Urartuca Uşma Şin ‘Mavi Cennet’ ve İlişkili Anlamları Çözümleme

Abstract

Yaklaşık üç bin yıllık geçmişe sahip olan Urartu yazıtlarının okunma uğraşları, iki yüz yıla yakın bir süredir devam etmektedir. Diller arası ve bağlamsal kanıtlar, krali yazıtlarda sıklıkla tekrarlanan bazı temel ifadelerin yanlış yorumlandıklarını göstermektedir. Urartu coğrafyasında tarih boyunca yaşamış bölgesel diller ve dil etkileşimleri, metinlerdeki çizgisellik ve sözcüklerin anlamsal tutarlılıkları bakımından belirleyici açıklamalar sunmaktadırlar. Bu bakış açısıyla, Urartu krali söylemlerindeki temel sözcüklere yapısal ve anlambilimsel açılardan odaklanılmaktadır. Urartuca ušma šin ‘mavi cennet’ ve ilişkili anlamlar ortaya çıkarılmaktadır. Urartuca bütüncelerde (korpuslarda) uš-ma-ši-ni sözcük öbeği ve benzer yapılar ‘güç, kudret, koruyuculuk’; al-su-i-ši-ni ve benzer yapılar da 'tüm mavi denizler' anlamı daha belirgin olmasına rağmen ‘yücelik’ anlamları ile tercüme edilmekteydi. Metinlerin incelenenen bölümlerinden anlaşılmaktadır ki önceki çalışmalarda tanrı(lar) ve kral(lar) için atfedilen soyut niteleyiciler aslında temel anlam olarak ilgili tanrı(lar) ve kral(lar)ın yaşam ve hakimiyet alanlarını belirten bileşik adlardır. Bu yeni bulgulara bağlı olarak Urartu yazıtları ve korpus çalışmaları değerlendirilmelidir.

Keywords

• Urartu dili
• Urartu yazıtları
• Dil etkileşimi
• Mavi Cennet
• Uşma Şin

Unearthing Urartian Ušma Šin “Blue Heaven” and Associated Meanings

Abstract

Urartian inscriptions, which have a history of nearly three thousand years, have been attempted to be read for approximately two hundred years. Cross-linguistic and contextual evidence indicate that some basic statements frequently repeated in royal inscriptions were misinterpreted. Regional languages and language contacts in the Urartian territory throughout history provide decisive explanations for determining the linearity and coherence of the word meanings in the texts. In this context, the study focuses on the basic vocabulary in Urartian royal discourses, unearthing Urartian ušma šin ‘blue heaven’ and associated meanings. In different Urartian corpuses, ušmašini and its synonymous forms were translated as ‘might’, ‘glory’, and ‘protection’; alsuišini and its synonymous forms were translated as ‘greatness’ although the meaning of ‘all blue seas’ is more obvious . It is understood that the examined parts in the texts do not contain abstract qualifiers attributed to god(s) and king(s) as the basic meaning, as stated in previous studies, but compound nouns associated with the spheres of residence and authority of the respective god(s) and ruler(s). Urartian cuneiform texts and corpuses should be re-evaluated based on these findings.

Keywords

• Urartian Language
• Urartian Inscriptions
• Language Contact
• Blue Heaven
• Ušma Šin

References

1. Bläsing, U. (1997). Asme, asmen, astare: Nordwestiranisches wortgut im Türkeitürkischen, Iran & the Caucasus, 1, 171–178. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4030750.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3Acce42ac2f0f80ae9149f3782475f65a0&ab_segments=&initiator=&acceptTC=1.
2. Bonfanti, A. S. (2024). Some philological notes on the inscription of Meher Kapısı, Iran and the Caucasus 28, 2 (2024): 184-205.
3. Coşkun, İ., Varol, O., & Polat, E. (2023). Adilcevaz Kef Kalesi kazısı: yeni bulgular ve değerlendirmeler. Oannes - Uluslararası Eskiçağ Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi 5(1), 253-274.
4. Crystal, D. A. (2008). Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (6th ed.), Blackwell, 2008.
5. Çavuşoğlu, R., Coşkun, İ & Uslu E. (2023). Biainili/Urartu Kültür Envanteri I (Türkiye Sınırları).
6. eCUT = Electronic Corpus of Urartian Texts Project (available online at: http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/ecut/).
7. Gershevitch, I., & Fisher, B. W. (1985). The Old Eastern Iranian World View According to the Avesta, In İ. Gershevitch (Ed.), Cambridge History of Iran. Cambridge University Press, 640-663.
8. Grekyan, H. Y. The Urartian Onomasticon A prosopographic study, In. A. Kosyan (Ed), Yerevan, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography and Institute of Oriental Studies National Academy of Sciences of Armenia.

