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Air-stone on Nectanebo’s Divination Tablet: the Armenian Evidence1
Резюме: В статье приводится филологический анализ перевода фрагмента «Повести об Александре Македонском», содержащего описание гадательной таблички, на древнеармянский язык. Анализ двух существующих изданий древнеармянского фрагмента и его сопоставление с рецензиями а и в древнегреческого оригинала, а также с рядом сохранившихся переводов «Повести Александра Македонского» на другие древние языки, позволяет уточнить английский перевод древнеармянского текста и устранить ряд заблуждений, возникавших при использовании древнеармянского материала для реконструкции древнегреческого архетипа.
Ключевые слова: «Повесть об Александре Македонском», гадательная табличка, древнеармянского фрагмент, древнегреческий оригинал, реконструкция древнегреческого архетипа.
The original text of The Alexander Romance is traditionally attributed to an Alexandrian author of the 2nd cent. A.D. - Pseudo-Callisthenes. Its earliest preserved Greek versions and many translations of the story contain a description of a divination tablet that Nectanebo, the last king of Egypt and a proficient magician, used to predict the birth of Alexander the Great. Below, we provide the relevant passage from the earliest Greek version - recensio a edited by W. Kroll (Kroll 1926: 4-5):
«Apa Ss хф таота slnsiv nposvsyKapsvo; nivaKa noAmipnTov PaaiAiKov, ov sppnvsoaai Aoyo; oo SwaTai, s£, sA^avTo; Kai sPsvou Kai xpouao Kai apyupou, Tpi%apaKTov Z®vai;, sni psv Too лрютои kukAou SsKavou; s%ovTa той; A;', sni Ss Too SsuTspou ^Sia та ф', sni
1 Статья написана в рамках проекта «Древние индоевропейские тексты», выполняемого по Программе ОИФН РАН «Текст во взаимодействии с социокультурной средой: уровни историко-литературной и лингвистической интерпретации». Направление V. Лингвистические аспекты исследования текста. Кроме того, при написании статьи были использованы материалы исследования «Грамматическое значение основообразующих суффиксов древнеармянского глагола», выполняемого по Госконтракту № l6.740.ll.0292 от 06.10.2010 в рамках федеральной целевой программы «Научные и научно-педагогические кадры инновационной России» на 2009-2013 гг.
I would like to thank the administration and staff of the Library of the Pontifical Oriental Institute (Rome) for their indispensible help during the work on the present article, and Hrach Martirosyan for the valuable comments on the draft.
Se tou piaou ^Iiov Kai ael^vnv, eOnKev eni Sl^pou elxa yI©aaOKop,ov
5 r 5 ^ r t r f 5 f >e>?A
avolqa; eie^avTivov ©aam©;, piKpov, eKKevroaa; tou; enTa aaTepa; Kai tov ©poaKOnov e£, okt© IiOoT£%v©v | ^£TaH©v auveOnKe tov T^^iKo^Tov oupavOv ev oily© kdkX© nepi^roTlaa;, npoOei; tov ^Aaov KpuaTailou IlOou, T^v aeA^vnv asa^avTo; IlOou, tov Apea aip,araou IlOou. tov Ala aiOeplTou IlOou, T^v A^poSlrnv aan^elpou IlOou, tov KpOvov o^Itou IlOou, tov ©poaKOnov AuySlvou IlOou» .
The most recent translation into English based on the Greek a version executed by R. Stoneman reads as follows:
«Then he placed his hand in a fold of his garment and took out an extraordinary little writing tablet, constructed from gold, ivory, ebony and silver, and engraved with three zones. [On the first circle were the thirty-six decans, on the second the twelve signs of the zodiac, and on the inner one the Sun and Moon. He put it on a chair. Then he opened a small ivory box, revealing the seven stars and the ascendant made of eight precious stones, which lit up the pictured miniature heaven. The Sun was of crystal, the Moon of diamond, the Mars of haematite, the Mercury of emerald, the Jupiter of air-stone, the Venus of sapphire, the Saturn of ophite and the pointer of white marble. A-text]» (Stoneman 1991: 38).
