Katatepe inscriptionAzatiwada inscriptionEnglish and Phoenician |
Although I must take responsibility for this translation, I got the Phoenician text from
K. Lawson Younger, Jr.'s article (see below). If you cannot read Aramaic script (then you
almost certainly can't read Hebrew, and Phoenician will likely be lost on you as well) you
can go to Younger's article, where it is transliterated into latin script. My translation
is consistently informed by this article. I was also drawing ideas from the translations
of Franz Rosenthal (ANET), André Dupont-Sommer, and the
one that appears on Tayfun Bilgin's page (he does not tell us if he did it, or if not, where
it came from). All errors, of course, are my own. Bilgin, Tayfun. Asatiwatas speaks. http://www.hittitemonuments.com/karatepe/ accessed 1/11. Dupont-Sommer, André (1948). La grande inscription Phénicienne de Karatepe. in Comptes-Rendus des séances de l’Acadé des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 92.4, pp. 534-539. http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/crai_0065-0536_1948_num_92_4_78333 accessed 1/11. Rosenthal, Franz, trans. (1969). Azitawadda of Adana. In James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern texts: Relating to the Old Testament. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. Younger, K. Lawson, Jr. (Spring, 1998) The Phoenician inscription of Azitawada: An integrated reading. Journal of Semitic Studies, 43.1, pp. 11-47. http://jss.oxfordjournals.org/content/XLIII/1/11.full.pdf accessed 1/11. Please report errors to me (link at end of page). -Alan Humm |
Summary: This is an 8th c. bilingual inscription, the other language being hieroglyphic Luwian (Hittite). Azatiwada was a local ruler who built this fortress (which he calls Asatiwadaya—exercizing characteristic humility). One of its most important features, as far as modern scholarship is concerned, is that it is a bilingual inscription, and has proved extremely useful in understand the Luwain language, although as our understanding of that language increases, the inscription has returned the favor on a few nuances of Phoenician. |
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[1] = Adanaweans.
[2] lit. from the rising to the setting sun.
[3] or good heart.
[4] lit. toward the setting sun.
[5] lit. toward the rising sun.
[6] from the rising to the setting sun.
[7] or, night There is a word play here, lost in my translation, that in Azatiwada’s day was no night (Younger, p. 26).
[8] Vattioni (1968), 7 1 - 3 argues that KRNTRY in this incription refers to Kelenderis, Cilicia [LY].
[9] Following Younger (who is following Morpurgo, Davies, & Hawkins (1987, pp. 270-72) reading מסלת as “river-land’ (informed by the Egyptian parallel—haparis). Older translations took it to refer to the statues (of the gods), so Rosenthal has, “A sacrificial order was established for all the molten images” [AH].
[10] Prov. 3.10.
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