9. Harutyunyan, V. N. (2001). Korpus Urartskich klinoobraznych nadpisei (Corpus of Urartian cuneiform inscriptions). Yerevan University Press.
10. Heine, B., & Kuteva, T. (2007). Identifying instances of contact-induced grammatical replication, Language Contact and the Dynamics of Language: Theory and Implications, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, http://www.unice.fr/ChaireIUF-Nicolai/Archives/Symposium/Symposium_Textes/Heine Kuteva_Leipzig07.pdf.
11. Irani, J. D. (1998). The Gathas The Hymns of Zarathushtra. In K.D. Irani (Ed.), Center for Ancient Iranian Studies.
12. Johanson, L. (2008). Remodeling grammar: Copying, conventionalization, grammaticalization. In P. Siemund, N. Kintana (Eds.), Language Contact and Contact Languages, John Benjamins, 61–80.
13. König, F. W. (1955). Handbuch der chaldischen Inschriften, Archiv für Orientforschung, Beiheft 8. Selbstverlag Ernst Weidners, (1).
14. König, F. W. (1957). Handbuch der chaldischen Inschriften, Archiv für Orientforschung, Beiheft 8. Selbstverlag Ernst Weidners, (2).
15. Melikishvili, A. G. (1971). Die Urartaische Sprache, Biblical Institute Press.
16. Nanto, S., & Varol, O. (2023). Ölü bir dil olarak Urartucayı incelemenin parametreleri, Arteoloji Dergisi, 2(2), pp.155-179.
17. Roth, T. M. (1991). The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago / Oriental Institute of the University of Chica Volume 11, N, Part I.
18. Salguero, P. (2017). Cultural associations of water in early Chinese and Indian religion and medicine, Special Issue: Water and Asia, Education About Asia 22(2), pp. 23–28.
19. Salvini, M. (2008). Corpus dei testi Urartei Volume I, II, III, Le Iscrizioni Su Pietra E Roccia-Tavole.
20. Schafer, E. H. (1956). The development of bathing customs in ancient and medieval China and the history of the Floriate Clear Palace, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 76 (2), pp. 57-82.
21. Schmitt, R. (1989). Black Sea, Encyclopeadia Iranica, Vol. IV, Fasc. 3, pp. 310-313, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/black-sea.
22. Simonjetz, F., Laasonen, J., Cobanoglu, Y., Fraser, A. & Jiménez, E. (2024). Reconstruction of Cuneiform Literary Texts as Text Matching. Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024): 13712–13721, Torino, Italia. ELRA and ICCL.
23. Thomason, S. G. (2001). Language Contact: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University TLRC: https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/aveol Press, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474473125.
24. Sayce, A. H. (1882). Art. XXIII.—The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van, deciphered and translated. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 14(3), 377–496. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00018335
25. Silvestre, P. J., Villalva, A. & Cardeira, E. (2016). Colour and colour naming: crosslinguistic approaches. Varol, O. (2023). Urartu’nun miras sözcükleri için yapısal ve anlamsal belirleyiciler, Van İnsani ve Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, ViSBiD, 6, pp. 62-79.
26. Wang, Y. (2021). The economic characteristics of language choice from the perspective of language and society interaction[Paper presentation]. Proceedings of the 2nd i nternational conference on language, communication and culture studies (icLccs 2021), https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211025.007.
27. Wegner, I. & Bomhard, A. (2023). An Introduction to the Hurrian Language, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. Wilhelm, G. (2008). Urartian, In R. D. Woodard (Ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages, pp. 119-137, Cambridge University Press.