What the Ancient Greek alphabet can say about the Late Babylonian phonology: The sibilants

If the writing system of the Late Babylonian language (7th–1st centuries BC) is studied relatively well, the phonology behind the cuneiform spelling remains unclear in many points, especially concerning sibilants. At least the approval of the affricate hypothesis (according to which the Proto-Semitic sibilant fricatives *s *z *ṣ are reinterpreted as the affricates *c *ʒ *c̣) requires a re-examination of some previously expressed ideas. The present article examines the rendering of Babylonian words through the ancient Greek alphabet and the transcription of Ancient Greek words in cuneiform. Late Babylonian texts of the 4-2 centuries BC contain ca. 250 Greek personal names and ca. 15 appellatives (most likely adopted in the Koine pronunciation). An opposite case is the so called Graeco-Babyloniaca, a small corpus origination from Babylonia and dated from the last centuries BC to the first centuries AD. It consists of ca. 15 clay tablets mainly with traditional scholar exercises in Late Babylonian and/or Sumerian, which contains cuneiform text paralleled with its transcription in the Greek alphabet. The following correspondences between the Late Babylonian cuneiform and Ancient Greek are established: s-series ↔ σ, š-series → σ, ṣ -series → σ, z-series ↔ ζ. This can be illustrated by the following examples. s-series ↔ σ: Σώσιπατρος → su-si-pa-ṭu-ru-us; Ἀλέξανδρος → a-lek-sa-an-dar; προστάτης → pu-ru-su-tat-te-su 'protector'; as-nu-u → ασανω 'a k. of date palm'; su-ḫuš-šu → σοοσ 'young date palm'; apsî → αφσι 'underground water (myth)'. š-series → σ: šap-liš → σαφαλισ 'below'; šá-kin-nu → σακιν 'date palm cultivator'; šamaš → σαυασ 'Sun-god'; ṣ -series → σ: ṣ u-ba-tu → σουβ[…] 'cloth'; ṣ i-iḫ-tu4 → σιξ[ιθ] 'weeping'; murṣ u → μουρσ 'illness'; z-series ↔ ζ: Ζηνόφιλος → ze-ˀe-na-pa-lu-su, zi-ia-na-pa-lu-ú-[su?]; Zo[…]→ zu-[…; Ζώιλος → zu-ˀi-lu-sú; za-na-nu → ζαναν 'to rain'; uznê → οζονει 'ears'; uznu → οζον 'ear'. Our main conclusion is that in the Late Babylonian period, the Proto-Semitic and Proto-Akkadian affricate ts was spirantized into s (cuneiform signs of the s-series).