The translator gives the following comment concerning the air-stone of Juppiter in the Armenian version of the text: «The Greek word is aerinos, y has aerios; A has aitherites. The expression is translated as ‘the ethereal astrologer Aramazd’ (i.e. Zeus) by the Armenian translator; he did not understand it either» (Stoneman 1991: 189). This misleading comment requires rectification.
The collocation ‘the ethereal astrologer Aramazd’ has in fact little to do with the Greek text but has been introduced by A. Wolohojian, the author of the otherwise brilliant translation of the Classical Armenian Patmut'iwn Alek'sandri Makedonacwoy (The History of Alexander of Macedon) into English. Here, Wolohojian misinterpreted the Armenian text while the latter closely follows the Greek p version (another inaccuracy of Stonman’s remark who evokes the Armenian text in connection to the Greek a text)3. Below, there are three passages from: a)
2
The structure of the divination tablet, as it is described in the Greek a text, is not entirely strange to the astronomical tradition of the Hellenistic Egypt of the time of Pseudo-Callisthenes. One immediately recalls the famous Denderah zodiac, a bas-relief from the ceiling of the Hathor Temple (I cent. B.C) nowadays displayed in the Musee du Louvre, in which the outer belt of thirty-six decans and the second belt of Zodiac may be easily recognized.
3 The Armenian version of Alexander Romance is traditionally attributed to the 5th cent. A.D. and is one of the oldest preserved translations from the original Greek version, along with the Latin one by Julius Valerius. Still, the Armenian
the critical edition of the Greek p text, b) the critical edition of the Armenian text, and c) the translation of the Armenian text into English:
a) Recensio p (Bergson 1965: 6):
«...Kai Pal©v x^v %eipa auxou evSov <xou KoAnou> auxou e^nyaye nivaKiSiov onep loyo; eppnveuaai ou Suvaxai, %puai© p,ev Kai
r C* r )r ? r e > > e r er^ r
e^e^avxiv© SiaKei^evov, e%ov aGxepa; enxa Kai ©poGKonov, ^Mov xe Kai aeA^vnv. Kai o p,ev ^lio; ^v KpuaxaAXivo;, ^ Se aeA^vn aSapavxivn, o Se leyo^evo; Zeu; aepio;, <o Se Apn; aipmixn;, o Se Kpovo;> o^ixn;, ^ Se A^poSixn aan^eipivo;, o Se 'Ep^; a^apaySivo;, o Se ©poGKOno; MySivo;».
b) T'reanc' 1842; critical edition based on Venice Ms. 424:
«Ew haneal i nerk'ust artak's zjern matoyc' {zjernamatoyc'/ zjernmatoyc'/ matoyc'} taxtak zor ban ew p'orj meknel oc' kare, zi oskwov ew p'ioskerb er kazmeal, ew zeot'n asteisn, ew zzamadetn4 {zzamagetn / zzamadepsn / zzamadetn zmrxtaw ew} Aramazd awdayin ew aregakn sarnayin biwrieay {biwriay / biwreieay} ew lusin amarintine {amarinsine / adamantine} ew Ares ematites {emaites} ew Ermes zmrxteay ew Ap'rodites sap'iwieay ew Krawnos op'ites {sop'ites / sop'rites / sop'rotes} ew zamadetn likdinos» (T'reanc' 1842: 5)5.
c) «And taking his hand out from beneath (his garment), he showed a tablet which no word nor effort can describe; for it was made of gold and ivory and showed seven stars: the ethereal astrologer, Aramazd, a sun of icy crystal, a moon of amaranthine, an Ares of hematite, an emerald Hermes, an Aphrodite of sapphire, and a Kronos of serpentine. #» (Wolohojian 1969, 26).
