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59-526: Occupation of the site extends from the Late Chalcolithic, Ubaid period, Early Bronze I period, Middle Bronze II, until the Iron Age. In the Late Chalcolithic (4000-3200 BC) it was surrounded by a megalithic stone wall at the base of the acropolis with a moat. The economy was based on the herding of mostly sheep but also pigs. The find of elderly bovines indicated that agriculture was being practices. During

118-452: A Hittite document ( KUB 19.15 + KBo 50.4), Tette tried to enlist Egypt as a partner when Nuḫašše (as apparently also Kinza ) rose in rebellion against the Hittites. The prevailing opinion equates this rebellion with the seventh year of Muršili's reign, but there are also opinions according to which it took place in the ninth year of Muršili's reign. From Egypt, which may actually have undertaken

177-514: A bilingual Hittite -Hurrian text (named the Song of Release) which is copied from a Hurrian original dating to 2000 BC. In the Hurrian text, Nuhašše was a close ally of Ebla. The region was mentioned also in the archive of Mari and in the archive of Alalakh but did not designate a politically unified entity; at the times of Mari, the northern regions of Nuhašše were under the supremacy of Yamhad while

236-524: A campaign into Syria, the Hittite king demanded Tette's extradition in a letter addressed to Arma'a ( Horemheb ). Tell Afis may have been part of Nuḫašše, later becoming an administrative center under Hattusili III . In the Iron Age, the region became known as Lu'ash . Proto-Semitic language Proto-Semitic is the reconstructed proto-language common ancestor to the Semitic language family . There

295-558: A high king. Tell Khan Sheykhun has tenatively been identified as nu-ḫa-še . The Semitic name "Nuhašše" means "rich, prosperous". Nuhašše stretched from the Euphrates valley in the east to the Orontes valley in the west between Hamath in the south and Aleppo in the north; it did not include Ebla and it was separated from the Euphrates river by Emar and Ashtata. In the west, it reached

354-568: A merger of the two to [s] occurs in various other languages such as Arabic and Ethiopian Semitic. On the other hand, Kogan has suggested that the initial merged s in Arabic was actually a "hissing-hushing sibilant", presumably something like [ɕ] (or a "retracted sibilant"), which did not become [s] until later. That would suggest a value closer to [ɕ] (or a "retracted sibilant") or [ʃ] for Proto-Semitic *š since [t͡s] and [s] would almost certainly merge directly to [s]. Furthermore, there

413-508: A relatively close object and those showing a more distant one. Nonetheless, it is very difficult to reconstruct Proto-Semitic forms on the basis of the demonstratives of the individual Semitic languages. A series of interrogative pronouns are reconstructed for Proto-Semitic: *man ‘who’, *mā ‘what’ and *’ayyu ‘of what kind’ (derived from *’ay ‘where’). Reconstruction of the cardinal numerals from one to ten (masculine): All nouns from one to ten were declined as singular nouns with

472-480: A storm god was also found. The earlier temples were leveled when the Iron Age II-III temples, A2 followed by A1, were constructed. They were of a tripartite longroom design 38 meters by 32 meters with a vestibule, a long hall, a rear room, and rooms along the sides and constructed of stone.Temple A1 was dismantled and the materials re-used. A sizable Iron Age II cultic area was discovered to the east of Temple A2, on

531-520: A surface collection. In 1970, 1972, and 1978 excavations were conducted by Paolo Matthiae with the Italian Archaeological Mission in Syria. The site was excavated from 1986 until 2010 by a joint project from the universities of Rome, Pisa and Bologna, under the direction of Stefania Mazzoni and Serena Maria Cecchini. Two areas (B and D) were excavated in the northern part of the lower town. On

590-457: Is any consonant and V is any vowel), or on the third syllable from the end, if the second one had the structure CV . Proto-Semitic allowed only syllables of the structures CVC , CVː , or CV . It did not permit word-final clusters of two or more consonants, clusters of three or more consonants, hiatus of two or more vowels, or long vowels in closed syllables. Most roots consisted of three consonants. However, it appears that historically

