Brown, The Mediterranean Vocabulary of the Vine

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BRILL is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Vetus Testamentum. http://www.jstor.org The Mediterranean Vocabulary of the Vine Author(s): John Pairman Brown Source: Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 19, Fasc. 2 (Apr., 1969), pp. 146-170 Published by: BRILL Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1516407 Accessed: 31-03-2015 11:03 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 192.231.59.35 on Tue, 31 Mar 2015 11:03:18 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Brown, Mediterranean Vocabulary of the Vine

Transcript of Brown, The Mediterranean Vocabulary of the Vine

  • BRILL is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Vetus Testamentum.

    http://www.jstor.org

    The Mediterranean Vocabulary of the Vine Author(s): John Pairman Brown Source: Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 19, Fasc. 2 (Apr., 1969), pp. 146-170Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1516407Accessed: 31-03-2015 11:03 UTC

    Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

    JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

    This content downloaded from 192.231.59.35 on Tue, 31 Mar 2015 11:03:18 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

  • THE MEDITERRANEAN VOCABULARY OF THE VINE

    BY

    JOHN PAIRMAN BROWN Berkeley

    In any area of culture, classical and Near Eastern literatures share a common "Mediterranean" vocabulary to the extent that culture has actually spread through trade, war, diplomacy or emi- gration.1) Nowhere is there a thicker cluster of shared vocabulary than around the vine. The familiar names of the plant itself are local: 5a3, &itXo (no etymology), Lat. vitis (perhaps from vieo "I plait"). As soon as we come to its utilization, Greek, Latin and Hebrew express similar sentiments in similar language. The spreading vine is in fact perhaps the dominant symbol of the ancient cultures, intensely localized but with a memory of foreign origins: "You made a vine spread out of Misrayim" (Ps. lxxx 9). The identification is very explicit: "The vineyard of Yahweh Sebaoth is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the planting of his delight" (Isa. v 7).

    This ambiguity of reference between people and land may be resolved in either direction. Hellenistic Laodiceia in Syria, where the mountain behind the city was "covered with vines almost to the summit" (Strabo 16.2.9), is the ideal of every Mediterranean city. One of the first parts of Italy that Hellenes saw, around Sybaris in its instep, was called Oenotria (Herodotus 1.167). Servius 2) correctly derives the name a vino bono quod in Italia nascitur; perhaps it shows the word "wine" already domesticated in some Italic

    1) I have discussed my presuppositions and procedure more fully in "Literary Contexts of the Common Hebrew-Greek Vocabulary", Journal of Semitic Studies XIII (1968) 163-191. An essentially complete bibliography is given by Mme Emilia MASSON, Recherches sur les plus anciens emprunts semitiques en grec (Etudes et Commentaires LXVII), Paris 1967. Her study, a model of clarity and accuracy within its limits, stops short at two points: it does not discuss items of the com- mon Hebrew-Greek vocabulary which come from any other source than Semitic; it quotes Greek texts fully but mostly relies on lexica for Semitic words. It is only at these two points that I can claim to have gone beyond her.

    2) Servius on Aeneid 1.532, ed. G. THILO & H. HAGEN, In Vergilii Carmina Commentarii, 3 vols., Leipzig 1878-1902 (repr. Hildesheim 1961).

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  • THE MEDITERRANEAN VOCABULARY OF THE VINE

    dialect, like the Carian termination of Otv6ocvSc.1) Vergil (Aen. 1. 532-3) defines Oenotri .. viri as settlers of Italia, probably "Calf-land" from vitulus ;2) we shall see how widespread is the cultic association of wine and bull. Certainly our first duty, Alcaeus tells us, is to "plant no other tree sooner than the vine" 3):

    [zr V & aXXo qpuruerLtg trpO6rTpov 8vSpLov 4rTX(o or as Horace translates him (Carm. 1.18.1):

    nullam, Vare, sacra vite prius severis arborem.

    We Americans live on soil first named Vinlanda Insula.4) Greek myth and drama are dominated by a figure who in some

    sense is the vine. In the Homeric Hymn (VII) to Dionysos, the indication to the "Tyrsenian pirates" that they have kidnapped the God is the growth of a vine across the sail; the Athenian potter Exekias painted the scene in a black-figured cup about 525 B.C. found appropriately at Vulci in Etruria.5) The attributes of Dionysos and Israel are combined in the figure who says "I am the vine, you are the branches" (John xv 5).

    1. The name of "wine". Cretan dialect genitive FOINO, i.e. FoLvo, identical with syllabic Cypriote genitive wo-i-no, no. 4 below (Linear B wo-no is uncertain 6)); classical olvos with o'tvY "vineyard" (Hesiod W.D. 572). Lat. vinum, Iguvine uinu accusative, Etruscan vinum. Heb. :_, emphatic ]?~, suffixed jeyn- (1r Cant. v 1); Samarian ostraca r'; Ugaritic yn; Arabic wayn "black grapes" (collective); Sabaean wynhmw "their vineyards". Hittite [wi?-]-ya-na-as ;7) Hieroglyphic

    1) But Justin (Epitome 43.4.1, ed. E. CHAMBRY, 2 vols., Paris n.d.) thought that the first Greeks in Gaul brought the vine and olive.

    2) The Italic Confederacy of 91-83 B.C. coined with a bull goring the Roman wolf and the Oscan legend VITELLIU; see e.g. M. CARY, A History of Rome (New York 1954), 2nd ed., Plate on p. 320.

    3) D. PAGE, Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford 1955) p. 311 = Athenaeus 10.430c. 4) R. A. SKELTON et al., The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, New Haven &

    London 1965. 5) M. ROBERTSON, Greek Painting (Skira: The Great Centuries of Painting),

    Geneva 1957, p. 71. 6) M. VENTRIS & J. CHADWICK, Documents in Mycenaean Greek (Cambridge

    1956) no. 250 (Vn 20) p. 348; see S. LEVIN, The Linear B Decipherment Controversy Re-examined (State Univ. of New York, 1964) p. 102 n. 53.

    7) J. FRIEDRICH, Hethitisches VWrterbuch (Heidelberg 1952) p. 255 (& p. 273 s.v. GESTIN); in accordance with my program I should have tried to quote the contexts. Luvian forms wintar, winiyanda are claimed by H. T. BOSSERT, Asia (Istanbul 1946) p. 110; FRIEDRICH cites Luvian winiyant- from E. LAROCHE, Dictionnaire de la langue louvite (Paris 1959), unavailable to me.

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  • J. PAIRMAN BROWN

    Hittite wa-d-na-a-s. Forms are also quoted from Ethiopic, Armenian and Caucasian languages.1)

    The word has evidently spread with the thing it denotes from an uncertain source. Outside Canaan it is marginal in Semitic; a single Arabic text known to me reads

    JO" "-J-, J - " J -

    J\ 11 ss\ 1 u L

    ka'annahu 'lwaynu 'idan yujna 'lwaynu "it is like black grapes when they are picked".2) In South Arabic we have only a doubtful Sabaean inscription mentioning xL5Ni in;,li "and the lands of their vineyards".3) The word did not come to Greek through Canaanite with its initial "y" but through some form of Hittite, for the "w" is presupposed in Homeric prosody, and attested in Cypriote (no. 4 below) and in the law-code of Gortyn :4) 6 8' &cv0ro 6T rl tLpLtoL zTL FzL UTptIo L poV Xcl Trpoxoov FoLvo. "Let the man who makes an adoption give his mistress a sacrificial animal and a prochoos of wine".

    One gathers from Gen. ix 21 that wine was first prepared on the slopes of Mount Ararat (Gen. viii 4 tni ). This name of Urartu appears in a beautiful transcription as the ethnic 'AXacpo8-Lo (Herodotus 3.94, 7.79). I have not yet found the local wine mentioned in Accadian campaign-records in Urartu, nor in the native cuneiform texts. But Strabo 15.1.58 praises the wine of Armenia and adjacent parts; and the Armenian chronicler Moses of Chorene describes how "Semiramis" planted Ararat with "a large number of vines in soils fertile with wines". 5)

    In Homer oinos is synonymous with Indo-European "mead"; thus at II. 7.467 ships from Lemnos bring oinos, which at vs 471 is called ti60u. It came to Greek with a fixed Indo-European adjective, 'iOu a8'6 (Od. 4.746 etc.); so in the Middle English Towneley Mysteries

    1) Other wine words: Gk sikera (Luke i. 15, Galen 19.693 KUHN) is trans- lation of Heb. sekar; form and meaning of Gk karoinon, Lat. car(o)enum is doubt- ful-even more so its relation to Akkad. karanu.

