Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

Khwarazmian cxr “wheel”, Sogdian ÇGr/ÇrG “cakra”, Vakhan cPtr “spindle” 339 ; Homeric
Greek kÊklow “ring, circle”, kukl°v “wheel away, carry forth”, eÎ-kuklow “well-
wheeled”, tetrã-kuklow “four-wheeled”, the personal name KukleÊw = Mycenaean
ku-ke-re-u 340 ; Phrygian k¤klhn: tØn êrkton tÚ êstron. FrÊgew (Hes.) 341 ) and
Germanic (Old Icelandic hvêl < *k w ek w
el-[on] > *hwe[h]wlaz > Old English
hwêol/hweogol “wheel” 342 ). A non-reduplicated derivative from the same root
designates “wheel” in Western Baltic (Prussian kelan and derivatives like kelle-wesze
“driver”, kele-ranco “one of the poles in the frame of the wheeled vehicle”; in Eastern
Baltic preserved only in an archaic compound: Latvian du-celis < *d w i- *k w el- “two-
wheeled vehicle” 343 ), Slavic (*kolo “wheel”, plural *kola “wheeled cart”) and Celtic (Old
Irish cul “carriage”). It can be suggested that Luwian (Hieroglyphic) zal-al- “carriage,
vehicle”, Cuneiform zal-war/n- “riding in a chariot” derives from the same root having
the earlier period and reflected in Hittite are missed, together with other mistakes, such as the
omission of the common Celtic and Balto-Slavic term for the wheel, etc.
339 The last word (Griunberg and Steblin-Kamenskij 1976, 318) is contaminated with another stem. See
on the data: Abaev 1958, 287-288; Oranskij 1979, 140- 142, n.16; Edel’man 1986, 157-158; Benveniste 1929,
91. The Iranian word for “wheel” in its mythological meaning was borrowed into Northwestern
Caucasian variants of the Nart folk epics, on the motif of which see Dumézil 1978, 95-122. A probable
Kassite borrowing in Akkadian LÚ ÍakrumaÍ “an officer related to chariots and horses; a commander of
two chariots on a military campaign” (= Egyptian jdnw n tj-n-˙˙tr, Edel 1994, II, 24, 30, n.7) belongs to
possible Mesopotamian Aryan terms. A link to Old Indian cakra- seems probable.
340 It seems possible to suggest a connection to the name of Kikkuli- as representing the centum (possibly
Northern Anatolian) variety of the stem, but the name is to be connected to the Hurrian name Kiklipatal
(Laroche 1966, 92, n.572) and to similar Kutean names; in all these cases an Indo-European
etymology is not absolutely excluded.
341 In spite of a skeptical remark by Chantraine (1990, 597) the interpretation of this gloss seems beyond
doubt because of a number of exact semantic parallels to the representation of Ursa major (Big Dipper)
as a carriage: Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1984/1995, 592; 622; the Old Russian name is derived from the
same root as Phrygian. The connections of Phrygian (although the facts known about the language are
not numerous) and Tocharian are corroborated by other isoglosses (as well as Greek-Tocharian relations
already stressed in the classic study of Benveniste on the dialectal place of Tocharian). It seems
definite that Phrygian entered the Eastern Indo-European (Indo-Iranian-Armenian-Greek) dialectal
group belonging to the centum branch which included Greek and Ancient Macedonian.
342 Among possible disputable ramifications cf. Old English gêola “month (December/January)”, Gothic
fruma jiuleis “the month before the Yule month”; Old Icelandic jôl “heathen festival lasting 12 days”
with a generalization of the intervocalic voiced (glottalic according to the glottalic theory) consonant
repeated also in the first syllable of reduplication (on the phonological obstacles, see Lehmann 1986,
211, J8); cf. Greek Kuklei≈n , name of a month called after the festival tå KÊkl(e)ia.