649-811: Is based on triads of related voiceless , voiced and " emphatic " consonants. Five such triads are reconstructed in Proto-Semitic: The probable phonetic realization of most consonants is straightforward and is indicated in the table with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Two subsets of consonants, however, deserve further comment. The sounds notated here as " emphatic consonants " occur in nearly all Semitic languages as well as in most other Afroasiatic languages, and they are generally reconstructed as glottalization in Proto-Semitic. Thus, *ṭ, for example, represents [tʼ] . See below for

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708-517: Is certain although few modern languages preserve the sounds. The pronunciation of *ś ṣ́ as [ɬ ɬʼ] is still maintained in the Modern South Arabian languages (such as Mehri ), and evidence of a former lateral pronunciation is evident in a number of other languages. For example, Biblical Hebrew baśam was borrowed into Ancient Greek as balsamon (hence English "balsam"), and the 8th-century Arab grammarian Sibawayh explicitly described

767-463: Is debated: The precise sound of the Proto-Semitic fricatives, notably of *š , *ś , *s and *ṣ , remains a perplexing problem, and there are various systems of notation to describe them. The notation given here is traditional and is based on their pronunciation in Hebrew, which has traditionally been extrapolated to Proto-Semitic. The notation *s₁ , *s₂ , *s₃ is found primarily in

826-406: Is more naturally interpreted as deaffrication. Evidence for *š as /s/ also exists but is somewhat less clear. It has been suggested that it is cross-linguistically rare for languages with a single sibilant fricative to have [ʃ] as the sound and that [s] is more likely. Similarly, the use of Phoenician 𐤔 *š , as the source of Greek Σ s , seems easiest to explain if the phoneme had

885-731: Is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic Urheimat : scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant , the Sahara , the Horn of Africa , the Arabian Peninsula , or northern Africa. The Semitic language family is considered part of the broader macro-family of Afroasiatic languages . The earliest attestations of any Semitic language are in Akkadian , dating to around

944-475: Is thought to have been from Akkad. The earliest text fragments of West Semitic are snake spells in Egyptian pyramid texts, dated around the mid-third millennium BC. Proto-Semitic itself must have been spoken before the emergence of its daughters, so some time before the earliest attestation of Akkadian, and sufficiently long so for the changes leading from it to Akkadian to have taken place, which would place it in

1003-404: Is unclear whether reduction of *š began in a daughter proto-language or in Proto-Semitic itself. Some thus suggest that weakened *š̠ may have been a separate phoneme in Proto-Semitic. Proto-Semitic is reconstructed as having non-phonemic stress on the third mora counted from the end of the word, i.e. on the second syllable from the end, if it has the structure CVC or CVː (where C

1062-568: Is various evidence to suggest that the sound [ʃ] for *š existed while *s was still [ts] . Examples are the Southern Old Babylonian form of Akkadian, which evidently had [ʃ] along with [t͡s] as well as Egyptian transcriptions of early Canaanite words in which *š s are rendered as š ṯ . ( ṯ is an affricate [t͡ʃ] and the consensus interpretation of š is [ʃ] , as in Modern Coptic. ) Diem (1974) suggested that

1121-586: The Horn of Africa between 1500 and 500 BC. Proto-Semitic had a simple vowel system, with three qualities *a, *i, *u, and phonemic vowel length, conventionally indicated by a macron: *ā, *ī, *ū. This system is preserved in Classical Arabic. The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic was originally based primarily on Arabic , whose phonology and morphology (particularly in Classical Arabic ) is extremely conservative, and which preserves as contrastive 28 out of

1180-508: The 24th to 23rd centuries BC (see Sargon of Akkad ) and the Eblaite language , but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian texts from the first half of the third millennium BC. One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur , addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur ( c.  2485 –2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who