    2) From the author al-Ac'rbi, quoted Lisan al-cArab (Beirut 1956) vol. XIII p. 455 B.

    3) F. HOMMEL, "Uber das Wort Wein im Siidsemitischen und insbesondere die sabaische Inschrift Glaser No. 12", Zeitschr. des deutschen morgenldndischen Ge- sellschaft XLIII (1889) 653-662.

    4) Col. x lines 37-9, ed. M. GUARDUCCI, Inscriptiones Creticae IV, Rome 1950. 5) History of Armenia 1.16, tr. V. LANGLOIS, Collection des historiens anciens et

    modernes de l'Armenie II (Paris 1869) 68b.

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  • THE MEDITERRANEAN VOCABULARY OF THE VINE

    ( ab. A.D. 1460) "It is swetter than med".1) Sanskrit has a morpho- logically identical phrase including the accent, *mddhu svddti; I cannot yet quote it from early texts. In general literature often combines wine and honey.

    Homer describes (II. 3.246-7) how heralds carry

    UpVs &uct xO't (F)o1mv Et'iypPOVOC, XCxp7C0tV &po04p1q, &Coxpj iv cciystc...

    "two lambs and wine that makes glad the phren, the fruit of the ground, in a goatskin". So Ps. civ 15

    einrzz'1~ ntt. ) rn where the LXX translate Homerically xoct oavoq OcuppatvvL xcp cav XvOpc7rou. It affects Gods similarly; Nausicaa describes her father's throne (Od. 6.309)

    t4z 6' yE (F)o0vo0o0TME&L eiy &Pvoq M0rVMoT0 6 s "on which he sits and drinks wine like an immortal". So the vine asks (Judges ix 13) :

    "Shall I leave my new wine which cheers God(s?) and men?" Both societies for overland transport of wine used a small animal skin: I Sam. x 3 etc. jvi-~=3, LXX &cax6v o't'vou; a Samaritan ostracon 7r) r ' ""a skin of old wine".2) Less danger so of bursting; Mark ii 22 ou' e1S PO'3&?le o1vov v6ov Ei O'CGX06q TCMX0LQu'q "nobody pours new wine into old skins (Jerome utres veteres, 'old bellies')."

    Euripides (Bacchae 136 if.) gives the characteristic effects when Dionysos appears on land:

    cEZ a' yOCcXMXTt 7tsQV, 'p a' 0tQV(, 'PI ez a' ,etai VsX'rPLa Xupccs a' o' ? Lr3Xvou xa- =v6v 6 BoCxze6q ave(ovx...

    1) Chap. 28.11 (Oxford Eng. Diet. s.v. mead, quoting the Surtees Society ed. of 1836). In The Fight at Finnsburg 39, for hw?ine medo "white mead" many edd. cj. -sw,Ftne medo "sweet mead" for the sake of alliteration; F. KLAEBER, Beowuif... (Boston 1950), 3rd ed., p. 247. I hope elsewhere to collect such Indo-European fixed epithets.

    2) H. DONNER, & W. Rb5LLIG, Kanaandische und Aramdische Inschriften [hereafter "K.A.L"], 3 vols., Wiesbaden 1962-4, no. 185. Perhaps conn. with nebFlab ""corpse") rather than with nFbel "lute", or with nFbel "jar".

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  • J. PAIRMAN BROWN

    "The ground flows with milk, flows with wine, flows with the nectar of bees. And as the Bacchic celebrant raises up the smoke of Syrian libanos. . ." 1) Caianus' myth of old times (Strabo 15.1.64) has springs of water, milk, honey, wine and oil. (When the LXX came on "a land flowing milk and honey" (Ex. iii 8 etc.) they must have had a Dionysiac twinge as they translated es y,v 'pouaocv yX0aX xac tXi; Clement of Alexandria (Protrepticus XII) sees the Bacchae as a type of sacred liturgy). The Theban scene is mirrored in Cant. v 1 with sexual coloring : "I come to my garden, my sister, my bride; I gather my myrrh ('iD, LXX aoiupvav) with my spice; I eat my honeycomb with my honey; I drink my wine with my milk."

    The SitZ im Leben for the imagery used both in the orgy of Euripides and the sexuality of Canticles is the symposium; for a brief description we may turn to an elegy of Xenophanes.2) He mentions the wreaths of flowers, the scented ointment (myron), the altar (bJmos), and the "ready wine" (olvos zroLpoq, vs 5). In vs 7 libanos sends up its sacred odor (cyv-\v 68OiYv XLvcor\t 'tC); in vs 10 a table is laden with cheese and rich honey (piXLtoq 7tLovo4).

    At Cant. iv 10-14 wine appears with nine spices including lebonah; wine mixed with libanos was given to elephants to enrage them for battle (III Macc. v (2,)45 o'vou XeXLpavtcovou).3) The wine mixed with myrrh of Mark xv 23, oapLupvLotVvov olvov, was perhaps for an anaesthetic. I don't know what the vinum murrinam of Pliny 14.92 was.4)

    Cant. iv 13 calls its garden a "paradise", and there is scattered evidence for an original vineyard paradise.5) The tree of knowledge is called a vine in Enoch xxxii 4, and Wisdom is finally compared to a vine at Sirach xxiv 17. ALBRIGHT ingeniously compares Kalyp- so's island (Od. 5.68-71), with its vineyard and four rivers going four ways. A Father affirms that "for those living in paradise ... there is no longer wine-drinking or animal sacrifice" (Troq v rTC 7rcpoCaLS .&..o.Levo . . . . 07 olvo7oacr., oU7 CooOuaL) ;6)

    1) The tympanon (no. 10) appears vs 156. 2) H. DIELS & W. KRANZ, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 vols., 8th ed.,

    Berlin 1956, 21 B 1 (vol. i p. 126). 3) The same story in Chronicon Paschale 176 (MIGNE, Patrologia Graeca 92.432C).

    Wine and libanos appear together 1 Chron. ix 29. 4) Plautus (Poenulus 1177 etc.) has murrina simply. 5) W. F. ALBRIGHT, "The Goddess of Life and Wisdom", Am. J. of Sem.

    Lang. &' Lit. XXXVI (1919/20) 258-294. 6) Basil dejejunio hor. 1.3, MIGNE Patr. Gr. 31.168B.

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  • THE MEDITERRANEAN VOCABULARY OF THE VINE

    Empedocles denies the sacrifice of bulls to the Golden Age, but permits myrrh, libanos, and libations of honey-unfortunately he has no information about wine-drinking rthen.l)

    2. The drinking-hall. X ra]X ; rwh. (r131. Neh. iii 30, xii 44, xiii 7). The variation 1/n in Hebrew suggests a foreign word, perhaps

    Cypriote. Cf. oapvoc II. 18.413 "chest" with vapvao (Hesychius); '13r on Cyprus 2) with modern AlpvoCi.3) Further Bib. Aram. '.r.lo (Dan. iii 7) with Greek ;ocAX'plov; AoBu6v7Toq (Herodotus 1.74), Akkadian Nabu-naid.

    An archaic inscription from Kamiros on Rhodes reads :4)

    ETOTTIAA HMI AEEXE

    The editors explain E60uzTL Xl '

    AZaXo "I am the tomb(?) of Euthytis", and derive XeAaX from *XeZXxC "place of lying", root XsZ. But I cannot read a final alpha on the photo of the squeeze, and don't know how to interpret it. The derived meaning "conver- sation" suggest that Greeks thought of it as from XAyw "I say". It would seem as if this were an early migrant from Greek to Hebrew, retaining the feminine ending ;5) the borrowing is motivated by the fact that the words mean not merely "hall" but "place for drinking."

    Melantho the maid says to disguised Odysseus (Od. 18.328-332): ou' woX sfis v oaXx]L'ov c S6oov eX9i)v r\ 7COU ic ?Xy77v, &?X' gvO&Ss 7c6?X' ayops6si. 6cpacx?ao4 TcoXho aL piLT aVSpCaLV, OUSs TL 6Up4)

    Tapper pa ae (F)olVos e. CpSVOcS, u TOL aie TOLOUTO VOO, eCTt . . .

    "Why don't you go off and sleep at the bronzesmith's house- or off to the lesche, instead of saying many insolent things here with many people? Aren't you frightened at all? Either wine has your phrenes, or you are always in this frame of mind." Hesiod (W.D.

    1) DIELS-KRANZ8, Die Frag. der Vorsokr., 31 B 128 (i. 362-3). 2) K.A.I. 43, 46. 3) P. LE BAS & W. H. WADDINGTON, Voyage Archeologique . . . en Asie Mineure

    (Paris 1847-70) no. 2779: inscription mentioning a cult of this place, but initial letter of place-name uncertain.

