Re: [tied] First iron swords on mass scale

----- Original Message -----

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Friday, October 13, 2000 7:47 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] First iron swords on mass scale

Miguel wrote:

The exact form of the B-S etymon is indeed problematic.  We have
Slavic z^ele^so and Lith. gelezis, OPr. gelso (I suspect /gelzo/, in
view of the German orthography of Old Prussian).  The Slavic and
Baltic terms are not quite compatible, apart from initial *g(w)el-.

 

Actually, the Slavic word is z^ele^zo and the Lithuanian one gelez^is. Lithuanian has eliminated the neuter gender, so the different stem is scarcely surprising. Slavic z^ (before a front vowel) = Baltic g (PIE labiovelar or unsatemised velar), and Slavic z = Lithuanian z^ = Old Prussian z, orthographic <s> (satem treatment of *g(H)). The only trouble is the vowel-length difference in the second syllable. Before IE unaspirated voiced stops Balto-Slavic shows vowel lengthening, the precise conditions for which are not yet known ("Winter's Law"). The apparent mismatch may be due to the failure of Winter's Law to apply in this particular Baltic form for reasons we don't fully understand at present (there are also a few Slavic words in which it "should" but doesn't apply). With this single reservation, the match is pretty good.

 

Sumerian <bar> shows up in several metal words: an.bar "iron"
(an="sky"), za.bar "bronze" (za="stone"(?), Akk. siparru), maybe
a.bar5 "lead" (a="water"(?)).  "Silver" is <ku3 babbar>, with the
reduplicated form of the word <bar> "bright, white".  Sumerian
adjectives follow the noun, except <ku3> ~ <kug> "pure", which
sometimes preceeds.  It's possible, but hard to prove, that a change
in word order AdjN -> NAdj had occurred in Sumerian.  Especially the
word <bar> (written UD) is found in initial position in writing, where
it is pronounced finally, as in the spelling UD.KIB.NUN (=
bar.$ennur.nun) for the town of Zimbar (Akk. Sippar) [the same
spelling also for the river Euphrates = Buranun, Akk. Purattu], or
UD.KA.BAR (bar.zu2.bar) for <zabar> "bronze".

Well, this is a cogent argument. Sumerian bar does mean 'bright, shining', which is exactly the expected adjective where silver is concerned, and we have Sumerian barzil '(meteoritic) iron', which, as you convincingly argue, might be a reversed variant of zil-bar or sil-bar (with zil 'cut, peel?'). Still, there are some further questions. Why does a reflex of this putative *zilbar or *silbar (surprisingly unchanged, cf. Akkadian siparrum) appear ONLY in Northern Europe and in Celtiberian with the meaning 'silver'? Where was it hiding during the twenty centuries or so between its formation in Sumerian and its earliest attestation in Europe?

 

Piotr