1239-477: The Arabic descendant of *ṣ́ , now pronounced [dˤ] in the standard pronunciation or [ðˤ] in Bedouin-influenced dialects, as a pharyngealized voiced lateral fricative [ɮˤ] . (Compare Spanish alcalde , from Andalusian Arabic اَلْقَاضِي al-qāḍī "judge".) The primary disagreements concern whether the sounds were actually fricatives in Proto-Semitic or whether some were affricates, and whether

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1298-470: The Canaanite sound change of [*θ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) > *š would be more natural if *š was [s] than if it was [ʃ] . However, Kogan argues that, because *s was [ts] at the time, the change from [*θ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) to *š is the most likely merger, regardless of

1357-597: The Early Bronze Age (2500-2000 BC) occupation was mainly of a domestic nature though an industrial area (pottery manufacture) was found to the north and a food processing area to the south. In the Middle Bronze IIA (c. 1820-1628 BC), the Kingdom of Yamhad (Aleppo) gained control of the region and Ebla to the south became a vassalage. Afis being north of Ebla on the route to Aleppo would have been part of this change. In

1416-658: The Greek placename Mátlia , with tl used to render Ge'ez ḍ (Proto-Semitic *ṣ́ ), is "clear proof" that this sound was affricated in Ge'ez and quite possibly in Proto-Semitic as well. The evidence for the most maximal interpretation, with all the interdentals and lateral obstruents being affricates, appears to be mostly structural: the system would be more symmetric if reconstructed that way. The shift of *š to h occurred in most Semitic languages (other than Akkadian, Minaean , Qatabanian ) in grammatical and pronominal morphemes, and it

1475-473: The Kingdom of Hamath. The tell is 28 hectares in area (570 meters by 500 meters) with an extensive lower city and an acropolis on the northern edge. The site had been subject to quarrying by the local populace for building materials. The lower town was protected by a Late Iron Age 5.2 meter wide wall. The wall was built without foundation or facing which the excavators took to indicate it was built rapidly. In 1932 William F. Albright collected Iron Age pottery in

1534-511: The Levant around 3750 BC, with a later single introduction from South Arabia into the Horn of Africa around 800 BC. This statistical analysis could not, however, estimate when or where the ancestor of all Semitic languages diverged from Afroasiatic. It thus neither contradicts nor confirms the hypothesis that the divergence of ancestral Semitic from Afroasiatic occurred in Africa. In another variant of

1593-539: The Orontes river only if it included the region of Niya which is debated. The main city was named Ugulzat (possibly modern Khan Shaykhun ). Hittite texts mention the "Kings of Nuhašše", indicating that the region consisted of a number of petty kingdoms that might have formed a confederacy; one of the monarchs took the role of primus inter pares (first among equals), and resided in Ugulzat. The majority of population in

1652-510: The Siege of Carchemish), attacking and annexing the region. Tutankhamun also died, causing Suppiluliuma I to become the most powerful ruler in the Near East controlling large parts of Anatolia and Syria. The Amarna archives (c. 1350 BC) reveals that Nuhašše was engaged in territorial disputes with its neighbour Amurru . Amurru had swiftly aligned itself with the Hittites. A Hittite treaty dating to

1711-499: The acropolis an Old Syrian Linear Style green stone seal was found, dating to the 1st half of the 2nd millennium BC. In the 15th century BC, the Mitanni Empire gained control over the region. Afis may have belonged to a petty kingdom called Nuhasse . Around 1350-1345 BC, the Hittite ruler Suppiluliuma I gained control over the northern parts of Syria. This region was then called Nuhasse . Levels VII to V have been firmly dated to

1770-542: The acropolis, areas A, G, and, E (on the western slope) were excavated. The site was reportedly damaged by encampments during the Syrian civil war . Nuhasse Nuhašše ( nu-ḫa-áš-še; nu-ḫa-še ), was a region in northwestern Syria that flourished in the 2nd millennium BC. It was east of the Orontes River bordering Aleppo (northwest) and Qatna (south). It was a petty kingdom or federacy of principalities probably under

