Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

elated to the participle. 95 The idea that one person is (or will be) feeding nine kings
makes it clear that the narration, although associated with the history of Ebla, is to be
understood as a mythological one. In a parallel tablet (K Bo XXXII 20 Rs. IV 16-17) the
Hurrian passage just cited is repeated. But before it a story of m Purra- in connection to
the Eblaitic and other kings is told (cf. the equative form m Purra-nna and Genitive
m Purra-wii : ib., Vs. I 7’, 8’). Unfortunately, without the Hittite translation, which is
absent or quite fragmentary, it is impossible to understand the plot; still, it seems that
Purra appears as an important historical and/or mythological person whose fate is
miraculously bound to a stone. 96 If his name is really connected to the noun purra-
“slave”, it can be understood as part of the peculiar structure of the Hurrian-Hittite epic
poetic narration, in which the topic of slavery and of the slave/prisoner being set free is
discussed via the example of the highest god of the pantheon Teshop or of such an
important Slave = prisoner as Purra.
In the other parts of the same Hurrian text the noun purra- is used without the
determinative of a male personal name, as opposed, for instance, to the name m Me-e-ki,
which is always preceded by this cuneiform sign. In the corresponding Hittite text the
determinative is used regularly with the Hittite m Purra. Thus the Hurrian noun is not
translated but is simply transliterated by the Hittite translator (or a later scribe copying
the text), who understood it as a proper name (this is the interpretation followed by
modern scholars 97 ). Accordingly, just as in the previous cases, it is possible to
understand Hurrian Purra (as well as the Hittite m Purra that renders it) as a proper
name (probably originally meaning “Priest < Slave of the God”). But as shown by Neu,
in this part of the story alone, the Hittite translation (which seems to have been written
in the Middle Hittite period, much later than the Hurrian text) differs from the Hurrian
original. In the latter Purra does not rejoice (Íi-in-zu-uh-ha-am-ma a-ni-ik-ki Pur-ra-a-bi
“in the second place (= on the other hand) Purra’s [heart, mentioned only in the
beginning of the whole passage] does not rejoice” [K Bo XXXII 15 I 22’-23’]). The Hittite
rendering gives the opposite picture: ta-a-an pé-e-di-ma-kán A.NA m Pur-ra a-ap-pa pí-
95 Cf. Speiser 1941, 171-172; Laroche 1980, 174. See above on another view in Girbal 1990.
96 Neu 1996, 444-445, 461.