Hittite mi-e-nu-us: Humans as ‘meek’ or ‘lesser’
Keywords:
Hittite etymology, Anatolian theonymy, Hittite mi-e-nu-, danduki-, Luvian massana-Abstract
A recent article posits Hittite mi-e-nu- as ‘male’, hapax (KBo 3.28 II 16) also ‘human being’, with abundant cognates all the way to English ‘man’, with strained and forced recastings of mi-e-nu- ’soft, mild’ in all other passages as ‘male’. Here crucial KBo 3.28 II 14-16 is reamended and retranslated, implicitly declining the article’s assumptions and conclusions, affirming the vocable involved as formulaic of ‘human frailty’ in binary contrast to divine powers.
References
HED 1 – Puhvel, J. 1984. Hittite Etymological Dictionary, vol. 1. Words beginning with A; vol. 2. Words beginning with E and I (Trends in Linguistics. Documentation 1). Berlin – New York – Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers.
Oettinger, N. 2022. Hethitisch menu- ‚Mensch, männlich‘. HSp 135: 255-263.
Puhvel, J. 2012. Ultima Indoeuropaea (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 143). Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck.
