“Ur of the Chaldees” or “Ur Kasdim” is a place-name mentioned in the Bible as the birthplace of biblical Abraham.
The original Hebrew name of this place is: “אוּר כַּשְׂדִּים”, usually transliterated in English as: (ʾŪr Kaśdīm) or (‘uwr Kašdīm).
Contrary to the popular belief, the real etymology and the exact location of “ʾŪr Kaśdīm” is still debated by biblical scholars.
– Septuagint:
In Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Old Testament, “ʾŪr Kaśdīm” is translated as: “χώρα τῶν Χαλδαίων”, (khôra ton Khaldion).
אוּר –→ χώρα (Khôra)
כַּשְׂדִּים –→ Χαλδαίων (Khaldaion)
– Vulgate:
The Vulgate is the Latin translation of the Bible (from Hebrew and Greek).
“ʾŪr Kaśdīm” is written in Latin as: “Ur Caldeaium”, and from Latin into English as: “Ur of the Chaldees”. (or Chaldeans).
אוּר –→ Ur (a Latinization of the Hebrew: ʾŪr)
Χαλδαίων –→ Caldeaium (a Latinization of the Greek: Khaldaion)
Translation & Transliteration
The Greek translators decided to “translate” “אוּר” as: “χώρα” (Khôra)
The Latin translators decided to “transliterate” “אוּר” as: “Ur”.
Translation: gives you the meaning of a word that’s written in Hebrew.
Fortunately, the corresponding Greek for “אוּר” is “χώρα”.
Transliteration: doesn’t tell you the meaning of the word, but it gives you an idea of how this word is pronounced in Hebrew.
Unfortunately, the corresponding Latin for “אוּר” is NOT given.
(ô) pronounced as: “o” in (horse)
(Ū) pronounced as: “oo” in (stool)
(ś) & (š) pronounced as: “sh” in (show)
(ī) pronounced as: “ee” in (steel)
[Kh] is the Hebrew: (כ), Arabic: (خ), Akkadian (ḫ), Greek (x) or (ch) in Scottish English: “loch” and German: “Bauch”
[kh] & [k] are free variants.
כַּשְׂדִּים (Kaśdīm)
“Kašdīm” is a plural noun: (“Kaśd” + plural suffix “-īm”). Most scholars believe that “Kaśdīm” is an ethnonym, a name for a people known in history as “the Chaldees”. (or the Chaldeans)
Χαλδαίων (Khaldaion)
“Χαλδαίων” is believed to be a by-form of “כַּשְׂדִּים/Kaśdīm”, a variant form of the same name. It is the English: “Chaldeans”.
אוּר (Ūr)
In biblical Hebrew, “אוּר/Ūr” means: illumination, luminary, bright, clear, day, light (-ning), morning, Sun, fire, region of light, or east. [1],[2].
However, the intended contextual meaning of “Ur” in “Ur of the Chaldeans” is still debated by biblical scholars:
Is it “the light of the Chaldeans”?
“the Sun of the Chaldeans”?
“the fire of the Chaldeans”?
or what?
Χώρα (or χώρας)
Hebrew “אוּר/Ūr”, in ancient Greek, means “Χώρα/Khôra”. Understanding the etymology of the latter helps to determine the contextual meaning of the former.
“χώρα/Khôra” or “χώρας/Khôras”, is a common Greek word, transliterated in English as “chora” or “khora“.
In Modern Greek, χώρα means: land, territory, region, tract and country.
In ancient Greek, “χώρα/Khôra” had several denotations, some of them can be found in specialized lexicons and ancient literary works, such as:
01- “dictionnaire grec-français”, a Greek-French dictionary published in 1895.
“χώρα/Khôra”, according to this dictionary , means:
- espace, intervalle entre. (Space, space between two limits)
- pays, contree, region. (Country, countryside, region)
- territoire d’une ville. (territory of a city)
- campagne.
