Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

supposing that the noun was derived from the adjective. 312 The phonetic similarity of
the two parts of compounds like flpp-≈khw “riding in a swift chariot” is no longer
discernible. In this way they differ from the corresponding (though differently
sequenced) Old Indian á≈vâspa = Avestan âsu.aspa-, cf. âsu.aspô.tPma-, âsu.aspî-
“having rapid mares”, âsu.aspya “the richness consisting in rapid mares”. 313
The semantic structure of these Indo-European compounds may help in solving
another problem concerning the connections between Hurro-Urartian, Northern
Caucasian and Indo-European terms related to names for horses. According to I. M.
Diakonoff, S. L. Nikolayev and S. A. Starostin, the Urartian name for horse seen in
Menua [a]r-Ωi-bi-ni (for which no interpretation in the inscription is given) can be
understood as a member of a large group of Northern Eastern Caucasian names for
eagle, the protoform of which, despite many phonetic and morphological difficulties 314 ,
has been reconstructed by them as *( ? âr)-çwäm ? V. These scholars suppose that the
noun; in Avestan 19 names (in a text that is relatively much shorter than those known in the two other
traditions: Milewski 1969, 59, 67).
312 An old idea of Curtius revived in our century by Güntert and Specht, see bibliography in Lehmann
1986, 15; 1993, 247; BlaÛek 1992, 10 (as an alternative to Sino-Caucasian borrowing). The reconstruction
of the Indo-European prototype of the formula in Watkins 1995, 12, presupposes *H 1 in the initial
position of each of the two words, see on such a reconstruction above.
313 Bartholomae 1979, 339.
314 The main morphological problem is the initial * ? âr- which, besides the Urartian word, is found in
Proto-Nakh * âr-çiw “eagle” > (Chechen är-zû, Ingush är-zi, Bacbi ar-çiw), Lak b-ar-zu, Proto-
Lezghian *m-ar-ç “eagle”and Proto-Dargwa *‘ar-çimi, but is absent in Avar-Andi *çûm ? i “eagle”, Tsezi
*cuhV, Khinalug çimir “bird”. The place of metathesized labialization in initial position is
phonetically irregular in Lak (b-), Proto-Dargwa and Proto-Lezghian (m-, where also the feature of
being nasalized had moved) and the kind of affricate reflected in Dargwa as well as the initial
consonants in several Tsezi languages, see Nikolayev and Starostin 1994, 371 on all these difficulties.
On relations to the forms in other languages, cf. Diakonoff 1951b, 115-116; Diakonoff 1978, 31;
Nikolayev 1985, 61; Diakonoff and Starostin 1986, 45; 1988, 184; Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1984/1995, 92,
n.23; 457; Xachikian 1985a, 54, 141-142, n.59. A Hurrian equivalent to the Urartian word is not known,
but in a Hittite Bo azköy text of Kizzuwatna provenance the name “golden eagle of Teshub” is given as
e-ri-bu-u-uÍ-ki-iÍ (K Bo XV 37 I 21), on the basis of which Hurrian eribuÍki may be deduced (Laroche
1980, 83), where -(u)Íki- can be a Hurrian suffix (on other words with this suffix, cf. Xachikian 1985a,
65); on a possible link to Nuzi erupu- see: Haas 1982, 228, n.293; on the name of the Urartian city Erebuni,
cf. Ivanov 1993, 119, n.47. If Hurrian eribu- is equivalent to Urartian arΩibi- the retention of *-rbefore
a lost fricative is exceptional in Hurro-Urartian diachronic phonology, where such groups are
usually simplified in the opposite manner through the loss of *-r-; it might be seen as a trace of a name
of foreign origin. Cf. also the discussion on er- “eagle (?)” (Akkadian erû[m]) in Neu 1994, 45.