Edomite language

Edomite
Native to	Edom
Region	Idumea (modern-day southwestern Jordan and southern Israel)
Ethnicity	Edomites
Era	early 1st millennium BCE [1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Central Northwest Canaanite South Edomite
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xdm
Linguist List	xdm
Glottolog	edom1234

Edomite is a Northwest Semitic Canaanite language, very similar to Biblical Hebrew, Ekronite, Ammonite, Phoenician, Amorite and Sutean, spoken by the Edomites in Idumea (modern-day southwestern Jordan and parts of Israel) in the 2nd and 1st millennium BCE. It is extinct and known only from an extremely small corpus, ^[2] attested in a scant number of impression seals, ostraca, and a single late 7th or early 6th century BCE letter, discovered in Horvat Uza. ^{[2] [3] [4] [5]}

Like Moabite, but unlike Hebrew, it retained the feminine ending -t in the singular absolute state. In early times, it seems to have been written with a Phoenician alphabet. However, by the 6th century BCE, it adopted the Aramaic alphabet. Meanwhile, Aramaic or Arabic features such as whb ("gave") and tgr/tcr ("merchant") entered the language, with whb becoming especially common in proper names.^{[ citation needed ]} Like many other Canaanite languages, Edomite features a prefixed definite article derived from the presentative particle (for example as in h-ʔkl ‘the food’). The diphthong /aw/ contracted to /o/ between the 7th and 5th century BCE, as foreign transcriptions of the divine name "Qos" indicate a transition in pronunciation from Qāws to Qôs. ^[6]

Examples

Edomite [7]	Reconstructed transliteration (per Ahituv 2008)	Translation
אמר למלך אמר לבלבל	ʾōmēr lammeleḵ ʾĕmōr ləḆīlbēl	(Thus) said to the king: Say to Bilbel,
השלם את והברכתך	hăšālōm ʾattā wəhīḇraḵəttīḵā	"Are you well?" and "I bless you
לקוס ועת תן את האכל	ləQōs wəʿattā tēn ʾet hāʾoḵel	by Qos." And now give the food
[ ] אשר עמד אחאמה	ʾăšer ʿīmmaḏ ʾĂḥīʾīmmō [...]	that Ahi'immoh [...]
והרם ש[א]ל על מז[בח קוס	wəhērīm Šā[ʾu]l ʿal mīz[baḥ Qōs	And may Sa[u]l lift [it] (up) upon (the) al[tar of Qos,
פן י]חמד האכל	pen ye]ḥmad hāʾoḵel	lest] the food become leavened

References

1. Edomite at MultiTree on the Linguist List
2. Lemaire, André (2013). "Edomite and Hebrew". In Khan, Geoffrey; Bolozky, Shmuel; Fassberg, Steven; Rendsburg, Gary A.; Rubin, Aaron D.; Schwarzwald, Ora R.; Zewi, Tamar (eds.). Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. doi:10.1163/2212-4241_ehll_EHLL_COM_00000499. ISBN   978-90-04-17642-3.
3. Wilson-Wright, Aren M. (2019). "The Canaanite Languages" (PDF). The Semitic Languages. London, Routledge: 509–532. doi:10.4324/9780429025563-20. ISBN   9780429025563. S2CID   189509857 – via utexas.edu.
4. Vanderhooft, David S. (1995). "The Edomite Dialect and Script: A Review of Evidence". p. 142.
5. Young, I. (2011). Diversity in Pre-Exilic Hebrew. Forschungen zum Alten Testament. Eisenbrauns. p. 39. ISBN   978-3-16-151676-4 . Retrieved 2023-06-03. While we were fortunate enough to have a major inscription, the Mesha Stone, for Moabite, we are much less fortunate as regards Edomite. Here we are reliant on a few short and fragmentary inscriptions and a number of seals.
6. W. Randall Garr (2004). Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, 1000-586 B.C.E. Eisenbrauns. p. 35. ISBN   978-1-57506-091-0. OCLC   1025228731.
7. Ahituv, Shmuel (2008). Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period. Carta. p. 351. ISBN   9789652207081.