“Campagne” in French is defined as: “Grande étendue de pays plat, peu habitée, par opposition à la ville”.
This can be translated as: “Large expanse of flat country, sparsely populated, as opposed to the city”.
02- Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance.
–Strong’s #5561/χώρα: (Khôra): “empty expanse; room, i.e. a space of territory (more or less extensive; (often including its inhabitants), coast, county, fields, ground, land, region.”
–Strong’s #2048/ἔρημος (érēmos): “Undefined desert, desolate, solitary, wilderness of uncertain affinity; lonesome, i.e. (by implication) waste (usually as a noun, G5561 (χώρα) being implied)”
03– in “Republic 495c”, Plato used the word: “χώρα/Khôra” to depict the “barren place” of philosophy resulting from the polluting of young minds by sycophants and flatterers in the Polis.[16]
04- In “Sophist 254a” “χώρα” is used to depict the bright region in which the philosopher resides, as opposed to the Darkness that enshroud the Sophist. The Stranger tells Theaetetus that it is difficult to look at the philosopher, for the “Khôra” is filled with so much light that it dazzles those who are ignorant. [16]
Ὁ δέ γε φιλόσοφος, τῇ τοῦ ὄντος ἀεὶ διὰ λογισμῶν προσκείμενος ἰδέᾳ, διὰ τὸ λαμπρὸν αὖ τῆς χώρας οὐδαμῶς εὐπετὴς ὀφθῆναι· τὰ γὰρ τῆς τῶν πολλῶν ψυχῆς ὄμματα b καρτερεῖν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἀφορῶντα ἀδύνατα.
From “A History of Light”, Page: 34
05- χώρα can be interpreted as “desert” [03]:
06- χώρα/Khôra is a doublet of χωρίς/khôris, which means: “barren of, without”. χώρα is also a doublet of χήρα/kherē, which means: “derelict, deserted“.
07- χέρρος/khôris is a by-form of χώρα/Khôra.
in Attic Greek, χέρρος means: desert, barren land, bare land and scorched land.
According to these sources, χώρα/Khôra, denotes: barren place, flat country, wilderness, desert, region of light, Sunny place, coast and, figuratively: brightness or dazzling light.
Clearly, there are semantic aspects, between Greek “χώρα” and Hebrew “אוּר”.
Current etymology of Khôra
The word “χώρα/Khôra” is generally considered to be of uncertain origin, which means it is not originally a Greek word.
[en.wiktionary.org/wiki/χώρα]:
According to the Hellenist (Renfrew, 1998) “The Greek language is unusual among the languages of Europe in the high proportion of its vocabulary which includes words which are not only not Greek words, but apparently not part of an Indo-European vocabulary either”.
“Ancient documents and archaeology have shown that the Semitic peoples, especially the Phoenicians and the people of Ugarit, were in contact with other Mediterranean peoples by means of colonizing, trade and correspondence about legal issues etc. Therefore, words were often mutually transmitted and became adopted in a foreign lexicon. This applied to Ancient Greek as well. Although the exact number is unknown, the Greek lexicon contains presumably hundreds of Semitic loanwords. However, when one tries to determine the exact donor language, several problems occur.” [24]
Greek languages have a long history of interaction with “neighboring” Semitic languages, this includes the Greek alphabet, which was derived from the Phoenician alphabet. Such interaction results in sharing many related words. Some of these words underwent phonological /morphological changes, and became: (camouflaged loanwords), while others are still (explicit loanwords).
Examples:
01-Greek: “γη/gi” (= land)
Sumerian “ki” (= land)
02-Greek: χρυσός/khrysós (= gold)
Akkadian “ḫurāṣu” (= gold)
Akkadian /ḫ/ pronounced = /kh/
Greek suffix “-ós” is epenthetic.
03-Latin: “area” (English: area)
Sumerian: “aria; arua; éria”: steppe, desert, waste land, district. Translated into Akkadian as: “ḫarbu” & “ḫurbu”. [13]
04-Greek: (σαγήνη/saqina = fishing net).