    4) Inscriptiones Graecae XII (1) 709. 5) I hope elsewhere to discuss how Greek and Hebrew got such similar femi-

    nine singular endings, following a suggestion of Prof. Saul LEVIN.

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  • J. PAIRMAN BROWN

    493-4) suggests that the lesche is not so much contrasted with the smithy as attached to it:

    Hlap a' '6Ot aXaxeLov OCxov xaol cnaxia xcrz-xv kP3 XetFLPlT *...

    "Leave to one side the bronzesmith's seat and the warm (?) lesche in wintertime". The lesche is a place where you sit around idle, W.D. 500-1. All this suggests that the lesche was a room attached to the smithy for winter warmth, where men would sit, talking (which later became the dominant sense) and inevitably drinking.

    Various passages show that the Jerusalem temple had a number of rooms called liskdh. Jeremiah is ordered (Jer. xxxv 2) "to bring [the Rechabites] into the house of the Lord, into one of the lesakoth, (LXX [Jer. xlii 2] ocaUXv), and give them wine to drink":

    Vl aire n nt^m nio n nn n-iK n .aM n"n 1a3;l

    Similarly at 1 Sam. ix 22 Samuel brings Saul into the mnstf (LXX xcr&TXupj "inn", Jer. triclinium "diningroom") where thirty persons are eating.1) The evidence is consistent with the lesche/liskdh having been a common hall or village pub in both societies.

    In later Greece the lesche was a place for reciting poetry at Aeolic Kyme ;2) of unknown function at the Peiraeus 3) and Athens ;4) of the Knidians at Delphi for athletics.5) In the tragedians the word becomes abstract, "council" (Soph. Ant. 161); and hence later "talk".6) The lesche at Sparta was more archaic. Plutarch Lycurgus 25.1-2 suggests that symposia were held there. Banquets were held generally in the leschai at Sparta, and the comedian Kratinos ima-

    gines "sausages pegged to the wall in the leschai" :7)

    ev 8 T-cr AXLaL (XUaxt L poxat CrczoOraeTTXeupvCa

    Finally it had a Phoenician connection: Pausanias 3.15.8 says that at Sparta there was "a painted lesche, and shrines beside it of

    1) The liskah should be restored at 1 Sam. i 18 as banquet-hall. 2) Ps.-Herodotus, Life of Homer 12; Homeri Opera ed. T. W. ALLEN, vol. 5

    (Oxford 1946), 2nd ed., p. 199. 8) Inscriptiones Graecae, ed. minor, I. 888. 4) Ibid., 1st ed., II (2) 1055 line 23 etc. 5) Pausanias 10.25.1, Lucian Imag. 7, Plutarch de defectu orac. 6 = 412 D. 6) Callimachus uses it to say in vino veritas: Aetia 178.15 f. ed. R. PFEIFFER

    (Oxford 1949) i. 151. 7) Athenaeus 4.138 E = Cratinus frag. 166, J. M. EDMONDS, The Fragments

    of Attic Comedy (Leiden 1957-61), 3 vols., i. 80.

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  • THE MEDITERRANEAN VOCABULARY OF THE VINE

    the hero Cadmus son of Agenor," XeAX ... otXX zy x po 7p6S ocTcJ KScpou -rTO 'Ay'vopoS.

    3. "To mix". ay(TPy, iPLyvuit; Lat. misceo. Hebrew root '10 with jin and .o0. "mixture"; t with v "mixture"; Syriac mzg; Ugaritic msk "to mix" and "mixture"; Aramaic mgg (?).1)

    Genesius long ago 2) saw the parallelism, but attributed it either to an original connection between Semitic and Indo-European or to chance. However the root-variation in Hebrew again suggests borrowing, and is explained by the instability of unvoiced "s" beside voiced "g" in dLoyc. The nearly isolated phenomenon of a borrowed verb is motivated by the emigration of a Greek custom: mixed drinks.

    In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (207-9) the Goddess refuses to drink straight wine, "for she said it was not proper for her to drink red wine, but told [Metaneira] to mix in meal, water and soft mint and give it to her to drink":

    ... ou yo&p 0etL'TV Oi pocyaxe 7tVsLV olvov epuOp6v vcoy 8' ocp' &AX9L xoa i8sop aOVOCv . Lacrav OCIV 4L[LV ykX1wv TPLVf

    This mint julep is related to the elaborate cocktail called the kykeon (I. 11.624-641). Hebrew normally disapproves these mixed drinks. Prov. xxiii 30-1 :

    "Those who delay over wine, those who go to try a mixture; look not on the wine when it is red". See Isa. v 22 "mixing liquor", 'z? ob?, Jerome ad miscendam ebrietatem. Ps lxxv 9: "For there is a cup in the hand of the Lord, and the wine foams (is red?), full of mixture," no; xNp, Jerome vini meri plenus misto. The late Syriac translator of Rev. xviii 6 "in the cup which she mixed, mix for her double" (cf. Rev. xiv 10), where the Greek has forms of xep0vvuVtt, returns to Ps. lxxv and introduces forms of mZg. At Isa. lxv 11 mixed drinks are .attributed to a foreign cult:

    1) A. DUPONT-SOMMER, "La Tablette cuneiforme arameenne de Warka", Revue d'Assyriologie et d'Archeologie orientale XXXIX (1942-4) 35-62: Aramaic disguised in syllabic cuneiform.

    2) W. GESENIUS, Geschichte der hebriischen Sprache und Schrift (Leipzig 1815) pp. 66-7. Vetus Testamentum XIX II

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  • J. PAIRMAN BROWN

    "You who fill a mixture for Meni, Destiny (LXX Tux], Jerome Fortuna)".l)

    Ugaritic epic is not under this Puritanical restraint. Thus at 'nt I. 15-17:

    alp kd yqh bhmr rbt ymsk bmskh

    "He takes a thousand kad of liquor; he mixes ten thousand in his mixture. I Aqht 224, tnm tsqy msk hwt, "a second time Paghat makes Yatpan drink the mixture". U.T. 67:I:21 ks ymsk "he mixes a cup".2) In special contexts Hebrew can approve the mixture. Sexual: Cant. vii 3 m 'lbn-Srr'n "it never lacks mixed wine" (the unique Biblical form of meg). Mystical: Prov. ix 2 (cf. ix 5) ;rT Tmy. When Jerome must translate miscuit vinum, and the RSV "she has mixed her wine," we have an uncanny feeling that Latin and English are part of the same linguistic world as Hebrew.

    Commoner in the Hellenic world was the mixing of wine and water; Od. 1.110 (cf. 11. 3.268-270):

    oL dtev [ p' olvov k'tLayov ev1 XpqTjp a xal 8Xop "Some [of the heralds] mixed wine and water in the craters." Cf. Diodorus 3.62.7; Ovid Met. 12.321 miscenda / cur Styge vina bibas; II Macc. xv.39 "as wine mixed (auyxpCa076s) with water is sweet". The practice happens not be attested in the Hebrew Bible, and would need no Greek precedent or verb. The Rabbis, knowing both practices, made artificial distinctions among the roots:

    R. 'Asi asked R. Yohanan: "How is it when wine is mixed (masak) by a heathen (plt 'i inDnt r)?" The other answered, "Say rather maEag (T2t)". ['Asi] said, "I spoke as the Scripture [Prov. ix 2 supra], She has slain her sacrifice, she has mixed (mnD?) her wine." [Yohanan] said, "The tongue of the Torah is after its manner and the tongue of the wise is after its manner." 3)

    COHEN explains this passage: In the language of the Rabbis mazag has the signification to mix

    wine with water; but masak, while having that meaning in Biblical Hebrew, means in Rabbinical Hebrew to mix strong wine with weaker wine.

    1) Nabataean Mnwtw: G. A. COOKE, A Text-Book of North-Semitic Inscriptions (Oxford 1903) no. 79.5 p. 217 etc.

    2) Cited from C. GORDON, Ugaritic Textbook, 3 vols., Rome 1965 (Analecta Orientalia 38). See also mmskn U.T. 145.18, & 125.78.

    8) Aboda Zara 58 b: L. GOLDSCHMIDT, Der Babylonische Talmud (Berlin 1903) vii. 997; tr. A. COHEN, London 1935 (ed. I. EPSTEIN, Soncino edition) p. 291.

