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The Language Spoken in Ancient Samʾal

IN contrast to several shorter inscriptions found at Zencirli (Sam'al, for the Assyrians), those dedicated to Hadad and to King Panamu II are written in the national language spoken in the kingdom of Y'DY during the eighth century B.C. Modern students of those documents have sometimes leaned heavily on comparisons with languages of the second millennium, such as Ugaritic; as a result, Sam'alian has been considered by S. Moscatil or by J. Friedrich,2 for instance, as typologically earlier than the division of Northwest Semitic into Canaanite and Aramaic. On the other hand, A. Dupont-Sommer's publication of the stelae from Sefire3 supplied fresh evidence for a more traditional view, bracketing Sam'alian with Aramaic-a view consistently maintained by, among others, H. L. Ginsberg,4 and shared by the author of the latest comprehensive treatment of the Zencirli inscriptions, J. C. L. Gibson.5 Like the full monograph on which it is based,6 the present sketch is primarily concerned with the linguistic classification of Sam'alian; but it was also prompted by my suspicion that whether or not the prevalent scholarly opinion stood the test, fresh insights into the origins of Aramaic itself might thus be gained. At every step of the following discussion, priority will be given to comparisons with documents from the early first millennium B.c.-chiefly Old Aramaic, Hebrew, and Phoenician; a strict adherence to this rule is important, if one is not to misconstrue as relics from the ancient past what is actually susceptible of simpler explanations. Within those limits, the evidence of the earlier Northwest Semitic languages must obviously be taken into account in dating linguistic changes or in determining on which side of the Aramaic/Canaanite borderline a given transformation originated. Palaeographically, the Hadad inscription does not depart significantly from early Phoenician; but, alongside a few local peculiarities,'7 Panamu shows some of the distinctive marks of the Aramaic script, such as the z-shaped zayin or a ghimel with a shorter left stroke.