{"title":"Rites for the Dead, Amity for the Living: the Old Assyrian nasbītum Rite and Its Relation to the Old Babylonian kispum","authors":"Trey Nation","doi":"10.1163/15692124-12341343","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>While recent scholarship has clarified the spelling of the little-known Old Assyrian <em>nasbītum</em> rite, formerly glossed as <em>naspittum</em>, its etymology and social context have remained obscure. This paper suggests the elusive rite has its etymology in the <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">OA</span> verb <em>sabā’um</em>, “to brew/draw beer,” and refers to the act of libation. While the textual evidence for <em>nasbītum</em> is currently limited, an analysis of the rite as it occurs in the <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">OA</span> corpus suggests that <em>nasbītum</em> was the <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">OA</span> term for the care and feeding of the spirits of the dead, analogous to the better-known Old Babylonian <em>kispum</em>.</p>","PeriodicalId":42129,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15692124-12341343","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
While recent scholarship has clarified the spelling of the little-known Old Assyrian nasbītum rite, formerly glossed as naspittum, its etymology and social context have remained obscure. This paper suggests the elusive rite has its etymology in the OA verb sabā’um, “to brew/draw beer,” and refers to the act of libation. While the textual evidence for nasbītum is currently limited, an analysis of the rite as it occurs in the OA corpus suggests that nasbītum was the OA term for the care and feeding of the spirits of the dead, analogous to the better-known Old Babylonian kispum.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions (JANER) focuses on the religions of the area commonly referred to as the Ancient Near East encompassing Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria-Palestine, and Anatolia, as well as immediately adjacent areas under their cultural influence, from prehistoric times onward to the beginning of the common era. JANER thus explicitly aims to include not only the Biblical, Hellenistic and Roman world as part of Ancient Near Eastern civilization but also the impact of its religions on the western Mediterranean. JANER is the only scholarly journal specifically and exclusively addressing this range of topics.