Akkadian: (šikinnu = fishing net).
05- Greek: (κάννα/kanna = reed).
Akkadian: (qanû = reed).
06- Greek: (κόφινος/kuph-inos = basket).
Akkadian: (quppu = basket).
Arabic: (qufa = basket)
Greek suffix “-inos” is epenthetic.
07- Greek: (κούπα/koúpa = cup).
Quranic Arabic: (kawb = cup).
08- Greek: (χώρα/khura = land).
Sumerian: (kura = land).
09- Greek: (ταύρος/taurus = bull).
Aramaic:(tawra = bull).
Thus, it is not far-fetched to assume that Greek “Khôra” is related to Sumerian/Semitic “kur” which means: Land, country, to light up, to burn, and east.
Semantic equivalents
As mentioned earlier, ancient Greeks translated “אוּר/ Ūr” as “χώρα/Khôra”. This has led some scholars to infer that these two words, (Ūr & Khôra), are close in meaning, or as.. Wikipedia put it: “The Septuagint translation of Genesis does not include the term: Ur ; instead it describes the: Land of the Chaldees, (Greek χώρα , Khôra). Some scholars have held that biblical Ur was not a city at all, but simply a word for land.”
One of those scholars is (Shanks, 2000), who held that: “Ur, as used in the Bible refers not to a city, but to a region“. [4]
That’s to say:
1- “אוּר/Ūr” has an “obsolete sense” which is: “land”.
2- “אוּר/Ūr” and “χώρα/Khôra” share “semantic aspects”, and they could be “semantic equivalents”.
Semantic equivalents: are words in two different languages that have similar or practically identical meanings. They may be cognate, but usually they are not. For example, the German equivalent of the English word “cow” is “Kuh”, which is also cognate, but the French equivalent is “vache”, which is unrelated. [5]
Obsolete sense
To investigate more about this “obsolete sense” of “אוּר/Ūr”, we need to do some “cognate comparison”.
The existing senses of “אוּר/Ūr” are: illumination, luminary, bright, clear, day, light (-ning), morning, Sun, fire, region of light, or east.
This Hebrew word has cognates in other Semitic languages, but ultimately Sumerian in origin.
It is worth noticing, here, that Sumerian and Akkadian words are characterized by their multiple “spelling variants”, and “many cuneiform signs can be pronounced in more than one way and often two or more signs share the same pronunciation” [6]
Akkadian: “urrû; urru; urra”: to shed light, daylight, morning, daytime. “ārā, aru; eru; erû; irû; eriu, uru”: land, empty, destitute, nakedness, naked, to strip bare, to clear out. [7],[8]
Sumerian: “ara; ar; rà; ùru”: light, lustrous, bright, glowing, clear, polished, luminous object. watchfire, to shine; to blaze.
“aria; arua; éria”: desert, waste land, district.
“uru; iri; ri; iri”: immediate vicinity, adjacent place, village. [12].[13]
Syriac: (ܥܪܐ), (ܥܲܪܝܵܐ): (ᶜara), (ᶜaria): Lay bare, strip naked, kindled, started (fire), stripped, lacking covering, abraded.
(ܐܰܥܪܺܝ): (aᶜri): to light, to torch, to start fire, to lay bare.
(ܚܘܵܪܵܐ): (ḥura): white, a blank, a landscape, an extensive view.
(ܟܳܪ): (her): hot, burning, sultry, ardent. [9], [10]
Arabic: ḥar (حَر): heat, rural region, side.
ḥariah deverbal adjective (حَرّية): sandy land, (أرض حَريّة)
ḥarra (حَرّة): scorched land, lava field.
ᵓuar (أوار): heat of fire, flame.
ᶜaraᵓ (عراء): nakedness, nudity, barren land, desert.
ᶜara (عرا) or (عرى): side, piazza, suburb, province.
