Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

Hurrian borrowed terms endanni- : Íankunni-. 24 But the gender contrast alone of these
two terms speaks against connecting an Old Hurrian title of a male person to the
Akkadian name of a female priestess (having the mark -t- of the feminine). The
meaning “priest” suggested as a solution 25 could not help in explaining the difference of
this title from the Hurrian continuation of the Akkadian borrowing. If Laroche is right
in suggesting the latter, then—contrary to his opinion—the two later words found in
the Bo azköy texts at the period of the intensive borrowing of Akkadian cultural and
religious terms have nothing to do with the Old Hurrian title of a king.
As to the origin of the latter, it has been suggested that endan may contain the suffix
-dan of the names of professions 26 , although it seems doubtful that “to be a ruler =
king” might have been supposed to be a profession; the known examples of this
suffix—like abul-da-n(i) “gate-keeper = the one in charge of the gate” from a later
Akkadian borrowing abullum > abul- “gate” 27 —point to the other semantic field and
belong to a much later period. According to Wilhelm 28 , en-dan is derived either from a
borrowed Sumerian EN “ruler” 29 —the solution that he prefers now 30 —or from the
Hurrian nominal stem eni “god”.
As for Sumerian EN: this was the main social term in Ebla 31 , where contact with
Hurrian is documented. Still, deriving the Hurrian title from it remains doubtful, since
the suffix has a meaning that does not fit the derivation.
The Hurrian noun eni- “god” appears in the form en- (without the final vowel of the
stem) before the following -n- of the suffixed article. 32 In the Hurrian-Hittite bilingual
text K Bo XXX II 14 I 36, the Hurrian plural collective form e-en-za-a-ri = Hittite
24 On the last pair, cf. Xachikian 1985a, 66, 132, n.4.
25 Diakonoff 1971, 111, n.123, “a priest or a priestess?”; Xachikian 1985a, 6, 9, 132, n.4.
26 Wilhelm 1989, 11.
27 Wilhelm 1970; Xachikian 1985a, 66. See the remark of G. Buccellati ap. Wilhelm 1998 on the
function of the suffix that makes the derivation from “ruler” less plausible than that from “god”.
28 Wilhelm 1989, 11.
29 Like Akkadian en-t-u, cf. Xachikian 1985a, 51.
30 Wilhelm 1998.
31 Cf., for instance, on EN = malikum Diakonoff 1985, 329-330; on (in ) EN-eb-la ki “(in the hand) of
the king of Ebla”, EN ’À-du ki “king of Adu”: Pettinato 1987, 26, 30-35 a.o. Other data from neighboring
areas: Wilhelm 1998.
32 Cf. the forms in Laroche 1980, 81; Xachikian 1985, 153.