1829-414: The affricate interpretation of Akkadian s z ṣ is generally accepted. There is also a good deal of internal evidence in early Akkadian for affricate realizations of s z ṣ . Examples are that underlying || *t, *d, *ṭ + *š || were realized as ss , which is more natural if the law was phonetically || *t, *d, *ṭ + *s || > [tt͡s] , and that *s *z *ṣ shift to *š before *t , which

Tell Afis - Misplaced Pages Continue

1888-472: The city Yaruqatta ( i-ia-ru-wata-an/aš). Tette of Nuḫašše () was the grandson of Šarrupši and was installed by king Šuppiluliuma I as the new king in a vassal treaty (CTH 53). When Šuppiluliuma I died around 1323 BC, the population's confidence in Tette decreased. The office was given to his brother, Šummittara. Tette staged a revolt against his brother and returned to the trone, being installed by Muršili II. In

1947-516: The conventional transcription and still maintained by some of the authors in the field is that *š was a voiceless postalveolar fricative ( [ʃ] ), *s was a voiceless alveolar sibilant ( [s] ) and *ś was a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative ( [ɬ] ). Accordingly, *ṣ is seen as an emphatic version of *s ( [sʼ] ) *z as a voiced version of it ( [z] ) and *ṣ́ as an emphatic version of *ś ( [ɬʼ] ). The reconstruction of *ś ṣ́ as lateral fricatives (or affricates)

2006-454: The eastern acropolis. In Building G, 25 meters to the east of the sacred area, a pottery shard marked "LWR" was found. It was speculated that they were three letters of the god of Hazrek El-we. Three additional Aramaic fragments were later found. In Iron Age III (750/700-600 BC) the site was occupied c. 738 BC by the Neo-Assyrian empire under Tiglath-Pileser III . In 720 BC Sargon II defeated

2065-418: The evidence for the "maximal extension" positions that extend affricate interpretations to non-sibilant "fricatives" is largely structural because of both the relative rarity of the interdentals and lateral obstruents among the attested Semitic language and the even greater rarity of such sounds among the various languages in which Semitic words were transcribed. As a result, even when the sounds were transcribed,

2124-402: The evident 29 consonantal phonemes. Thus, the phonemic inventory of reconstructed Proto-Semitic is very similar to that of Arabic, with only one phoneme fewer in Arabic than in reconstructed Proto-Semitic, with *s and *š merging into Arabic / s / ⟨ س ⟩ and *ś becoming Arabic / ʃ / ⟨ ش ⟩ . As such, Proto-Semitic is generally reconstructed as having

2183-490: The exact pronunciation of *š while the shift was underway. Evidence for the affricate nature of the non-sibilants is based mostly on internal considerations. Ejective fricatives are quite rare cross-linguistically, and when a language has such sounds, it nearly always has [sʼ] so if *ṣ was actually affricate [tsʼ] , it would be extremely unusual if *θ̣ ṣ́ was fricative [θʼ ɬʼ] rather than affricate [t͡θʼ t͡ɬʼ] . According to Rodinson (1981) and Weninger (1998),

2242-492: The first and third consonants were identical were extremely rare. Three cases are reconstructed: nominative (marked by *-u ), genitive (marked by *-i ), accusative (marked by *-a ). There were two genders: masculine (marked by a zero morpheme) and feminine (marked by *-at / *-t and *-ah / -ā ). The feminine marker was placed after the root, but before the ending, e.g.: *ba‘l- ‘lord, master’ > *ba‘lat- ‘lady, mistress’, *bin- ‘son’ > *bint- ‘daughter’. There

2301-467: The following phonemes (as usually transcribed in Semitology): *ʼ , ˀ [ ʔ ] The reconstructed phonemes *s *z *ṣ *ś *ṣ́ *ṯ̣, which are shown to be phonetically affricates in the table above, may also be interpreted as fricatives ( /s z sʼ ɬ ɬʼ θʼ/ ), as discussed below. This was the traditional reconstruction and is reflected in the choice of signs. The Proto-Semitic consonant system