ᶜar (عر): side, rural region.
ᶜurian (العُريان): sand dune. [11]
In these languages, words such as: (hot, blazed, bright, scorched, parched, naked, and blank), are used figuratively to denote: “exposed land”, “bare soil”, “barren desert”, “sands”, or broadly: “land”.
Open spaces, plains, deserts and dunes are usually associated with clarity, light, heat or whiteness, in contrast with the dark, shady and cool dwellings or wooded areas.
Here are some examples:
– Sumerian: “Kur”: to light up, to burn, east, land, country.
– Mandaic language: “Ber”: Shine out, burn with anger, desert, vacant land.
– Latin word ‘harena’ or ‘arena’: sandy desert, another meaning of this Latin word is Fire or Lava.
– English word “shire” (suburb/country): derived from old English ‘Scir’ (pronounced Shir) which means ‘bright’ or ‘clear’.
– English ‘plains’ refers to ‘treeless level expanses’, its literal meaning is: “clearly visible”.
Diachronically, the figurative sense, may become the general meaning of the word, or one of its lexical denotations. Some or one of these denotations may become archaic or obsolete, no longer used, no longer understood.
“Obsolete denotation” refers to the case of a word which had more than one meaning, but which, in the course of time ‘lost’ one of its meanings. [15] This “lost meaning” is called: “obsolete denotation” or “obsolete sense”.
All this leads to the conclusion that Hebrew “אוּר/Ūr” has an obsolete sense, which is: “desert” or “sands”, and broadly: “land”.
Within Hebrew lexicography, there is “ערם/ᶜr-am” ( = naked, heap), which might be a doublet of “ער” and “אר”. In Semitic morphology “-m” is a ‘suffix’ or an ‘epithesis’
“ער-ם” has an Arabic cognate: “ᶜarma/عَرَمةُ” (pile, sand dune).
Sand is perceived as being pure, soft, clean, unspoiled, shiny, hot and reddish-white. This made the word “sand”, or its equivalents, synonymous with “lighted, glowing, heat, redness, whiteness, pure, bare, barren, stripped, without, empty, deprived, poor… etc.
Cf. Greek: “χωρίς/khoris”, (= barren of, without), obviously a doublet of “χωρας/khora”.
– in “Republic 495c”, Plato used the word: “χώρα/khora” to depict the “barren place” of philosophy resulting from the polluting of young minds by sycophants and flatterers in the Polis.[16]
Khôra as “Coast”
In Septuagint, “אוּר/ur” is rendered as “χώρα” (Khora), or “χώρας” (Khoras). Septuagint, is the earliest Greek translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew.
The Septuagint was presumably made for the Jewish community in Ptolemaic Egypt when Greek was the common language throughout the region. [17] The official language of Ptolemaic Egypt was Greek but the vernacular language was Coptic.
Coptic language is written in Greek script and heavily influenced by the Hellenistic Culture. Up to 40% of the vocabulary of literary Coptic is drawn from Greek. There are instances of Coptic texts having passages that are almost entirely composed from Greek lexical roots. [18]
One of these Greek loanwords in Coptic language is: “χώρα/Khôra” or “χώρας/Khôras”.
In this case, Greek is the donor language, and Coptic is the recipient language.
The donor language: is the language from which the word was borrowed.
The recipient language: is the language into which the word was borrowed.
Loanwords often preserve features lost in the donor language, this includes pronunciations and meanings. [19]
In Coptic language “χώρα” (var. χωριον), means: Rural area, suburb, region, territory, side and coast.
This last denotation, (coast), is particularly interesting.
“Coast” as a lexical meaning of “χώρα”, is not found in ancient Greek lexicons.
However, it is listed in “Strong’s concordance”.
Strong’s #5561: χώρα (pronounced kho’-rah): “Feminine of a derivative of the base of 5490 through the idea of empty expanse; room, i.e. a space of territory (more or less extensive; often including its inhabitants):–coast, county, fields, ground, land, region.”.
