The Appetites of the Dead: West Semitic Linguistic and Ritual Aspects of the Katumuwa Stele
This study begins with a solution to the “lexical crux” of the inscription, the term for the site of the funerary installation itself, and proceeds from narrow philological problems to larger issues of meaning and use. It first sets the philology of the stele on firmer ground by drawing on substanti...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
The University of Chicago Press
2013
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| In: |
Bulletin of ASOR
Year: 2013, Volume: 369, Pages: 35-55 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | This study begins with a solution to the “lexical crux” of the inscription, the term for the site of the funerary installation itself, and proceeds from narrow philological problems to larger issues of meaning and use. It first sets the philology of the stele on firmer ground by drawing on substantial untapped West Semitic evidence; second, it integrates this philological view with new archaeological data about the stele's use and previously unmined linguistic and cultural data about its Luwian and West Semitic cultural background; and finally builds these into a more coherent picture of how the inscription worked as a ritual artifact in a funerary installation. The stele of Katumuwa from eighth-century Zincirli casts new light on the relationship between written texts and ritual practice concerning the afterlife in Iron Age Anatolia and the Levant. It not only presents the most detailed Northwest Semitic funerary inscription known from the period, but the first discovered in an archaeological context providing extensive evidence for its use. This uniqueness is also at the root of the inscription's interpretive challenge: it is a sui generis text, in a dialect known from only one area, representing a funerary tradition that is otherwise mostly lost. |
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| ISSN: | 2161-8062 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Schools of Oriental Research, Bulletin of ASOR
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.5615/bullamerschoorie.369.0035 |