2360-405: The former for districts belonging to Aleppo; The Hittites granted Nuhašše its request. The date of the border disputes in which the Hittites interfered is related to the date of the monarch named Hattusili but the identity of that king is mysterious but could have reigned as co-king of Arnuwanda I , early 14th century BC. In Hittite clay tablet (CTH 63), Barga and Nuḫašše disputed the dominion of

2419-495: The fourth millennium BC or earlier. Since all modern Semitic languages can be traced back to a common ancestor, Semiticists have placed importance on locating the Urheimat of the Proto-Semitic language. The Urheimat of the Proto-Semitic language may be considered within the context of the larger Afro-Asiatic family to which it belongs. The previously popular hypothesis of an Arabian Urheimat has been largely abandoned since

Tell Afis - Misplaced Pages Continue

2478-453: The fricatives/affricates. In modern Semitic languages, emphatics are variously realized as pharyngealized ( Arabic , Aramaic , Tiberian Hebrew (such as [tˤ] ), glottalized ( Ethiopian Semitic languages , Modern South Arabian languages , such as [tʼ] ), or as tenuis consonants ( Turoyo language of Tur Abdin such as [t˭] ); Ashkenazi Hebrew and Maltese are exceptions and emphatics merge into plain consonants in various ways under

2537-399: The influence of Indo-European languages ( Sicilian for Maltese, various languages for Hebrew). An emphatic labial *ṗ occurs in some Semitic languages, but it is unclear whether it was a phoneme in Proto-Semitic. The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic has nine fricative sounds that are reflected usually as sibilants in later languages, but whether all were already sibilants in Proto-Semitic

2596-402: The literature on Old South Arabian , but more recently, it has been used by some authors to discuss Proto-Semitic to express a noncommittal view of the pronunciation of the sounds. However, the older transcription remains predominant in most literature, often even among scholars who either disagree with the traditional interpretation or remain noncommittal. The traditional view, as expressed in

2655-525: The lower town Middle Bronze Age II occupation is attested (excavation Area D) but in a smaller area than the later Iron Age II-III Aramaean town, as well as on the acropolis. Both the lower town and acropolis were walled, with the latter substantial and laid on massive stone foundations. A number of radiocarbon samples from a kiln in the EB-MB layer were tested. In the Middle Bronze I/II layer of excavation E on

2714-492: The noun: Like most of its daughter languages, Proto-Semitic has one free pronoun set, and case-marked bound sets of enclitic pronouns. Genitive case and accusative case are only distinguished in the first person. For many pronouns, the final vowel is reconstructed with long and short positional variants; this is conventionally indicated by a combined macron and breve on the vowel (e.g. ā̆ ). The Semitic demonstrative pronouns are usually divided into two series: those showing

2773-488: The region could not have supported massive waves of emigration before the domestication of camels in the 2nd millennium BC. There is also evidence that Mesopotamia and adjoining areas of modern Syria were originally inhabited by a non-Semitic population. That is suggested by non-Semitic toponyms preserved in Akkadian and Eblaite. A Bayesian analysis performed in 2009 suggests an origin for all known Semitic languages in

2832-507: The reign of Muwatalli II , 13th century BC, mentions earlier border disputes between Nuhašše and Aleppo to the northwest where the people of Nuhašše asked the Mitannian king to interfere; the king campaigned against Aleppo and gave the disputed lands to Nuhašše. The treaty mentions that the people of Aleppo committed an offence against a Hittite monarch called Hattusili and the Nuhašše petitioned

2891-494: The resulting transcriptions may be difficult to interpret clearly. The narrowest affricate view (only *ṣ was an affricate [t͡sʼ] ) is the most accepted one. The affricate pronunciation is directly attested in the modern Ethiopic languages and Modern Hebrew, as mentioned above, but also in ancient transcriptions of numerous Semitic languages in various other languages: The "maximal affricate" view, applied only to sibilants, also has transcriptional evidence. According to Kogan,

