Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

III. (Southern) Anatolian. Luwian-Lycian: Hieroglyphic Luwian as/zu(wa)- “horse”
is attested in different case forms in several inscriptions, including the Karatepe
bilingual text. 210 The phonetic complement -u- after the logographic Sumerian
AN E.KUR.RA “horse” in Cuneiform Luwian 211 makes it possible to suppose a form
comparable to the Hieroglyphic Luwian one. Cuneiform Luwian a-aÍ-Íu- is repeated
twice (KUB XXXV 102 + 103 Vs. I 7’; 107 + 108 Rs. IV 22’ = Starke 1985, 221, 240, I.1.A
and III.1) in a group of birth rituals where also the semi-logographic spelling
AN E.KUR.RA-uÍ “horse” (KUB 107 = 108 Rs. IV 7’, Starke 1985, 239) is used with a
hippological epithet waÍÍanti≈ 212 ; a logogram for “horse” (KUB XXXV 128 Rs. III 7’) and
the horse-god Pirwa also appears in the other fragments of the same group. 213 See
below on the -tt- derivation from aÍÍu- “horse” in Luwian. The Hieroglyphic and
Cuneiform forms reflect the normal development of palatal *´k in Luwian not only
before u 214 , but in other positions as well: thus the classification of Luwian as a satPm
language has been proven. 215 But it was a language in which only the first two stages of
the development of the velar stops took place: the palatal stops had already become
affricates and fricatives (and some of them then disappeared), and the labiovelars had
209 Pisani 1979, 495.
210 Starke 1995, 118-119, n.237, with a discussion of the reading su (and not zu as suggested by Melchert
1994, 234).
211 Otten 1953a, 40; Laroche 1959, 119; Meriggi 1980, 252. On the possibility of finding the spelling with
-zu- in Cuneiform Luwian as well as in Hieroglyphic Luwian, cf. Melchert 1993b, 38-39, 44. In the text K
Bo XIII 260 III 24, where Melchert has suggested the form az-zu-wa-an-za as derived from az-zu-wa-
“horse” in several lines, the Luwian name for a (wooden) object tu-u-ri-in is repeated, which may be
derived from the Hittite root turiya- “to harness, to yoke” and may have the meaning “pole of a
carriage” (see below in section 5).
212 Starke (1995, 43) suggests “gathered, assembled” as a meaning referring to the position of the horse.
On the meaning of the Luwian word, cf. Starke ib., 118, n.236; see also below in the next section of the
article, on a-aÍ-Íu-ut-t[i-.
213 Starke 1985, 252-254 and 231. Comparable contexts with Pirwa and UR.MAS “lion” are present in
KUB XXXV 145 Rs. III 13’-14’ and Bo 1391 Vs. I 6 (Starke ib., 256).
214 Melchert 1994 with references. See earlier discussions: Meriggi 1980, 265, §265; Gamkrelidze and
Ivanov 1985, 87.
215 On the language of the Hieroglyphic texts, see Bonfante and Gelb 1944. For examples of the change
*´k > s/z, see Morpurgo Davies and Hawkins 1986; Melchert 1994 with further references.