Einleitung und
Erlauterungen
. Leipzig: Hinrichs.
Huehnergard, J. 1987. Review of Sivan 1984.
Journal of the American Oriental Society
107:713–725.
Moran, W. 1987.
Les lettres d’el Amarna. Correspondance diplomatique du pharaon.
Litteratures
Anciennes du Proche-Orient 13. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf.
———
. 1992.
The Amarna Letters
. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Na’aman, N. 1994. “The Canaanites and their land – a rejoinder.”
Ugarit-Forschungen
24:397–418.
Pardee, D. 1997a. “Proto-Canaanite.” In E. Meyers (ed.),
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in
the Near East
, vol. 4, pp. 354–355. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———
. 1997b. “Proto-Sinaitic.” In E. Meyers (ed.),
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the
Near East
, vol. 4, pp. 352–354. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———
. 1997c. Review of Tropper 1994.
Journal of the American Oriental Society
117:375–378.
Rainey, A. 1996.
Canaanite in the Amarna Tablets. A Linguistic Analysis of the Mixed Dialect Used by
Scribes from Canaan
(4 vols.). Handbuch der Orientalistik, 25. Leiden: Brill.
Sass, B. 1988.
The Genesis of the Alphabet and Its Development in the Second Millennium BC
. Agypten
und Altes Testament 13. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
———
. 1991.
Studia Alphabetica. On the Origin and Early History of the Northwest Semitic, South
Semitic and Greek Alphabets
. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 102. Freiburg: Universitatsverlag;
Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
!
.
).
CANAANITE DIALECTS
107
Sivan, D. 1984.
Grammatical Analysis and Glossary of the Northwest Semitic Vocables in Akkadian
Texts of the 15th–13th C. BC from Canaan and Syria
. Alter Orient und Altes Testament, 214.
Kevelaer: Butzon and Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag.
Tropper, J. 1994. “Is Ugaritic a Canaanite language?” In G. Brooke, A. Curtis, and J. Healey (eds.),
Ugarit and the Bible
. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Ugarit and the Bible,
Manchester, September 1992, pp. 343–353. Ugaritisch-Biblische Literatur 11. M unster:
UGARIT-Verlag.
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