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  • THE MEDITERRANEAN VOCABULARY OF THE VINE

    The Midrash Rabba explains Isa. v 22 and Prov. xxiii 30 supra, "They used to mix strong wine with weak wine to get drunk with it" :1)

    iz -1nmr1? "8- Tp ?rz ptn 'r aoina r r The metaphorical use in Ps. cii 10 "I mixed my drink with tears",

    Jerome et potum meum cum fletu miscebam:

    has a parallel in Ugaritic, U.T. 62:10 tst kyn udm't, "she drinks tears like wine". Compare Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto 1.9.20 cumque meis lacrimis miscuit usque suas "and with my tears he mixed his own."2)

    4. The winejar. x&ao4 with Greek derivatives,3) syllabic Cypriote ka-to-se, Lat. cadus; Heb. r7n, Ugaritic kd, Aramaic plural T'rT,4) Phoenician rT: (?).5)

    In the earliest period, we saw that for landborne commerce wine was transported and perhaps stored in small animal skins, with native name. For the common vocabulary of transport we must look to texts dealing with seaborne trade- not then to the Hebrew Bible. A fragment of Archilochos from the island Samos reads :

    XX' ayc 6Uv x6omL Ooic at 6Xpra V76 (pora xocl xotXcov Tmptoc-T' &apXxe xaocov,

    cyptL 8' oNvov puOp6v O TCO rpuyo * ou8 yap 7]LsZ

    v7

  • J. PAIRMAN BROWN

    Linear B a-pi-po-re-we) 1). We have found hundreds of them in ancient wrecks ; our text, illustrating a constant danger to navigation in the wine-trade, will suggest to the archaeologists why so many wrecks are to be found.

    Cambyses sent various Levantine products to the "Ethiopians" (Herodotus 3.20.1, cf. 2.86.4), of which the best received was a "jar of date wine", poLvLXYX)ou o'vou xoaov. Anacreon alleges that he "tossed off a jar of wine", o'Lvou 8' az[TLov xcAov.2) Plautus draws from Greek - perhaps also from Punic commercial usage. In his Punic play Poenulus the slave Milphio (vs 259) suggests that he be rewarded cado vini veteris; so Ampbitryon 429 cadus erat vini and frequently. So Vergil near Phoenician Carthage describes how Aeneas (Aen. 1.195-6)

    vina bonus quae deinde cadis onerarat Acestes dividit ...

    "shares out the wines which good Acestes had stowed in cadi". Statius also suggests a Phoenician origin for the word (Silv. 3.2.140), quo purpura suco / Sidoniis iterata cadis, "the juice with which purples were twice-dipped in Sidonian vats".

    These literary testimonies are solidly anchored in commercial usage. A syllabic Cypriote inscription interpreted by the Massons contains wo-i-no ka-to-se, almost certainly Foivo xdc8o..3) Across the water at Ugarit an accounting of rations 4) has two entries be- ginning kdyn. An impeccable international phrase: cadus... vini = O'vou x08ov = -wo-i-no ka-to-se = kdyn =* 7 3.

    In landlubber Israel the kad was used for storage and transport of water: Gen. xxiv 14-16 (Rebekkah at the well), I Kings xviii 34 (Elijah on Carmel), Eccles. xii 6 (no. 7 below). This is not Greek linguistic usage, and the LXX translates nr by 68pLoc, reserving xdcSos for "'Lr at Isa. xl 15 (no. 6 below). Gideon's men (Judges vii 16) had lamps in their jars, t .'.;T :inn r7'.r1?, LXX (B) Xoct- x&8occs ev -rocZi 68pLoa . Elsewhere I hope to discuss how Greek Xyarr0oS "lamp" apparently migrated to Canaan as the 't.5.5)

    1) Tablet Uc 160 (Knossos); accepted by S. LEVIN, Controvery ... p. 64. 2) D. L. PAGE, Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford 1962) frag. 28 (no. 373) p. 189. 3) O. MASSON, Les inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques (Paris 1961) no. 318 VII. 1

    (p. 317); a doubtful text with wo-i-no no. 285 p. 292. 4) U.T. 1099.27-8. The ritual text U.T. 3.23 involves kdm yn; text 59 may

    actually be a jar-label, k(d) (y)n lprt, "a jar of wine for Prt." 5) Lappid was already seen by GESENIUS, Geschichte der hebrdischen Sprache...

    p. 65 as a Hebrew borrowing from Greek.

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    The widow of Phoenician Sarephath kept her meal (nrp.) in a kad (1 Kings xvii 12). Pliny 18.307 quotes Varro as saying that "beans and leguminous grain stored in oil jars with a covering of ashes keep a long time", fabam et legumina in oleariis cadis oblita cinere longo tempore servari. So at Ugarit foodstuffs were kept in a kd, U.T. 12.2, alp kd nbt kd smn mr, "100 jars of honey, a jar of ointment of myrrh" (Esther ii 12 'nbn ,1pf, LXX v aCtupvvcV aoc). The same usages in Latin agriculture. Ovid Fasti 1.186 (cf. Martial 1.55.10)

    et data sub niveo candida mella cado

    "and clear honey in a white cadus". Similarly olive-oil was kept in them (Martial 1.43.8, Columella 12.53.3).

    5. The drinking-cup. xcOcov; Etruscan qutun etc., Faliscan quto; Heb. 7gi?, Ugar. qtn?. Cf. Kcocov the inner port of Carthage.

    We have seen Archilochos drinking out of his kothon at sea. An inscribed Faliscan pitcher eco quto . . enotenosio "I am the kothon of Enotenus" enabled Pallottino to understand the Etruscan of a similar pitcher, mi qutun Lemausnas "I am the pitcher of L." 1) Since Pliny 13.51 says that cottana are small Syrian figs, we may look for a Semitic etymology here also.2) In the difficult passage Isa. xxii 24

    in spite of the difference of number, the most natural translation is "all the vessels of type qdtdn, from all the vessels of type aggdn to all the vessels of type ngbel." Then this enables us to give a good meaning to the frequent Ugaritic hrs qtn (U.T. 308.9 etc.) "artisan of pot- tery." Strabo 17.3.14 describes the Kothon of Carthage with a diminutive, "a round islet" (vaciov repCLp).

    6. Other vessels. Here I note briefly some possible etymologies. a. Lat. dolium, cask for wine (Plautus Cist. 542 dolium vini) and

    water (Horace Carm. 3.11.27, Tibullus 1.3.80 of the Danaids, in cava Lethaeas dolia portat aquas); Isa. xl 15 .5T1 n1n5, LXX cog Tpaycov ar6o x&aou "a drop from a bucket"; cf. Num. xxiv 7;

    Talmudic 'l7r "Aquarius". Phonology and meaning are very close; Rome could have gotten it from Carthage.

    1) M. PALLOTTINO, The Etruscans (Penguin 1955) p. 253. 2) Hesychius says that Cretan dialect kottana was "maiden"; i.e. Semitic

    "little girl".

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  • J. PAIRMAN BROWN

    b. Xexavtv or (Hesychius) Xacxav], since Aristophanes, is con- nected by LSJ with Akkadian lahannu.

    c. yyoq, a vessel used for wine (Od. 16.13); ]p, vessel for mixed wine Cant. vii 3 (no. 3 above), LXX xpaTrXp.

    7. The (golden) bowl. yauXo6, Lat. gaulus; Heb. ;mi (also "capital", "base of lamp"), Ug. gl, Akkadian gullatu C.1) Cf. also yauoXo "round (Phoenician) freighter" ; the island rFauXq, Phoen. "l.

    As a luxury item it appears first in Greek in Middle Comedy, in a fragment of the Chrysis of Antiphanes, ab 330 B.C.2) Among the possessions of the bridegroom are: (A)... yTauXo6u 0XoXpucouS ...

    (B) rcXoa ; (A) TOUq xa8ous JLtV o5v

    xcaXouQL yauXou,Q 7CaCVTqS E 7CPOyCaXCTOp

    (A) "... gauloi all of gold". (B) "Boats (gaAloi)?" (A) "Every body gives the name gauloi to kadoi if they are potbellied." The grammarians vouch for the distinction of accent. The context in Antiphanes implies that the gauloi are wine-cups; the same is suggested by Theocritus 5.104 and Longus Daphnis and Chloe 3.4. A Byzantine lexicon3) specifically calls it a "vessel for wine" (oLv0p6v ayyZov), Plautus Rudens 1319 lists gaulus in a catalogue of wine-vessels.

