KC

thesis thesis thesis

In Phoenician there's also ʔdnšʕ. Could be from the Phoenician equivalent of שעה 'regard (with favour)', though.

Oh, that's interesting.

There's a late 8th-century king of Ashdod (reign of Sargon II) attested in Akkadian as a-ḫi-mi-ti or a-ḫi-me-ti, taken to be "(my) brother is Mit/Met", whoever that is—it actually feels difficult to me for it to be either Mot or Mut, but I don't have any alternative suggestions.

A screenshot from a textbook from 1889 casually using several Semitic writing systems.

Jakob Barth, Die Nominalbildung in den semitischen Sprachen (1889). Arabic, Geʿez, Syriac, and square script—the only reason he doesn't expect you to read cuneiform is because people were still figuring out Akkadian at the time.

13. The fact that Linear B scribes invented the sign 𐁄 <dwo> from a sequence of two 𐀺 <wo> signs is objectively funny.

I'm not going to make a habit of thesisposting but there are some extricable chunks that people who aren't even me can maybe enjoy.

Screenshot from Wikipedia listing "Isaiah Ben-Amotz" as a Judean commander and "Rabshakeh" as an Assyrian one.

Anyway, that was Sennacherib's third campaign. It had tremendous consequences for the Levant, but you won't read about that in the Bible. The good people of Wikipedia, meanwhile, report on it in a way that is all their own. /🧵

Because of that, they engender an enthusiasm that can lead people to overlook that they come with their own agenda—obviously Sennacherib's annals are state propaganda. Sometimes you can combine unreliable sources in a way that diminishes rather than multiplies their unreliability, though.

Serious people are generally aware the Bible has a complicated transmission history and many writers and editors whose agendas rarely included the objective relaying of history. Cuneiform texts (mostly) don't have a transmission history at all—we have them as they were originally written.

Hezekiah doesn't come out of this story looking good, and it's no wonder two of the three Biblical accounts leave out the tribute entirely and cast their lucky break as an act of God. At the same time, Sennacherib's inability to take Jerusalem is a sore point for *him*.

⑤ As a compromise, Sennacherib accepts tribute and a new loyalty oath from Hezekiah instead. The amount of tribute is probably exaggerated in Sennacherib's account, but it's nice that both sources mention 30 talents of gold.

④ During the siege, disease (or an angel, I guess) strikes the Assyrian army, causing many casualties. As a result, Sennacherib isn't *able* to take Jerusalem. Not mentioned in the annals, but there's no real other way to explain why the Assyrians wouldn't just sack the city and depose Hezekiah.

③ In 701 BCE, Sennacherib lays siege to Jerusalem. In the Bible this is left implicit: the Rabshakeh does bring his army when he shows up, but he's never shown to use it against Jerusalem.

② Sennacherib's troops reconquer the rebellious territory with ease: mentioned in both the Bible and the annals, in both cases to play up the power of the Assyrian army.

① Hezekiah joins a large-scale revolt against Assyrian dominance in the Levant, even helping to overthrow the pro-Assyrian king Padî of Ekron; in the Bible, the Assyrians just kind of show up.

Hezekiah becomes an Assyrian vassal, and the conquered Judean cities are divided up among Ashdod, Ekron, and Gaza—Philistine cities that stayed loyal to Sennacherib. Combining the narratives, we can piece together what must have happened.

"As for him, Hezekiah, fear of my lordly brilliance overwhelmed him and, after my (departure), he had the auxiliary forces (and) his elite troops whom he had brought inside to strengthen the city Jerusalem, his royal city, thereby gaining reinforcements, (along with) 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, choice antimony, large blocks of ..., ivory beds, armchairs of ivory, elephant hide(s), elephant ivory, ebony, boxwood, garments with multi-colored trim, linen garments, blue-purple wool, red-purple wool, utensils of bronze, iron, copper, tin, (and) iron, chariots, shields, lances, armor, iron belt-daggers, bows and uṣṣu-arrows, equipment, (and) implements of war, (all of) which were without number, together with his daughters, his palace women, male singers, (and) female singers brought into Nineveh, my capital city, and he sent a mounted messenger of his to me to deliver (this) payment and to do obeisance."

In Sennacherib's account, the Assyrians are responding to a large-scale rebellion in the Levant, which they suppress easily. He lays siege to Jerusalem, and exacts a tribute of 30 talents of gold, 800 of silver, his daughter(s), and much more. oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap3...

... Later, Isaiah's version was grafted onto this more or less verbatim; after the tribute, the Rabshakeh still shows up and the angel still kills 185,000 Assyrians. The retelling in 2 Chronicles 32:1-23, the third account, leaves out the tribute entirely.

In 2 Kings 18:13-19:36, Sennacherib conquers the cities of Judah, and Hezekiah sends a delegation to Lachish to beg him not to attack Jerusalem; Hezekiah pays 30 talents of gold and 300 of silver in tribute, for which he has to strip the doors and pillars of the Temple.

(Rabshakeh, Hebr. רַב־שָׁקֵה, renders Akkadian rab-šāqê; it's often translated as 'chief cupbearer', but we aren't actually sure what šāqû means in this context. But it's a real Assyrian title.)

The earliest Biblical account is Isaiah 36-37. The Assyrians conquer the cities of Judah, and the Rabshakeh comes to Jerusalem from Lachish to ask king Hezekiah to surrender. Isaiah convinces Hezekiah not to, and an angel kills 185,000 Assyrians in the night; exit Assyrians.

The Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem is a real historical event that's described in the Bible three times, and in Sennacherib's annals (in Akkadian cuneiform) in over a dozen minor variants. It's interesting to see which parts get left out of which narratives. 🧵

The fact that individual Biblical Philistine kings are called מלך then isn't because they're a different kind of leader, but because the singular of סרנים being *סר was felt to be too irregular.

I think I've convinced myself Hebr. סְרָנִים 'Philistine (military?) leader', far from being related to τύραννος somehow, is actually just Assyrian šarrānū, an irregular but attested plural of šarru, and that this is connected with Akis (real, not Biblical) calling himself the שר, not מלך, of Ekron.

It me.

Oh, you're the CS person in the Tocharian class. I'm doing it online so my alarm doesn't even go off until 9:25, it's much more manageable. (It does mean I couldn't take Ethiopic, though.)

But that's nearly a third of all biblical Philistine names that aren't actually names (and Saph/Sippai may actually be another one). Isn't that incredible? Think about that the next time you praise the Masoretes for their obsessive attention to detail. /🧵

... In 1 Chron 20, וַיַּךְ אֶלְחָנָן בֶּן־יָעִר אֶת־לַחְמִי 'Elchanan, son of Jair, killed Lachmi': 'Bethlehemite' becomes the nota obiecti and Lachmi. The passage is corrupt in other ways—I guess once David got to be the one who killed Goliath people became motivated to misread it.

Finally, Lachmi, "the brother of Goliath", replaces Goliath in 1 Chron 20 as the person killed by Elchanan. In 1 Sam 20 Elchanan is אֶלְחָנָן בֶּן־יַעָרֵי אֹרְגִים בֵּית הַלַּחְמִי 'Elchanan, son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite'—see where this is going?