OLD ARAMAIC SEALS - A Correction

In a paper delivered to 205^th meeting of the American Oriental Society in March, 1995—2,500 years to the day after the inscribing of the cuneiform text in question—Matthew W. Stolper demonstrated that the two "different" seal impressions listed as 65SI and 71CI in An Aramaic bibliography Part I, pp. 174f. (= B.7. 1) are not only the same (cylinder) seal impression but actually come from only a single document, albeit one with a complex publication history. His paper is soon to be published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society 116/3 (1996): 517-521 as "A Paper Chase after the Aramaic on TCL 13 193." He summarizes his findings as follows:

• Edition: the editio princeps of the Aramaic in CTS II/1 No. 66 was substantially corrected by Delaporte Catalogue II A.797; the edition of the Babylonian text was superseded by TCL 13 193.
• Provenience: not unknown; the tablet was deposited in the Egibi archive held in Babylon, but it had been drawn up and the seal impressed in Šušan, in the vicinity of Borsippa.
• Date: not 450 B.C.; the seal was impressed in 505 B.C.; since the seal bears the name of its owner and shows an image of Iranian inspiration and style, it cannot have been manufactured (and inscribed) much before then.
• Name: [ ... ]/MDT, an Aramaic transcription of an Iranian name that could be transcribed in Babylonian either as Ummada:tu or as Ammada:tu. [HW]/MDT < Ir. *haumada:ta is more plausible than [']MDT or, [H]/MDT <Ir. *amada:ta,*hamada:ta, but all three are attested in Aramaic transcriptions. *[HW]/MDT or [H]/MDT <1r. *humada:ta is tenable, but the underlying Iranian name is not securely attested.
• Patronym: [ ... ], an Aramaic transcription of a name—possibly Iranian—that could be transcribed in Babylonian as Udunatu; no plausible candidates are known.

New Publications of Note

The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation, by Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, and Edward Cook is to be published in November by Harper Collins. The book contains, in translation, most of the legible non-biblical texts from Qumran in a translation intended for a broad audience of both specialists and lay people. The authors provide introductions for each text, with brief commentary, as well as an introduction to the whole volume that seeks to place the Qumran scrolls in their historical context.

Targumic and Cognate Studies: Essays in Honour of Martin McNamara, edited by Kevin Cathcart and Michael Maher (JSOT Supplements 230; Sheffield: Academic Press). It includes 14 essays on the targums and other Aramaic texts, including "Our Translated Tobit" by CAL research associate Edward Cook.

CAL Home Page