“χώρα” with this meaning is found in Acts 26:20.
Acts 26:20, King James Bible:
“But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.”The original Greek:
ΠΡΑΞΕΙΣ 26:20 Greek NT: Stephanus Textus Receptus 1550:
“ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἐν Δαμασκῷ πρῶτόν καὶ Ἱεροσολύμοις εἰς πᾶσάν τε τὴν χώραν τῆς Ἰουδαίας καὶ τοῖς ἔθνεσιν ἀπαγγέλλων μετανοεῖν καὶ ἐπιστρέφειν ἐπὶ τὸν θεόν ἄξια τῆς μετανοίας ἔργα πράσσοντας”.
Here, the KJV translators translated “χώραν”, (plural of χώρα ), as: “coasts”!
In Coptic, “ χώρα”, (a loanword from Greek), means: “coast”!
In James Strong’s dictionary, “χώρα” (among other denotations) means: “Coast”.
It is interesting that: “Ora” in Latin means: “coast”.
In medieval Persian: “إيراه/irah” means: “coast”.
Sand and Coast
In many languages, the word “sand” is synonymous with “seaside” and “riverbank”.
1- English: ‘sand’.
According to “Merriam-Webster”:
Sand is a loose granular material that results from the disintegration of rocks. Synonyms: beach beachfront, strand.
According to “Longman Dictionary”: Sand is:
– A substance consisting of very small pieces of rocks and minerals that forms beaches and deserts.
– An area of beach.
2- English ‘Beach’: From Middle English bache, bæcche (“bank, sandbank”),
3- Italian ‘piaggia’
-Stretch of flat terrain interrupting a slope.
-Alternative form of spiaggia (= beach).
(From Medieval Latin plagia, from Latin plaga, whence also French plage, Spanish playa).
3- Greek: ἄμμος:
Strong’s Definition: ἄμμος (ámmos), from G260 (ἅμα): sand (as heaped on the beach).
5- Arabic: ᶜadan (عدان).
-Coast or bank.
-Soft sand.
(Probably a doublet of dahan/دهن: sand or sandy area).
6- Arabic: Sahal (سهل).
-Soft land.
-Sea-sand
(Probably a doublet of Sahil/ساحل: shore, seaside).
7- Spanish: “playa” (beach), From Latin: “plaga” (tract, region).
The contextual meaning
This leads to the conclusion that the ‘contextual meaning’ of “χώρα” in “χώρα τῶν Χαλδαίων” is : Coast.
Accordingly, this toponym can be translated as: ‘The Coast of the Chaldeans’
or in Hebrew: חוֹף כַּשְׂדִּים
In Summation so far: Biblical Hebrew: “אוּר/Ūr” and ancient Greek :”χώρα/Khôra” are “Semantic equivalents”, they both denote: Light, desert, sand or coast.
“Ūr Kašdīm” can be translated as: “The Coast of the Chaldeans”.
But, who were these Chaldeans? and where is their coast?
The Chaldeans
According to the Jewish encyclopedia:
“The Chaldeans were a Semitic people and apparently of very pure blood. Their original seat may have been Arabia, whence they migrated at an unknown period into the country of the sea-lands about the head of the Persian gulf.”. [20a]
Chaldea, their country.