    A beautiful parallel is given in Ugaritic, Krt 164 f.:

    ysq bgl htt yn bgl hrs nbt

    "[Keret] pours wine in a cup of silver (?), honey (Heb. n3i) in a bowl of gold". Hebrew compares the gullah to the kad as in Antiphanes, Eccles. xii 6:

    "Until the golden bowl is crushed, or the pitcher is broken at the well". In the Tyrian passage Zech. ix 3 Hebrew vocalizes the regular Phoenician word for "gold", yrnn. The root 'bb is "roll" and hence "be round", which goes well with the "potbellied" of Antiphanes. The gullah as capital of a pillar (1 Kings vii 41 f.),

    1) Chicago Assyrian Dictionary s.v. 2) Fragment 224 EDMONDS Frag. Att. Cor. ii. 283 = Athenaeus 11.500 E.

    Here ge is conjecture for ot of MSS, which means "All potbellied drinkers give the name gauloi to kadoi".

    3) Suda i. 509 ed. A. ADLER, Leipzig 1929.

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  • THE MEDITERRANEAN VOCABULARY OF THE VINE

    made by the Phoenician Hiram, also is round; cf. Akkadian gullatu A "column base". An unidentified ornament in Akkadian (gullatu B) is of gold, gul-la-tum KO.GI. On the basis of Pindar Isthm. 1.20 pao(acxai T XppuaoU "and with phials of gold" we may reconstruct *yauXoS Xpuacou out of Antiphanes. We thus have another model international phrase: *yauXos Xpucou = gl hrs = *ryn n= = gullatu hurasi.

    Keret might as well have had the wine in the golden bowl as in the silver one; and might as well have mixed as poured it. Thus we know how to say in Ugaritic "he mixed wine in a bowl of gold", *msk yn bgl hrs. Translating into Hebrew we obtain:

    Yrnn n^a Ii qo? If we then translate into quasi-Homeric Greek and compare with the Hebrew:

    iacay-e (F)oZ'v-ov v yauX-co xpuc-ou masal yayin be-gull-at harus

    we see how far an intelligible international language existed. Pastoral and technical uses of yauXo6 are earlier attested in Greek

    than this luxury one. Among his milk-vessels (&yyax) Polyphemus had yauXoc (Od. 9.222-3); see Leonidas (Anth. Pal. 6.35). Herodotus 6.119 implies that yauXo6 was the normal word for a well-bucket; in the sweep of the "asphalt" (petroleum) well at Ardericca it was replaced by half a skin, avrl 8k yauXou i[LLcu &acxou. In inscriptions from Delos it is a well-bucket and equivalent to xa8os.1)

    With Keret's bowl of honey we may compare Theocritus 5.58-9, dedicating to Pan gauloi of milk and skaphides of honey. Antiphilos (Anth. Pal. 9.404) calls the beehive a gaulos. At Zech. iv 2 f. the gulldh of a lampstand has something to do with its oil-supply. A gaulis contains olives or oil, Oppian Cynegetica 1.126

    xoap7r6 'AO0vacIr X7rcxap'7v T,r yauXis'ca 7rX0L

    "When the fruit of Athena fills the sleek gaulis". Cargo ships were "round" and more seaworthy (Herodotus

    1.163 cTpoyy6X,aCL vyuac) than "long" warships (vauTc.X'LTlaL LcaxpxaL). A Phoenician cargo ship is yauXos, clearly derived from a Phoenician word "round". Epicharmos of the 5th century B.C. speaks of

    auToq 6 IoxT8nav OCyov yauXo'criv v oV(I)vLxxoLq

    1) J. TREHEUX, "Etudes d'epigraphie delienne III", Bull. de Corr. Hell. LXXVI (1952) 562-571.

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  • J. PAIRMAN BROWN

    "Poseidon himself, carrying [fish] in Phoenician gauloi".l) The gauloi in Herodotus (3.136-7, 6.17, 8.97) are all Phoenician.2) An epigram of Callimachus has the dedicated object say:

    KuTpo0e SIsovto6 UL xocaTTycayv v0a8O ycauX5o "A Sidonian gaulos brought me from Cyprus".3) A Latin lexico- grapher affirms that the gaulus was genus navigii paene rotundum.4) Connected with the ship-name must be the island rcauXo (mod. Gozo) north of Malta, which Diodorus 5.12 calls a Phoenician colony; perhaps the "round" island. A local inscription 5) calls it 51n; I don't know whether the waw represents Phoenician or Greek pronunciation.

    8. Nard and other ointments. vapp8o (and v&aprT Theophrastus Hist. Plant. 9.7.3), Lat. nardus; n, with suffix '.l ; Syriac nardin; Sanskrit naladas.6)

    We have seen the physical setting of the classical symposium. The participants will have bathed, anointed themselves with perfumed unguents, and put on wreaths of flowers. In a fragment of Middle Comedy,7) somebody visits the perfumer's (,uporcowtq) and brings back cinnamon and nard ointments, xavvvL0x(lv0a, vapLpva[t6ppa]. By the Roman period nard is preferred. The middle- aged Horace, borrowing a theme of Alcaeus,8) invites his lady friend (scortus), "Why don't we lie down under this high platanus or pine, just as we are, scenting our grey hairs with roses while we can, and drink, anointed with Assyrian nard?":

    cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac pinu iacentes sic temere et rosa

    canos odorati capillos dum licet, Assyriaque nardo

    potamus uncti ... ? 9) 1) Frag. 54, A. KAIBEL, Doriensium comoedia..., Berlin 1899 = Athenaeus

    7.320 C. 2) See Xenophon Anab. 5.8.1; Aristophanes Birds 598-602. 3) Callimachus frag. 384.50 (i. 318 ed. R. PFEIFFER, Oxford 1949). 4) W. M. LINDSAY, Sexti Pompei Festi..., Leipzig 1913, p. 85. The gaulus

    appears in a list of boats at Aulus Gellius 10.25.5. 5) K.A.I. 62.1, 8; now in Malta, prob. originally from Gozo. 6) See the excellent article of W. H. SCHOFF, "Nard", Journ. of the Am. Or. Soc.

    XLIII (1923) 216-228, with refs. to more Oriental sources. Compare my treatment of cassia inJ.S.S. XIII (1968) 169-173.

    7) Antiphanes frag. 35, EDMONDS Frag. Att. Com. ii. 179 = Athenaeus 15.690 A. 8) PAGE, Sappho and Alcaeus p. 242. 9) Carm. 2.11.13-17; cf. Epode 13.8, Tibullus 3.6.63-4.

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    As the symposiasts chip in to provide the necessities, Horace (Carm. 4.12.16-17) tells his friend, "You can purchase wine with nard; a little onyx of nard will merit a cadus":

    nardo vina merebere nardi parvus onyx eliciet cadum.

    For nard is thought to win the girl's favor. Antiphilos of Byzantion (Anth. Pal. 6.250, first cent. after Christ) sends his girl friend a purple chiton, rose-red wool for knitting, and "nard for your dark hair, enclosed in a gray glass bottle":

    ... Y xuavoxpLXo XaxCT7v vap8ov, )uo ycXnuxc xXLoJLpV7]V uaoou

    The function of nard as love-charm is verified by Cant. i 12-14: "While the king was on his couch, my nard ("I~., LXX vap8os) gave forth its fragrance; my beloved is to me a bag of myrrh that lies between my breasts; my beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms (nb;3 bSb, LXX P6opuq T=% xuicpou) 1) in the vineyards of En-Gedi." Schoff made the beautiful discovery that nard, in its original language and home, is already a love-charm :2)

    afijanasya madughasya kustasya naladasya ca turo bhagasya hastabhyam anurodhanam udbhare

    "Of ointment, of madugha (licorice?), of costus, and of nard, by the hands of Bhaga, I bring up quick a means of subjection".

    Nard originally denoted only Indian Nardostachys Jatamansi, but later also valerians of the same family. Costus is the root of Saussurea Lappa of the Kashmir. Pliny 12.41-2 knew that "a root and a leaf have the most value among the Indians: the root is costus ... the leaf nard", radix etfolium Indis in maximopretio : radix costi. . . de folio nardi.3)

    These poetic catalogues hardly do more than transcribe technical writers. Theophrastus (Hist. Plant. 9.7.3) 4) has a list of twenty

    1) The hair of the angels is a wreath of nard blossoms in Apoc. of Peter 3.10; E. KLOSTERMANN, Apocrypha I p. 9 (Berlin 1933), Kleine Texte no. 3.

    2) Atharva Veda 6.102.5-6 ed. R. ROTH & W. D. WHITNEY, Atharva Veda Sanhita, vol. I (all pub.), Berlin 1856, p. 132. I owe assistance here to my student Roshni Rustomji BOHN.

    3) Pliny 13.15 states that ointment of nard also contained costus. Columella 12.20.5-6 has a long list of spices used to preserve wine; Lucan 9.916-21 alleges that burning galbanum, costus etc. fumigated against snakes.

