After so many language shifts, something that was well preserved from bronze age Anatolia is the terminology of musical instruments.
Our first pick is the Turkish zurna, which is a wind instrument. It derives from the PIE word *krn 'horn' and is first attested as the musical instrument zurni in cuneiform Luwian. Other Indo-European examples are the Anc. Greek σύριγξ, Mod. Greek ζουρνάς, Sanskrit śrṅga and of course Old English horn (proto-Germanic *hurnaz). If it does not derive from the Luwian zurni, Turkish got it through Persian.
Davul is the drum accompanying the zurna. This one is a bit controversial as it includes etymologies of various backgrounds, including Arabic. Albanian daulle 'tambour', Latvian dauzities 'beat, drum' and Indo-Iranian tab(e)la 'small hand drum' speak strongly for an Indo-European origin. To that we may add the presence of Lydian daul- 'pressure' in kandaules 'dog bane'. For sure it requires more investigation.
Moving away from the Indo-European world, the Hattic word zinar is sometimes erroneously considered the root for zurna. Zinar is usually a stem in compound words denoting a string instrument. It survives in Armenian as ӡnar or knar 'lyre, harp' and Hebrew kinnor. Greek has also inherited κινύρα 'string instrument', a substratum (pre-Greek) word related to the Hattian zinar. A lot can be said about the last one, but we'll save it for another post.
No comments:
Post a Comment