“In the early period, between the early 9th century and late 7th century BC, (Chaldea) was the name of a small sporadically independent migrant-founded territory under the domination of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) in southeastern Babylonia, extending to the western shores of the Persian Gulf. [20b]
“Chaldea” is called in Assyrian: ‘mat Kaldi’, that is, ‘land of Chaldea, But there is also used, apparently synonymously, the expression ‘mat Bit Yakin’, It would appear that (Bit Yakin) was the chief or capital city of the land; and the king of Chaldea is also called the king of Bit Yakin, just as the kings of Babylonia are regularly styled simply king of Babylon, the capital city. In the same way, the Persian gulf was sometimes called “the Sea of Bit Yakin, instead of ‘the Sea of the Land of Chaldea’.”. [20a] “Sargon II mentions ‘Bit Yakin’ as extending as far as Dilmun (Bahrain) or ‘sea-land’ (littoral Eastern Arabia)”. [21]
Evidence
“What is of great importance, is a dedicatory inscription (Fig. 01) carved on a rock face in Al-Hofuf oasis which represents that rare genre of texts variously called Old Arabic, Chaldean or, more commonly, Proto-Arabic, dated to between the 5th and 9th centuries B.C. While the actual dedicatory content of the text is of considerable interest, the mere fact of its existence in northeastern Arabia is of even greater significance, for it was W. F. Albright’s belief that such inscriptions, known also from Ur, Uruk, Abu, Salabikh, Nippur, and Anah on the Middle Euphrates , represented the earliest traces of the Chaldeans. [22]
“Fifteen years before Al-Hofuf inscription was known to the scholarly world, Albright suggested that the last dynasty to rule Babylonia before the Persian conquest, the dynasty which included the illustrious Nebuchadnezzar, had originated in “an undetermined part of east Arabia:’ Does this inscription then provide confirmation for Albright’s thesis?” [22]
Chaldean exiles
According to Encyclopædia Britannica:
“GERRHA (Arab. al-Jar ʽa), an ancient city of Arabia, on the west side of the Persian Gulf, described by Strabo (Bk. xvi.) as inhabited by Chaldean exiles from Babylon, who built their houses of salt and repaired them by the application of salt water. Pliny (Hist. Nat. vi. 32) says it was 5 m. in circumference with towers built of square blocks of salt. Various identifications of the site have been attempted, J. P. B. D’Anville choosing El Katif, C. Niebuhr preferring Kuwet and C. Forster suggesting the ruins at the head of the bay behind the islands of Bahrein”. [23]
Their coast
As mentioned above, the Chaldeans thrived on the Northern and the West-Northern shores of the Gulf. Every part of that long coast, can be called: “The coast of the Chaldeans”.
Conclusion:
Since mid-19th century, there has been near-consensus, among biblical scholars, that “Chaldea” is the homeland of biblical Abraham. There are also strong evidences that the north-western coast of the Gulf is a part of historical Chaldea. However, the intended contextual meaning of “Ur” in “Ur of the Chaldeans” and its exact location are still debated by these scholars.
“Ur” is a Semitic and Sumerian word, with several byforms and derived senses. In these languages: “Ur” denotes: light, fire, heat, region of light, east, desert and land. This is not uncommon, for example, the English word “shire” which means: “suburb/country” is derived from old English “Scir”, an adjective meaning: ‘bright’. Also the Latin word ‘harena’ or ‘arena’ which means: Lava, fire and sandy desert. Going further back in history we find “kur”, a Sumerian word: to light up, to burn, east, land and country.
Biblical “Ur” was translated into ancient Greek as “khora”. In Modern Greek “khora” means “country, land, territory, region and tract” but in ancient Greek it also denotes: countryside, outskirts, unoccupied land, region of light and desert. Another little-known sense of “khora” is: “coast”. This is also not uncommon, in many languages, the word for “land”, ( or desert) is synonymous with “seaside” and “riverbank”. For example: English: “Beach” and Spanish: “playa” (beach), the former derives from: “bæcche”, which means: “sandbank”, and the latter is from Latin: “plaga” (tract, region). Thus, it is fair to say that Semitic: “Ūr” and ancient Greek: “Khôra” are “Semantic equivalents”, they both denote: light, region of light, land, region, desert and coast.
Camarina
Eupolemus, a Jewish historian who lived about 150 BC, tells us that ‘the birthplace of Abraham’ has another name, which is: “Camarina”. Eupolemus refers to this ““Camarina” as being “Khaldaeo polis” (Chaldean city).