    4) Cf. de odor. 27, 32 f.

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  • J. PAIRMAN BROWN

    plants used for unguents including nard and costus. Pliny 13.18 describes a "royal" ointment made of 24 items-unless this is a list misinterpreted as a recipe.') The Talmud for the temple-incense combines the ingredients of the Biblical incense (Ex. xxx 34) with the anointing-oil (Ex. xxx 23 f.) and new items: stacte, onycha ("fingernail"), galbanum, libanos, 70 minas ea.; myrrh, cassia, "spike of nard," crocus, 16 minas ea.; costus (qost), 12 minas; bark (?) 3 minas; cinnamon 9 minas etc. :2)

    l;llp3p nmsjp ... tD np

    These prescriptions are verified by actual dedications: a stone of Seleucus I giving Apollo of Didyma cassia, costus, etc. ;3) a Christian text of the 4th century which lists properties in Tyre and Egypt as supplying oil of nard, cassia, balsam, storax, stacte, saffron to St Paul's basilica in Rome.4)

    The value of the spice-trade is verified by a tax-list (vectigal) of Marcus Aurelius b) containing 54 items, among them costus, nardi stachys and 18 other spices; and by the attempt of Diocletian's maximum-price edict to control "oil of nard" along with many other unguents.6) Documents of the actual spicetrade 7) are the Periplous of the Red Sea 8), which lists costus and nard as passing through various ports; commercial documents on papyrus of the third century B.C., one of which 9) lists Minaean libanos, "zmyrna", dry nard, "an alabaster of cinnamon ointment," and cassia;

    1) See the chart "Composition of classical perfumes according to Pliny and Dioscorides" in R. J. FORBES, Studies in Ancient Technology, 1st ed. (Leiden 1955) iii. 32.

    2) B. T. Kerethoth 6a (GOLDSCHMID ix. 480); see Baba Metsia 86a bot., Jer. Talm. Yoma IV. 41d. By counting properly we can verify the "13 spices" (un- specified) of Josephus Bell. Jud. 5.218.

    3) W. DITTENBERGER, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (2 vols., Leipzig 1903-5) no. 214 line 60.

    4) L. DUCHESNE, Le Liber Pontificalis (Bibliotheque des ecoles franSaises d'Ath6nes et de Rome, ii serie, Paris 1886-1892), i. 178 f.

    5) Digest de publicanis XXXIX. 4.16.5-7; Corpus iuris civilis ed. T. MOMMSEN & P. KRUGER, Berlin 1828, vol. I p. 651a.

    6) Edict XXII. 77, ed. E. R. GRASER in T. FRANK, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome (Baltimore 1940), V. 305 ff.

    7) I have not yet seen J. Innes MILLER, The Spice-Trade of the Roman Empire, 1968.

    8) Periplus Maris Rubri 38, 48-9, 56; ed. C. MULLER, Geographi Graeci Minores (Paris 1855-61) i. 257.

    9) Papiri greci e latini VI (Pubblicazioni della societa italiana per la ricerca dei Papiri greci e latini in Egitto), Firenze 1920, no. 628, p. 65.

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    another 1) has "sealed bags" (against theft) of nard, libanos, smyrna, purple, saffron. Precisely the strength of the poetry is its use of these technical and commercial vocabularies.

    The Phoenicians were the entrepreneurs at many points along the spice-route; they were with Alexander gathering "spikenard" (valerians?) in the desert of Gedrosia (Arrian Anab. 6.22.5).2) Their mystifications account for Arrian (7.20.2) describing the nard of Arabia, and Diodorus (2.49.3) 3) the costus and cassia of Arabia Felix. This mythical geography passes back into poetry. Enoch 4) describes the mountains of nard, mastic, cardamom and pepper in the Northeast. The mythical paradise of Cant. iv 13 f. contains nine spices or flowers, mostly non-Syrian.5) The Stephanos of Meleager of Gadara (Anth. Pal. 4.1, first century B.C.) compares each poet he has "anthologized" to a flower. Besides crocus and myrrh, see vss. 42-4:

    c(pOLVLaov -c vYv'V XUtpOV o 'Av-C TL-cTOU xal IT]v xoiL SupioCv a-cpCXu6OTPLX0C OcxrTO v&ppov,

    utivo06-Tav, 'EpioU5 aCopov &tL6OLvov.

    "And he put in the fresh scarlet henna of Antipater, and the Syrian spikenard [valerian], the hymn-maker, Hermodorus."6)

    Nard ointment also appears in the Gospels, and the scene sums up these themes. In Luke the woman like Horace's scortus is of the city, but sexuality is sublimated into preparation for death (Mark xiv 8). Still the setting is a banquet (Luke vii 36, John xii 2)- undoubtedly with wine. The gift is like a dedication-perhaps a Messianic anointing. The proletarian Evangelists are impressed by its expensiveness: Mark xiv 3 &Xa&3oCpa-pov utpou vc&pou :La-TLXar

    1) C. C. EDGAR, Zenon Papyri I (Catalogue generale des antiquites egyptiennes du musee du Caire, vol. [79]), Cairo 1925, no. 59069 p. 92.

    2) Quoting the historian Aristoboulos; see Strabo 15.2.3. 3) Quoting Poseidonios, JACOBY 87 F 114. 4) Greek: R. H. CHARLES, The Book of Enoch, Oxford 1893 & 1912. Aramaic

    fragments of 32.1: J. T. MILIK, "Henoch au pays des Aromates", Revue biblique LXV (1958) 70-77.

    5) Discussed J.S.S. XIII (1968) 171. The first three flowers of Canticles- kypros (henna), nard, crocus-appear in a geographical catalogue of flower- perfumes: Apollonius Mys in Athenaeus 15.688 E.

    6) Meleager at Anth. Pal. 5.147 describes a wreath of lilies (krina), crocuses etc. T. R. GLOVER (The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire, 2nd ed., Boston 1960, p. 123): Jesus "bade men study the flowers... Flower-poetry came into Greek literature from regions familiar to us in the life of Jesus; Meleager was a Gadarene."

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  • J. PAIRMAN BROWN

    7oXurTXo5q "an alabaster jar of precious ointment of nard 1) (and pistachio?)" ; John xii 3 X-lpacv [upou v&apou (v. om. cod. D) trou-

    9. The bull. I reserve full treatment of the words -rOc5po / bni etc. for a projected study of the unity of ancient civic cult. Here I just note briefly a normal sequence in Mediterranean public religion: the sacrifice of a bull with the libation of wine. Thus at Num. xv 10-11 :

    T [' T . T " T T * '

    "And you shall offer wine (LXX olvov) for the drink-offering . . thus shall it be done for each bull (LXX vi6aXc)". At Deut. xxxiii 17 for l it ni the LXX has the more etymological ren- dering trp&o)Tooxo T-raupou. When Alexander crossed the Hellespont "he sacrificed a bull to Poseidon and poured a libation from a golden vial to the Nereids" (Arrian Anab. 1.11.6), ycpXi&cvTc -xrcxpov T(o IIoa t&vt xol NYpYtL t ar6vStLv x Xpuo7] ptgLXYq. The non- ritualistic Greeks restrict exact formulas to civic decrees. For an exact parallel to the Hebrew we go to the only classical texts with detailed ritual prescriptions-the tables of Iguvium in Oscan dialect. For simplicity taking the version in Latin alphabet, we read : uitlu toru trif fetu ... heri uinu heri poni fetu, "he shall sacrifice three calves of a bull (Lat. vitulos tauri) ... either with wine or with (other) drink he shall sacrifice".2) A partial parallel in the Etruscan liber linteus of Zagreb :3) raxO tur hexsO vinum trin flere neOunil

    to the left ? give place the wine, invoke the God Neptunus. 10. The tambourine (LSJ "kettledrum"). TUOravov and later TUc7rCavov,

    Lat. tympanum ; 1, stem tupp- (LXX always -TUri7rtvov), denomi- native verb fln; Phoenician lnlr (K.A.I. 49.7) "drummer"; Ugar. tp is promised ;4) Talmudic Aramaic .ln.

    1) The Peshitta both places has nardin. 2) Tablet VI. B. 45-6; essentially identical is the doublet in Umbrian alphabet,

    I. B. 4-6. Ed. J. W. POULTNEY, The Bronze Tables of Iguvium (Philolog. Monogr. of the Am. Philolog. Ass. XVIII, Baltimore 1959) pp. 266, 162. So in Falerian (R. S. CONWAY, The Italic Dialects, Cambridge 1897, no. 312) foied vino pipafo era carefo, hodie vinum bibam cras carebo.

