Talk:Ishara

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In reference to:

ishar (or eshar), oblique ishan-, the Hittite for "blood" is probably derived from the same root, maybe from a notion of "bond" between blod-relations (c.f. Sanskrit bandhu). The verb ishiya "to bind, fetter", "to oblige" is directly cognate to Sanskrit syati with similar meanings.

what about eh-saan, i.e. ishaan (hindi, urdu, persian) meaning favour, debt, bond, obligation.

Regarding the statement that "ishar (or eshar), oblique ishan-, the Hittite for "blood" is probably derived from the same root": this is very puzzling. Is this the same Hittite word for 'blood' as hitt. e-eš-ar (esar), Gen. esanas, related to Old Latin aser (asser), assyr 'blood' and Sanskrit ásṛk, ásṛt, Gen. asnáḥ 'blood' (Pokorny 521 ēs-ṛ(gʷ), Gen. es-n-és 'blood')?

If so, how is this root related to Pokorny 1661 sē(i)-3, -səi- : sī- and sei- : si- 'to bind, strap', which is the root referenced here, and the source, among others, of "air. soíb 'betrügerisch, verlogen' (*soi-bho-), wörtl. 'zauberisch', ablaut. síabair 'Phantom, Gespenst', síabraid 'verzaubert, verwandelt' (*sei-bh-), PN Find-abair f. = cymr. Gwen-hwyfar `Ginevra' ('weißes Gespenst'); s. Vendryès RC 46, 263 ff." (from Pokorny 1661)? Pasquale 15:47, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure what the basis for

This needs work. Haas (1994)[2] unambiguously presents Ishara as an originally Hurrian love deity who rose to great prominence far beyond her original northern Syria / southern Anatolia even in pre-Hittite times. Her role as the Hittite goddess of the oath is presented as a secondary development. The question (not addressed by Haas) is: would this invalidate the Indo-European etymology of the name, or is this a coincidential homophony between the Hittite for "oath" and the Hurrian theomym that would have facilitated the development of her dual function? Or is the IE etymology perhaps mistaken altogether, and the Hittite term for "oath" is simply a loan from the Hurrian (but was Ishara already the goddess of the oath in Old Babylonian times then? Or why loan the name of a love goddess as the term for "oath")? I cannot answer this at present without indulging in OR. Fwiiw, it strikes me as not unlikely that the Hittite term for "blood-oath" or similar should have sounded similar to the name of the (unrelated) Hurrian goddess, which would have catapulted her to a new role by folk etymology. --

Ishara »was of considerable importance in Ebla from the mid 3rd millennium, and by the end of the 3rd millennium, she had temples in Nippur, Sippar, Kish, Harbidum, Larsa, and Urum.« Besides it was »a loanword in the Assyrian Kültepe texts from the 19th century BC«. In this case, how can it be, that this most probably semitic name should be »the earliest attestation of a word of any Indo-European language«? (Hm in fact, there are some indo-european names in the Kültepe texts, but Ishara does not belong to these!) This chapter about the claimed indo-european etymology should be deleted; there is even not given e reference to (reputable) literature. Of course, no serious scolar would approve such a ridicule etymology. Please delete this nonsense! --178.192.242.95 (talk) 21:53, 19 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, it should be deleted if it stay without a reliable source. I asked for citations and will wait a week and if no academic source is presented then I'll go ahead and delete the paragraph.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 01:55, 1 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Update, after looking everywhere, no academic source on Ishara's etymology showed up. I partly re-wrote the article according to the academic sources I found.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 06:29, 1 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ishara was a deity before becoming a Hittite word. She is introduced in the article firstly as a Hittite word !. She is attested in 2400 BC in Ebla 500 years before the Hittites. I have edited the article with proper Academic sources and removed the supposed Indo-European origin which is not sourced and most importantly plain wrong considering that she was worshiped before the arriving of Indo-Europeans in the near-east. I have tried to find sources for those claims about welsh and Indo-European connection in general but found nothing but the notion by most scholars that nobody know the origin or etymology of Ishara.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 06:21, 1 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I just reread a bunch of sources while "freshening" the Tell Ishchali article and at no point saw any mention of "Ishara". There is an Inanna of Kititum (also worshiped at Eshnunna) but I am not aware of them being in any way related. Well, aside from worshiped in vaguely the same general area and both starting with I. :-) There is also a Shamash Temple at Tell Ischali (though probably actually a Sin Temple) but no unoccupied temples. I started to just delete the wl for Tell Ishchali but thought I would give someone the chance to educate me first. PS I could also say all of the above about Eshnunna where it was also Inanna of Kititum.Ploversegg (talk) 21:27, 14 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, seems like Sibbing-Plantholt slightly overestimates the evidence provided by Prechel, I double checked and the evidence for Eshnunna listed by the latter (p. 45) is that there is a person with a theophoric name invoking her in a letter to king Bilalama and that there are six further theophoric names in texts from other nearby sites or Eshnunna itself. No temple or anything of that sort, no royal inscriptions. I think the recently discovered treaty where Ishara is one of the deities the king of Eshnunna swears by counts as evidence, but Prechel obviously had no access to that 20+ years before its discovery.

Ishchali is much less ambiguous, Prechel (pp. 54-55) cites a reference to silver for Ishara in an administrative text, OBTIV 109 (line 2), multiple references to a presumably nearby settlement named after her (OBTIV 79, 317 II, etc) and a handful of theophoric names as well. I think it's pretty solid. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 08:17, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. So be it then. Its interesting that there is nothing at all in the archaeology literature about this (granted that the publications for Ischali were disrupted by WWII). Maybe they and the religion people don't talk with each other. :-) I did see a mention of Ishara for Eshunna ie "The location of Isur is not known. The chief goddess of Isur was Ishara. Bilalama, ruler of Esnunna shortly after the fall of the Ur III dynasty, conquered Isur ..." which was a footnote in a paper on the Sin Temple at Khafajah. Anyway, thanks for checking this.Ploversegg (talk) 15:27, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think in many cases texts from a site are not published right after excavations in one go, but over the course of years or ever decades - there probably are exceptions (didn't basically every single text from Ebla get published?) but that's probably the norm. I remember reading recently that ex. there are still unpublished texts from the first Toll-e Maliyan excavations from the 1970s and 1980s and it seems like every new article from Jeremiah Peterson is about something "brand new" from old excavations in Nippur - so I presume it was/is similar in the case of the Diyala sites in Iraq? HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 19:04, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it was good news bad news. The OI did a bunch of excavations like 1935-1938 , Ischali, Khorsabad, Tell Asmar (and Khorsabad) then the world war broke out and publication plans fell apart. The good news is that they published top shelf excavation photographs and drawings [3] before they went home. Bad news is that the epigraphy all fell into a rabbit hole. To made matters worse the Kititum archive was looted for a couple years beforehand so hundreds of tablets are scattered in museums etc all over the world.Ploversegg (talk) 20:00, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]