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Sun 9 Apr, 2006 06:07 am
I was just reading Richard F. Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights when I came across a note that stated that Babel means "Gate of God". I was then reminded that I once read the Arabic for gate is Bab.
However, it occurred to me that the Arabic for God isn't El.
So, I was wondering, what is the root language that came up with the name, Babel. And in that language what are the words for tree, palace, tower and exile?
It's not from Arabic. It's from the Akkadian (Babylonian-Assyrian) Bāb (gate) and -ilu, which means "Gate of [the] god".
tree: itsum
palace: ekallum
tower: ????
exile: ???? (Do you mean a period of time, or a legal punishment?)
You can search online for Akkadian / Babylonian-Assyrian resources. There are relatively few.
Akkadian did not use the Roman alphabet.
And "El" was used in Hebrew as a synonym for "God" (of course the actual Hebrew word for God could not be written or spoken) and it crops up in the names Elijah, Elisha, Gabriel and so on.
I see... I guess the Arabic for gate must have been derived from Akkadian then.
I'm curious. I've come across a list of Akkadian words and the entry for palace is ekkal- What does the -um signify, if you don't mind me asking?
And yes, I do mean exile as in a punishment.
EDIT: Strangely enough, none of the sources I come across have the last two words I wanted to look up...
ekkal is the noun stem and um is the nominative singular ending. Remember declensions in Latin?
This page
http://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/akkadian.html
has some Akkadian grammar information, including declension endings (affixes) and gender infixes.
(Gender is 'infixed' in the middle of a word between the stem and case ending, for example sarrum (king) becomes sarratum (queen) -at- is the feminine infix)
Also a dictionary
http://www.oldtestamentstudies.net/hebrew/akkadengdict.asp?item=17&variant=0
I am not an expert, I just did a bit of googling after I read your post in the unanswered posts llist on this board. I hadn't heard of Akkadian until today, but I love languages.
In Phoenician 'El' means God too.
I'm not sure about bab though. It's not in the dictionary, which can mean two things: 1) they have another word for door/gate, or 2) the word for door/gate is not known...
Hm... been to both of those sites. They're very useful, aren't they?
Let me get this straight. The nominative for Bab would be Babum?
I've just been reading the following excerpt:
Quote:If in Akkadian two nouns are combined to form a compound, the first part (that identifies the object/person) is written in a special grammatical form, called the construct state (Lat. status constructus). The second part (a further specification) could be a noun in the genitive.
'Landlord' would in Akkadian be written as 'lord land', with bëlum 'lord' in the construct state bël and bïtum 'land' in the genitive bïtim: 'lord of the land':
bël bïtim
The form of the construct state often is the shortest form of the noun which is phonetically possible, e.g. the construct state of sharrum 'king' is shar
shar sharrï 'king of the kings'
(with long i, here written as ï, the genitive masc.plural)
In general: the construct state is used when the noun is further specified and immediately followed by:
* another noun in the genitive
* a possessive pronoun
* a verbal clause (about this possibility later).
Source:
http://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/akkadian.html
According to that page, shouldn't Gate of God be
Babili and not
Babilu, what with
-i being the genitive ending?
Therefore, wouldn't Palace of God be
Ekallili and not
Ekallilu?
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