    3) Translation, M. PALLOTTINO, The Etruscans (Penguin 1955) p. 274. Trans- literation corrected from PALLOTTINO, Testimonia Linguae Etruscae (Biblioteca di studi superiori XXIV) Firenze 1954, p. 15, col. IX lines 6-7.

    4) By GORDON, U.T. Glossary s.v. knr, to appear in "RS 24.252".

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  • THE MEDITERRANEAN VOCABULARY OF THE VINE

    There is a closely similar word for "clay tablet", "writing tablet": Sumerian DUB, Akkadian tuppu, Hittite tuppi. It seems to appear as Talmudic 9l, Aram. mrn "plank, column of scroll" ;1) Syriac L. dap(p)d' John xix 20 (rTLTov from Lat. titulus, which Jerome reads), pl. JLa. dap(p)e' "planks" Acts xxvii 44 (ao0vCoaw, tabulis). It is tempting to suppose that Latin tabula "plank, tablet" is con- nected, perhaps via Etruscan. But there is no clear semantic con- nection with the "timbrel" words.

    Hebrew usage suggests that toph is foreign, and there is no good evidence for an original root tpp. The old Aramaic forms tpwh, tph (K.A.I. 224.13) are obscure, as is Ug. ttpp ('nt 11:42, 1II :89). *qFn is only conjectured at 1 Sam. xxi 14 from LXX TUMO7rvAv. The participles nbnih Nah. ii 8, ni5nh Ps. Iviii 26 (LXX Tu7rOC- vLTarpLC)v) seem clearly denominative.

    If the Greek is derived from TU=Tt "I strike" with the instrumen- tal suffix -avo-, the Hebrew is a borrowing from it. But Greek usage strongly suggests borrowing from Asia Minor with folk-etymol- ogy-unless the Asianic language had a cognate to TU%T(O. Both -7t- and -pt- could represent Heb. -pp-; Hebrew doubled stops appear in Greek as (nasal plus stop): rm. / Xaocp7rS-; -r.n (Esth. i 1) / 'Iv6 "Hindu" ; nm.N / cyycpo.

    Although Euripides' Bacchae is our fullest statement of Dionysiac orgy-distinct both from private symposium and public cult-we find the neatest summary at his Cyclops 63-7:

    oU rOc's Bp6ito5, oU TaOCs X0opo BoxOzC T Oupaoop6poL

    oU TUV7:vtov XaXaYyTpOL Xpn'V= 7rap' U8poXUTOLq,

    oux oi'vou X(opat GaocyovS

    "These things are not Bromios [Dionysos], the choruses, the Bacchantes carrying their thyrsoi, the noise of tambourines by the watery springs, the yellow drops of wine."2) A papyrus letter shows us the reality of the tambourinist at a feast-unquestionably with wine :3)

    1) Also Aram. /p. "plank of ship", COWLEY, Papyri 26. 10. 2) Cf. Hercules Furens 891-2; Diodorus 2.38.5-6; Ovid, Met. 3.536-42, 4.7-29,

    391-404, 11.17-28; Anth. Pal. 6.165. 3) B. P. GRENFELL & A. S. HUNT, The Hibeh Papyri I, London 1906 (Egypt

    Explor. Fund, Greco-Roman Branch VI) no. 54, pp. 200-1.

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  • J. PAIRMAN BROWN

    &7It6aEl?hOV 8~ ~)izV Xoc Z7v6r3Lov t6v Pio?Xox6v ixov-c 4T7Uixvov Xoc xUPPc?Xoc X(XL xp&tc?a, XP,L( Y'X'OC eian tOC yuvMXLSv 7rp' t3v Oua'OCv.

    "Send us on also the homosexual Zenobios with his timbrel, cymbals and castanets; the women need him for the sacrifice." (He must be dressed very handsome, asteiotata).

    See now Isaiah xxiv 7-9, where a village festival is overthrown:

    "The ti~rJf mourns, the vine languishes (LXX vOaveilE otvos, xsvOjL,, &4o ); those merry in heart sigh, the myrth of the

    tambourines (LXX tcuwiv rv) is stilled; the noise of the jubilant has ceased, the mirth of the lyre (LXX xLangpis) is stilled; no more do they drink wine (LXX olvov) with singing, strong drink (amxepo) is bitter to the drinkers." Especially when in no. 11 we discover the underground connection between thyrsos and tiros: the two scenes look very much alike.

    In both societies women (or effeminates) have a practical mono- poly on the tambourine. Aristophanes, looking back from 411 B.C. to the sailing for Syracuse in 415, asks (Lysistrata 387-9, cf. vss 3, 393):

    &p' e;eAoqit 'tGV YUVOXLX&)V 7j1 PUTY) ZGt T7~VVVUYLOq XQL 7UXIVOL (Xr3CLL 6; t' 'AGwovLoaa.t o&5oq oin' rti&v Gtrycv;

    "Has the women's abandon broken out again, the shaking of tim- brels, the celebrations for Sabazios, this mourning for Adonis on the roofs ?" The Homeric Hymn to the Mother of the Gods (14.3) says that she is pleased with "the sound of castanets and timbrels, the wailing of flutes":

    j xpGTcX2&)v U7V TOv V 't LOXXj- CUV 'T eP otlG OW?)V

    Euripides Bacchae 59 says the tympana were the invention of Rhea and Dionysos.1) Likewise in Israel the timbrel is associated with

    1) The tragedian Diogenes described how Phrygian women in the worship of Cybele used timbrels and cymbals; A. NAUCK, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, 2nd ed., Leipzig 1889, pp. 776-7 = Athenaeus 14.636 a.

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  • THE MEDITERRANEAN VOCABULARY OF THE VINE

    women, who are much more prominent than in normal Mosaic religion. Jephthah's daughter comes out playing the toph, is sacri- ficed, and yearly lamented by the daughters of Israel (Judges xi 34-40)-a close parallel to the Adonis cult. It is the instrument of Miriam the ecstatic (Ex. xv 20) and of Judith (Jud. xvi 20).1)

    Lucretius gives our fullest list2) (2.618-620) of instruments used in the cult of Cybele:

    Tympana tenta tonant palmis et cymbala circum concava, raucisonoque minantur cornua cantu et Phrygio stimulat numero cava tibia mentis

    "They strike the stretched tympana (evidently "drums" here) with their palms, and the hollowed cymbals; the horns threaten with their hoarse song, and the hollow flute arouses emotions in its Phrygian mode." So when the Ark is brought up to Jerusalem (2 Sam. vi 5), David and all the house of Israel make merry before Yahweh with

    Jerome et cytharis et lyris (LXX va'&XaL) et tympanis et sistris et cymbalis. We are discovering a cultic orchestra.3) It appears Isa. v 12 at a symposium:

    * *nt * -T * Tr TTr TT -na rp nl

    LXX pxo&c yop xLOpaocq xao axoc-lp ou xaot Tuproxdvcv xoa aoctuov (Jer. tibia) Tbo o6vov iLVouGV. Saul will meet a band of prophets with exactly the same orchestra (1 Sam. x 5).4)

    The indecent "triangle" dance. The orchestra of 2 Sam. vi 5 pre- sumably continued when David did his indecent dance (vi 15-23). At a similar victory celebration (1 Sam. xviii 6) the women come out to meet Saul and David

    T* T : ' : * :

    1) MILTON, reading between the lines, guessed a Canaanite origin of the toph in the cult of Moloch (P.L. 1.394 f. "Though for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud / Their childrens cries unheard").

    2) Cf. Catullus 63.21-2. 3) Josephus Ant. Jud. 7.306 in his survey of Hebrew musical instraments omits

    flute and tympanum. 4) See my discussion of the orchestra, "Kothar, Kinyras and Kythereia",

    J.S.S. X (1965) 197-219, esp. p. 207. The orchestra of Ps. cl is more orgiastic than we might think.

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  • J. PAIRMAN BROWN

    "with tympana, songs and 'triangles' ". Eupolis in the Dippers (Baptai) shows an Athenian in women's dress :1)

    xaot &LaaXS. TpLYG)voGL xaolxtwLV T' xoXctvat&s xoa Tt0 ac AvXo (XXnY

    "You who play the timbrel nicely, and sing to the 'triangle', and swing with your bottom, and lift your legs." 2) I cannot identify either 'triangle' more closely.

    11. The vine-stem. Hieroglyphic Hittite tuwarsa; Oupaoo "branch" (Hesychius), "staff twined with ivy and vine"; Lat. thyrsus the same, also "stalk of lettuce etc.". tiv.ni "(new?) wine", Phoen. wtnn, Ugar. trt (lI Aqht VI, 7, fragmentary).