2950-515: The second half of the second millennium BC was West-Semitic, while the ruling classes were Hurrians. The diplomatic language used in the region was a Hurrianized form of Akkadian as Hurrian traits appear in every Akkadian sentence in tablets written in Nuhašše; the Hurrian elements comprise around fifth of a sentence. The coronation of a king included anointing; a common practice in Bronze Age monarchies of Western Asia. The name Nuhašše appears in

3009-477: The sound designated *š was pronounced [ʃ] (or similar) in Proto-Semitic, as the traditional view posits, or had the value of [s] . The issue of the nature of the "emphatic" consonants, discussed above, is partly related (but partly orthogonal) to the issues here as well. With respect to the traditional view, there are two dimensions of "minimal" and "maximal" modifications made: Affricates in Proto-Semitic were proposed early on but met little acceptance until

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3068-403: The sound of [s] at the time. The occurrence of [ʃ] for *š in a number of separate modern Semitic languages (such as Neo-Aramaic , Modern South Arabian , most Biblical Hebrew reading traditions) and Old Babylonian Akkadian is then suggested to result from a push-type chain shift , and the change from [t͡s] to [s] "pushes" [s] out of the way to [ʃ] in the languages in question, and

3127-619: The southern ones were subordinate to Qatna . The petty kingdom of Nuhašše changed hands between great powers in the region such as Egypt , Mitanni and the Hittites . Thutmose I conducted military campaigns in the region reaching the Euphrates River. Thutmose III (c. 1470 BC) annexed the region, then Mitanni established its rule over the area. Šuppiluliuma I fought a series of military campaigns ("Great Syrian Wars", c. 1350-1345 BC) against Tushratta of Mitanni (d. 1345 BC following

3186-684: The theory, the earliest wave of Semitic speakers entered the Fertile Crescent via the Levant and eventually founded the Akkadian Empire . Their relatives, the Amorites , followed them and settled Syria before 2500 BC. Late Bronze Age collapse in Israel led the South Semites to move southwards where they settled the highlands of Yemen after the 20th century BC until those crossed Bab-el-Mandeb to

3245-415: The three-consonant roots had developed from two-consonant ones (this is suggested by evidence from internal as well as external reconstruction). To construct a given grammatical form, certain vowels were inserted between the consonants of the root. There were certain restrictions on the structure of the root: it was impossible to have roots where the first and second consonants were identical, and roots where

3304-460: The time of control by 13th century BC Hittite ruler Hattusili III by seals, pottery, and nine cuneiform tablets and fragments (in Building F). Two of the tablets, and a fragment, were in Hittite while the others, badly damaged, were administrative documents in local clay. In Iron Age I (1100-950 BC) the site was a small settlement. In Iron Age II (950-750 BC) Tell Afis grew to substantial size and

3363-406: The work of Alice Faber (1981), who challenged the older approach. The Semitic languages that have survived often have fricatives for these consonants. However, Ethiopic languages and Modern Hebrew, in many reading traditions, have an affricate for *ṣ . The evidence for the various affricate interpretations of the sibilants is direct evidence from transcriptions and structural evidence. However,

3422-418: Was also a small group of feminine nouns that didn't have formal markers: *’imm- ‘mother’, *laxir- ‘ewe’, *’atān- ‘she-donkey’, *‘ayn- ‘eye’, *birk- ‘knee’ There were three numbers: singular, plural and dual (only in nouns ). There were two ways to mark the plural: The dual was formed by means of the markers *-ā in the nominative and *-āy in the genitive and accusative. The endings of

3481-456: Was part of the Kingdom of Hamath. On the western side of the Acropolis a multiperiod temple was found. The two lowest levels (A3.2 followed by A3.1) date from Iron Age I, both of mudbrick with the same plan and a 2.5 meter wide gate to the south. In A3.1 a plastered central podium was found with pit of ashes which included animal bones and fragments of a painted keros jar. A cylinder seal depicting

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