Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

Semitic) and is invented ad hoc; schwa indogermanicum secundum even if accepted does
not usually follow this type of initial s- 281 , and the reasons for the gemination of the
labiovelar stop remain unknown 282
b) Another hypothesis also based on the reconstruction of the initial *s- > h- might
suggest a link of the Greek *hik w k w o- < *sik w o to the Semitic name for horse: Akkadian
SISÛ (possibly from *sisâ’um, cf. the spelling .ZI.ZI = *[ SÍSÍ] in Southern
Mesopotamian texts at the end of the III mil. B.C. 283 ), Aramaic sûsyâ, Ugaritic ≈≈w/ssw
(sswm, feminine Dual ≈stm, also in personal names), Hebrew sûs. The Semitic noun
together with Egyptian ≈≈m.t 284 has often been thought to be borrowed from Indo-
European with a possible later reduplication. 285 But if the Semitic word is connected to
the Indo-European one, virtually the Proto-Greek stem with the initial *s- alone seems
to present a valid parallel. In the prehistoric Semitic-Greek contacts it was usually Greek
that borrowed. 286 If the direction of borrowing in this case was the same the Semitic
word itself should have been borrowed earlier from some other language where the
intervocalic group was closer to the Greek type. 287
281 Another suggestion to account for the Greek i in this word was recently made by Ruijgh (1995) who,
starting with the reconstruction H 1´kwó- > kwo- > ikwo-, sees in the i- of Mycenaean iqo- a voyelle
d’appui.
282 Preservation of length supposed for Greek does not seem to apply here according to strict rules.
283 Civil 1966; Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1984/1995, I, 478.
284 References to horses begin to appear only with the XVIII dynasty; on the ritual context: for which
see Struve 1925. The military use of horses and chariots drawn by them found by that time is ascribed to
the influence of Hittite and Hurrian technology. In a fairy tale about the taking of the town of Yoppa,
which has structural similarites to the story of the horse of Troy (“is it just a stratagem to bring his
people in this wise into the city along with the horses?”, Erman 1922/1966, 168, n.1; Goedike 1968;
Livshic 1979, 84-86, 241-246), the feeding of horses seems to have a functional role in the narrative,
where mrjn “Syrian warriors” equivalent to Hurrian mariya-nni (of Aryan origin, Laroche 1980, 168)
are mentioned.
285 Bibliography by Ellenbogen 1962, 123; Gordon 1967, 450-451 (item 1780).
286 Masson 1967; Szemerényi 1974 (with references).
287 See Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1984/1995, 482, on the possible traces of a very old migratory term in
Egyptian sk “foal of ass”, Coptic sê “foal of an ass, horse” ( ernY 1976, 175) comparable to Old Turk
eÍk/g/j/0äk “donkey”, Classical Mongolian el igen “donkey” (going back to an Altaic dialectal word at
the Proto-Turc-Mongol chronological level); cf. also below on the Northeastern Caucasian Proto-Tzez-
Khvashi *Íig w P “mare” > Tzezi *ÍIg w P, in other dialects the name for donkey, Nikolayev and Starostin
1994, 444-445. The main problem here is one of historical semantics: it seems that in many languages the
horse was later called by a name initially referring to another equid that, before the domestication of