Articles

Whitehouse, H. — Images of the invincible Gods: Piety and Panel Paintings in Roman Egypt

Less familar than the mummy-portraits of Roman Egypt are the painted wooden panels depicting divinities – images (eikones) apparently created for personal devotion or votive dedication. Intermittently discussed for a century or so, individually or as subject-types (notable amongst them, the ‘gods in uniform’), these rare examples of ancient framed pictures have grown in number over time. The publication now of a well-documented corpus of over 50 panels, or fragments thereof, lifts the discussion to a new level, opening fresh avenues for investigation. Drawing on both hellenic and pharaonic iconography and mixing representational conventions, these paintings reflect aspects of religion and culture in the first three centuries AD that have both local and general significance. Divisible into several sub-categories within the corpus, they pose questions regarding the transmission of imagery, as well as the identity of their subjects.

Jenni, E. — Typologie der hebräischen Stammform Hifʻil

Der vorliegende Artikel gibt eine knappe Zusammenfassung älterer und neuerer Erkenntnisse über die hebräische Stammform Hifʻil, wobei auf zerstreute Darlegungen zu Piʻel, Nifʻal und Hitpaʻel des Autors zurückgegriffen wird, wenn nötig mit Korrekturen. Die hier vorgestellten neuen Erwägungen sind geleitet von den Warum-Fragen, die über die blosse Deskription hinausgehen möchten, auch wenn sie natürlich nicht alle Rätsel der Funktion des Hifʻil zu lösen vermögen. Zur Untersuchung der Kausativität des Hifʻil (§1) werden zunächst die Aktionsarten (lexical aspect), die in der Hebraistik noch wenig Beachtung gefunden haben, und die Unterscheidung von verschiedenen Arten von Zustands-, Vorgangs- und Handlungsverben behandelt (§2). Besonderes Augenmerk gilt sodann der autokausativen Funktion des Hifʻil (§3) sowie der Kategorie des reduzierten und erweiterten Hifʻil (§4). Nach dem Hinweis auf die besondere denominale Eigenschaft des Hifʻil (§5) folgen die Ergebnisse in der Art einer Zusammenfassung (§6).

Al-Jallad, A.M. — What’s a caron between friends? A review article of David Wilmsen (2014), with special focus on the etymology of modern Arabic ši

This paper reviews the book Arabic Indefinites, Interrogatives, and Negators: A Linguistic History of Western Dialects (Wilmsen 2014), focusing on its central thesis, namely, that the various function words in modern Arabic with a š-element are not derived from the word šay'un ‘thing’, but from the Proto-Semitic anaphoric demonstratives/3rd person pronouns, *su'a, *si'a, etc. I refute this claim on the basis of historical phonology, and highlight several other errors of reconstruction which arise from the general disregard for sound correspondences. I go on to defend the traditional etymology of ši as being derived from the word šay'un ‘thing’ by explaining the unproblematic phonological derivation of the former from the latter, and locate its origins in the Old Arabic of the Safaitic inscriptions.

Book reviews and announcements

Faraonisch Egypte, Grieks-Romeins Egypte, Assyriologie, Hettitologie, Semitica, Oude Testament, Judaica, Archeologie, Arabica, Iranica, Turcica, Islam, Midden-Oosten

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