    Hieroglyphic Hittite is still imperfectly understood-or even transcribed. Several stelai are interpreted as dealing with the vine. The most interesting is that of "Sultanhan", which I believe is just south of L. Tuz in Turkey. As interpreted by MERIGGI 3) it refers to a God DTRH-hu--n tu-wa-r-s3-sa-a-n "Tarhui of the vine". Paragraphs 24-5 read: a-wa TRH-hu-i-s i-a tu-wa-r-s3-i ma-s-ha-na- a-ti a-wa wa-a-na-a-s ?-a-r-ti-a, "And (the God) Tarhui will favor(?) this vineyard, and the vine (will grow?)". In spite of all uncer- tainties, the apparent sense of tuwarsa is an excellent midpoint between the ritual vine-staff and the wine-as it also stands midway both in geography and in phonetics. Latin thyrsus "stalk of lettuce" (Suetonius, Aug. 77, Pliny 19.129) seems to preserve an older meaning lost from the Greek except in Hesychius and nearer to the Hittite.

    Our comparison of Isa. xxiv 7-9 with Dionysiac texts is even more pointed if thyrsos / tiros is an old ritual word differently specialized in the two languages. The connection of thyrsos with wine is clear from Euripides Bacchae 706-11:

    XXA ae vcap6Ox' 7i n0sov xaoNxs yq,

    1) Frag. 77, EDMONDS Frag. Att. Cor. I. 355 = Athenaeus 4.183 F. 2) King Juba of Mauretania said the trigonos was a Syrian invention, along with

    the sambuca and "Phoenician lyre"; Athenaeus 4.175 D. Another indecent dance was accompanied by tympana and cymbala; Athenaeus 14.621 A.

    3) Piero MERIGGI, Manuale di eteo geroglifico II. 1 (Incunabula graeca 14), Rome 1967, pp. 116-119.

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  • THE MEDITERRANEAN VOCABULARY OF THE VINE

    xaol TS xp7v7nv iSxavx' otvou O6o, . . . X , xCT,tvtOv

    Oupaov yXuxexaL jLeXLro0 GTTacov poMa

    "Another (Bacchant) strikes her narthex into the ground, and the God sends up a fountain of wine... and from the ivied thyrsoi there flowed sweet streams of honey".') Tiros forms part of an old formula,2) which once includes honey, 2 Chron. xxxi 5

    - 1 T : *. * IT

    "grain, wine, oil, honey." There is no doubt that it was fermented, Hos. iv 11

    "wine and tiros take away the heart". It was formulaic in Hebrew because it was the old name in Phoenician, whereyn is so far unat- tested. So in the Phoenician part of the Karatepe bilingual :3)

    ^Vs nQ5bx s v ' pl ntr t X T DY1 wlnl m Wy n a T nTimpn pi :nl Ystac IYs1 f2

    "And this city will be mistress of "plenty" and of wine; and this people which lives in it will be master of oxen, master of sheep, master of plenty and of wine." The use of y2w is illustrated by Prov. iii 10

    T' Tu : AT ThT y; : wTh T 1a *

    "Then your barns will be filled with plenty (LXX T'iou 'grain') and your vats will be bursting with wine."

    It was perhaps not unreasonable in the eyes of Antiochus IV to force the Jews into Dionysiac processions wearing ivy-wreaths (2 Macc. vi 7). Not long after (2 Macc x 7) the rebels celebrated the rededication in the same manner, carrying "thyrsoi and fair branches and palm fronds", Ou6pou xoal xXa8ouq cipocxou, T 8z xoa cpoLVLXCa XzovTe. Judith, whom we have seen with a tympanon, likewise takes up thyrsoi and distributes them to her women (Jud. xv 12). Plutarch thought there was a festival at which "they go into the Temple bearing thyrsoi", and others playing the lyre (xt0cptLovTre) ; and that somewhere on the temple was carved Ou6p7ao vTzTUroU Svo xoa

    1) The statue of Dionysos in Ptolemy's procession (Athenaeus 5.198 D) had over it a shade with ivy and wine, to which were attached thyrsoi, tympana etc.

    2) L. KOHLER, "Eine archaistische Wortgruppe", Z.A.T. W. n. F. 5, XLVI (1928) 218-220.

    3) K.A.L no. 26, A. III. 7-9 & C. IV. 7-9. I understand that the Hieroglyphic Hittite bilingual does not have tuwarsa for tr. Vetus Testamentum XIX 12

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  • PAIRMAN BROWN, THE VOCABULARY OF THE VINE

    TuPCtrav "an engraved thyrsos and timbrels".l) Tacitus (Hist. 5.5) combines this report with the sacred orchestra:

    sed quia sacerdotes eorum tibia tympanisque concinebant, hedera vinciebantur, vitisque aurea in templo reperta, Liberum patrem coli, domitorem Orientis, quidam arbitrati sunt.

    "But since their priests sang to the flute and timbrels, and were wreathed with ivy, and a golden vine was found in the Temple, some have thought they worshipped Liber Pater, the conqueror of the East".

    We learn from the Mishna how the golden vine was artistically trained on posts over the entrances to the Sanctuary, and gold offerings were hung on it. 2) Josephus describes its grape-clusters as tall as a man. 3) Aristoboulos sent Pompey another golden vine, which Strabo also called a garden (x7n7ro), and was named rzprcoXY ; hence Marcus conjectured its Hebrew name was plg "delight." 4) Pliny 37.14 describes it from the Pompei trimphorum acta, "a square mountain of gold with stags, lions, and (apple-)trees of every kind, surrounded with a golden vine", montem aureum quadratum cum cervis et leonibus etpomis omnis generis circumdata vite aurea. With this vision (hitherto unrecognized?) of the golden "mountain of God" (Ezek. xxviii 13 f.) and the Tree of Life as a golden vine we may appro- priately close.

    1) Quaestiones conviviales 4.6.2. Text & commentary in T. REINACH, Textes d'auteurs grecs et romains relatifs aujudaisme (Paris 1895) 143-6.

    2) Middoth 3.8. J. Lydus, On Months 4.53 (ed. R. WUENSCH, Leipzig 1898): "The Hellenes say that ... in the adyton of the temple in Jerusalem from both pillars there were once vines made of gold which held up the hangings of purple and scarlet; and so they concluded that the temple was of Dionysos."

    3) Bell. Jud. 5.210; Ant. Jud. 15.395. 4) Strabo quoted by Josephus, Ant. Jud. 14.36-7.

    Addenda. A different set of vine-words is discussed under the "Pelasgian" hypo- thesis by A. CARNOY, "Origine thraco-phrygienne du vocabulaire de la vigne," Le Museon LXXI (1958) 161-171.-The eponymous figure of the vineyard, king Oineus of Kalydon, "first received the plant of the vine from Dionysos" (Apollo- dorus 1.8.1). Phoinix tells how Artemis raised up the Kalydonian boar against his vineyards (Iliad 9.539-40). The symbolic vine of Israel is likewise ravaged by the "boar from the forest" (Ps. lxxx 14), and the vines by jackals (Cant. ii 15). Tammuz was killed by the boar at Aphaka of Lebanon, and one witness (Plutarch Quaest. Conv. 4.5 = Mor. 671B) says that "some consider Adonis to be none other than Dionysos."

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    Article Contentsp. [146]p. 147p. 148p. 149p. 150p. 151p. 152p. 153p. 154p. 155p. 156p. 157p. 158p. 159p. 160p. 161p. 162p. 163p. 164p. 165p. 166p. 167p. 168p. 169p. 170

    Issue Table of ContentsVetus Testamentum, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Apr., 1969) pp. 137-272Rubute and Ginti-Kirmil [pp. 137-145]The Mediterranean Vocabulary of the Vine [pp. 146-170]La vision danilique du Fils d'Homme[pp. 171-182]Der Turmbau [pp. 183-195]Chiastic Structure in Isaiah LI 1-11 [pp. 196-201]Gen. XLIX 10/Deut. XXXIII 2-3: A New Look at Old Problems [pp. 202-210]The Morphemes -y(-) and -w(-) in Biblical Hebrew[pp. 211-223]The Date of the Book of Joel [pp. 224-229]The Reign of God in the O.T. [pp. 230-243]Micah in Dispute with the Pseudo-Prophets [pp. 244-260]Short NotesIsaiah I 31 [pp. 261-263]The Rebellion of Absalom [pp. 263-266]

    ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 267-269]Review: untitled [pp. 269-270]Etudes Puniques [pp. 270-271]

    Booklist [pp. 272]