Scholars usually explain the meaning of Eupolemus’ “Camarina” as derived from the Arabic word: “qamar/قمر”, which means: “Moon”. [25]
Byzantinus “Camareni“
Stephanus Byzantinus (fl. 6th century AD) was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled Ethnica (Ἐθνικά).
in Ethnica, Byzantinus mentioned a place by the name of “Camareni“, and described it as being “Arabian Islands”. (Latin: arabum insulae).
Etymology of “Chaldees“
Some scholars hold that “Akkadian Kaldu/Kašdu and Hebrew כַּשָׂדִּים (kašdim) are connected with Akkadian (lexeme): kašādu”. [02]
Online Akkadian Dictionary also suggests that “kašd-im” “chaldee(s)” is a deverbal noun, derived from the Akkadian verb: “Kaṣadum“. [03]
Based on an etymological observation, this is more likely to be the case.
“Kald” and “Kašd“
According to Assyriologists, “Kald” and “Kašd” are two variants of the same name, the earlier is: “Kašd”.
In “Middle Babylonian” “š sound” in /šd/ or /št/ clusters, pronounced: “L”.
(š + dental stop) → (L + dental stop)
For example: Old Babylonian “ištakan” (= quieten down) pronounced in Middle Babylonian as “iltakan“. Also, “ḫaštu” → “ḫaltu” (= a kind of stone) and “ašṭur” → “altur” (= to write)
Middle Babylonian is a linguistic term describing the language of documents written in Akkadian in Babylonia (southern Mesopotamia) in the sixteenth through eleventh centuries.
Old Babylonian is a term that denotes “an ancient dialect of the Akkadian language spoken and written in Mesopotamia between c. 2100–1400 BCE.” The term Old Babylonian is related to the Law Code of Hammurabi.
Spelling variants of Kašdu/Kaldu
Sumerian and Akkadian words are characterized by their multiple spelling variants. “many cuneiform signs can be pronounced in more than one way and often two or more signs share the same pronunciation” [6]
In ancient Mesopotamian records, the word “kšd” (or kld) is found in many forms and spelling variants.
Here are some of these changes:
-The initial /k/ is sometimes:
01-Voiced to: /g/
[k-š-d] → [g-š-d]
[k-l-d] → [g-l-d]
02-Uvularized as: /q/
[k-š-d] → [q-š-d]
[k-l-d] → [q-l-d]
03-Fricated to guttural /kh/
[k-š-d] → [kh-š-d]
[k-l-d] → [kh-l-d]
In Akkadian dictionaries, the symbol ḫ is used to represent “kh sound”.
ḫ = kh “voiceless velar fricative” For example: “kapādu” (= to plan), is also pronounced as: “ḫapādu” (khapādu)
-The final /d/ is sometimes unvoiced to: /t/:
[k-š-d] → [k-š-t]
[k-l-d] → [k-l-t]
-The medial /š/ may unpalatalized to: /s/:
[k-š-d] → [k-s-d]
“emphatic /s/” (ṣ) is also used:
[k-s-d] → [k-ṣ-d]
-The final consonant /d/ (or /t/), is sometimes gets dropped:
[k-š-d] → [k-š-∅] →[k-š]
[k-l-d] → [k-l-∅] →[k-l]
–Grammatical element: An element that is combined with a word to produce derived or inflected form.
Grammatical elements include: bound morphemes.
“bound-morpheme” is a morpheme that can only occur when bound to a “root-morpheme”.
Morpheme, in linguistics, is the smallest grammatical unit of speech. It may be a bound-morpheme such as “de-” and “–al” in “deverbal”, Or a root-morpheme, such as “verb” in “deverbal”. In Akkadian, suffixes such as: “-um” & “-im” are grammatical elements (bound-morphemes).
Original and derived senses
The “original sense” of [k-š-d]/[k-l-d] and their variants, is: to hold.
