An Indo-European Word for 'Woman'

Abstract

Hans Ehelolf has published' two parallel passages from a fragmentary Hittite text. The important fact to which Ehelolf called attention is that in col. 2, line 8 we have an Akkadian phrase: A-NA LtBE-EL ?-TIM SALBE-EL-DI I-TIM, which is repeated in Hittite words in line 18: pdr-na-a? ig-bi-i pdr-naa? ig-ba-a?-?a-ri. Both lines mean 'to the master of the house, to the mistress of the house'; it follows that ig-ba-al-4a-ri, a dative whose nom. sg. is citable as i?-ba-ad-?a-ra-ad, is a derivative of i?-ha-a-ad e-e?-ha-a-ad 'master'. I, at least, have no doubt that the latter word is cognate with Lat. erus, the IH source of the two being either 'esxos or 'eso but there seems to be no evidence that clearly points to the Hattic language. Geographical considerations would make it as easy to assume that the names in -gar belong to women of Luwian speech. That is, in fact, the interpretation adopted by E. Laroche in his Recherches sur les noms des dieux hittites.6 After listing in his first two chapters a number of Hattic and Hurrian deities worshipped by the Hittites, he gives first place in Chapter 3 (entitled Divinit6s hittites et louvites) to three feminine names in a suffix -gara-, which, he thinks, show a Hittite thematization of more ancient words in a suffix -tar, and which are derived from Hittite nouns. First he cites 'I&-ba-al-?a-ra-ad, reported by Ehelolf, L.c., from Bo. 936.2.18 and 214 b 7. This