Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

As discovered by Laroche, according to the four-language dictionary from Ras
Shamra (R quadr. 137 III 4), Hurrian purame = Sumerian ÌR = Akkadian ardu =
Ugaritic (‘)abdu means “slave, servant”. 83 When Laroche announced his discovery in his
talk on “Récentes contributions de Ras Shamra au lexique hourrite” 84 , Diakonoff
immediately suggested the Hurro-Urartian etymology: Hurrian pura-me is equivalent
to Urartian b/pura- “slave”. 85 The former contains a suffix -me, cf. -pÍi (< *-amaÍi 86 ) in
pura-pÍi “priest = servant of the god” (the stem is interpreted as [*pora-] 87 ). The
latter is semantically close to the Urartian male proper name m Haldi-pura (= md Hal-di-
ÌR 88 ) “the slave of the god Haldi”, derived from b/pura- “slave” (this noun is often used
in similar combinations with the name of a god 89 ). It has been supposed that the word
is cognate with Proto-Eastern Caucasian *bHÅ i > Lezghian p·aÛ “natural child”,
Tabasaran baj “boy, son”. 90
The noun purammi- (with double spelling -mm- different from later texts and
possibly connected to prosodic features, as probably also -rr- in purra-) is attested in the
part of the Hurrian-Hittite bilingual text that deals with its main topic, which is the
setting free (kirenzi 91 ) of slaves or prisoners, including also the god Teshop who is to
be set free. The Hurrian sentence ki-ru-un-na pu-ra-am-mi-ib ki-i-ru(-)nu-ul-mi-ib is
translated by the Hittite tu-el ÌR DÁM GÉME TAM pa-[ra-a tar-na] (K Bo XXXII 15 IV 2-3 =
III 4) “let your male slave be free, let your female slave be free”. The noun ulmi-
”female slave” discovered in this bilingual text 92 may have the same suffix -mi as pura-
m(m)i- “male slave”. With a possible metathetic change and semantic specialization the
83 Laroche 1980, 205, with references.
84 10 August 1960, Moscow, at a morning session of the XXV International Congress of Orientalists.
85 Diakonoff 1963, 60; 1971, 77.
86 Laroche 1980, 206.
87 Cf. Xachikian 1985a, 48, 58.
88 Diakonoff 1963, 51, 90, 94.
89 Melikishvili 1960, 362; Gvaxaria 1963, 335; Meshchaninov 1978, 91-93.
90 On the etymology and on quite different variants of the suggested Northern Caucasian reconstruction,
cf. Diakonoff and Starostin 1986, 16; Nikolayev and Starostin 1994, 298-299; the etymology runs the
risk of not taking into account the universal spread of such “baby” terms.
91 Neu 1996, 9-12, with references. Regarding the equivalent Akkadian term addurârum it is important
to bear in mind the previous discussion of the term in Larsen 1976, 63-75; Hoffner 1998, 180-181.
92 Neu 1996, 346, 451; see Laroche 1980, 280, on the other occurrences of the word.