The derived senses include: to hold down, to get hold of, to hold on, to keep hold of, to hold back, to restrain, to detain. To be held, to be heldfast, to be held down, to be surrounded, to be controlled, to be confined, to be locked, to be taken all, everything, totality.
The definitions of Old Akkadian (OA) “Kald” & “kasad“, according to “Concise Dictionary of Akkadian” & Online Akkadian Dictionary:
“-um” is an Akkadian suffix, added to the stem.
Words derived from [k-š-d]/[k-l-d], and their variants, are used to describe, (or to name): confined, locked, recessed or deep places, such as caves, pits, valleys, lakes, pools, marshes, gulfs, narrow streams and dams.
Examples:
–ḫaltu (Khaltu), and khaštu (ḫaštu, ḫaštum): a ditch.
–mekaltu: water reservoir, streamlet.
(me- is a grammatical element, a prefix)
-Kuš (from [k-š]): water channel.
In other Semitic languages:
-Arabic: “qalt/قلت” or “galta“: A natural water pool that forms in a rocky cavity, (borrowed into English as: guelta). The original sense of “qalt/قلت” is: “cavity”.
-Arabic: “qalut/قلوط”: A medieval counterpart of “septic tank”.
-Arabic:, after metathesis: [g-l-d] > [g-d-l] = “gadwal” ( = streamlet).
-Hebrew:”גַל/gal” (from [k-l]): water well, fountain.
This Mesopotamian word found its way into Indo-European languages, compare:
–Old Norse “kelda“: bog, quagmire, water spring.
–Danish “kilde“: spring, well, water source.
–Greek “κοιλάδα/koiláda“: valley, (having a river or stream running along the bottom).
–Russian: “колодец/kolodet”: water well (the original sense of this word is: hole sunk into the ground).
As mentioned earlier, Kasdim is commonly believed to be an ethnonym, a name for a people known in history as “the Chaldees”. (or the Chaldeans), but this is not necessarily accurate.
Kasdim can be a geonym, a name of a natural feature, in plural form: marshes, caves or fountains
References:
[1] – Strong’s Concordance: H216.
[2] – Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon.
[3] – Sahas, D. J. (2021): Byzantium and Islam. Netherlands: Brill. p211
[4] – Hershel Shanks, Biblical Archaeology Review 26:2, March/April 2000.
[5] – Wikipedia: cognate.
[6] – Sumerian Lexicon by John A. Halloran
[7] – Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 2nd Printing.
[8] – The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD).
[9] – Chaldean-Arabic Dictionary by: J.E.Manna. page: 563
[10] – Syriacdictionary.net
[11] – Lisan al-Arab by Ibn Manzur.
[12] – Sumerian Lexicon by John A. Halloran
[13] – The Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (ePSD)
[15] – Shivtiel, A. (2013). Obsolete Meanings and Words. In G. Khan (ed.)
[16] – Mikuriya, J. T. (2016). A History of Light. India: Bloomsbury Publishing.
[17] –Britannica.com/topic/Septuagint .
[18] – Girgis, WA (1963–64). Greek loan words in Coptic. Bulletin de la Société d’archéologie copte 17:63–73.
[19] – Etymology For Beginners. (n.d.). (n.p.): Nicky Huys.
[20] – jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4213
[21] – Raymond Philip Dougherty, The Sealand of Ancient Arabia, Yale University Press, 1932, 66ff.
[22] – Potts, Daniel T. “Northeastern Arabia.” Expedition Magazine 26, no. 3 (March, 1984).
[23] – Encyclopædia Britannica/Gerrha
[24] – “A Study on the Origins of Loanwords in Ancient
Greek”, Joanne van der Poel, 2019.
[25] – WACHOLDER, B. Z. (1963). PSEUDO-EUPOLEMUS’ TWO GREEK FRAGMENTS ON THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM. Hebrew Union College Annual, 34, 83–113.
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