The close reading of the Armenian original immediately makes it evident that the expression «the ethereal astrologer Aramazd» is an erroneous translation of the Armenian text into English, whereas the Armenian text is in perfect accordance with the Greek version: Arm.
text is closer to the Greek p text at least so far as the fragment analyzed below is concerned.
4 The Armenian compound zam-a-det (zam ‘time, hour’ + det ‘watcher’, cf. ditel ‘to watch’) was purely coined from Gk. ©po-aKono;, here in the meaning ‘caster of nativities; ascendant (a pointer at the eastern horizon of the horoscope crucial to the astrological interpretation of nativities)’.
5 A more recent critical edition is available for several Armenian manuscripts of The Alexander Romance - Simonyan 1989; the description of Nectanebo’s oracular tool is present only in Matenadaran Ms. 5472, and is published on page 74. Safe for minor details, it is identical to that of Venice Ms. 424: «Ew haneal i nerk'ust artak's zjernamatuc' taxtak, zor ban ew p'orj meknel oc' kare, zi oskov ew p'ioskerb er kazmeal, ew zewt'n asteis ew zzamadetn Aramazd awdayin ew aregakn sarnayin biwriay ew lusinn amarintine ew Ares emarites ew (H)ermes zmrxteay ew Ap'rodites sap'iwiay ew Krawnos sop'rites ew zamadetn likdinos.»
z-zamadet-n (acc. sg., def.) ‘ascendant’ stands for the concluding element of the list of entities that Nectanebo took out from beneath his garments along with a marvelous tablet and the gems representing the planets, it is not an epithet of Aramazd; Arm. awdayin ‘airy’ is an epithet of the stone that represents Aramazd, while the stone itself is not called by its proper name just like in the Greek text. Quite naturally zamadet appears in the text with its proper stone, white marble, after the seven listed planets at the end of the passage, but not in the cited translation.
Thus, the Armenian text literally says: «And taking out from beneath his garment, he got in his hand a tablet, which no word nor effort could describe for it was made of gold and ivory, the seven stars, and the ascendant: Aramazd of an airy [stone], Sun of icy crystal, Moon of amaranthine, Ares of hematite, Hermes of emerald, Aphrodite of sapphire, Kronos of serpentine, and the ascendant of white marble».
The Latin (a) and Syriac (b) versions (the latter in the English translation by E. Budge) are provided below in order to control the reading:
a) «Et cum verbis tabulas promit, quas pertitiae huiusce docti pinacam nominaverunt, opus adeo fabre absolutum, ut artifex manus certasse putaretur cum bino eloquentiae testimonio. Auro enim et ebore variatum pretium sui cum operis admiratione contenderat. Tum promit etiam septem quas rogaret stellas et horoscopum pariter, quibus singulis sui metalli species erat. Iovem enim viseres aereo lapide nuncupatum,6 Solem crystallo, Lunam adamante, Martem dici sub lapide ematite; sed Mercurius ex smaragdo fuit, Venus vero sapphiria, Saturnus in ophite, tum horoscopus lygdinus» (Kubler 1888: 3).
b) «And when he had thus spoken to her with such like words, he straightway brought out into the midst a beautiful and magnificent table of ivory which belonged to the palace, set with splendid stones and of great value, the qualities of which the mouth of a man knows not how to describe, for it was made of acacia wood and gold and silver. Three circles were fitted on it after the manner of belts. Upon the outer belt there was a representation of Zeus with the thirty-six decani surrounding him; upon the second the twelve signs of the Zodiac were presented; and upon the third the sun and moon. Then he put the table upon a tripod, and he emptied a small box which was set [with stones] after the manner of the table upon the table, and there were in it [models of] those seven stars that were in the belts, and in that one which was in the middle, which they call in Greek ‘the watcher of the hours’ (tov rnpouKonov), were set by the craft of art eight kinds of precious stones; and he arranged them upon the table with the other gems. Thus he completed his representation of the great heavens upon a small table. He arranged a sun of crystal and a moon of adamant; and Ares, whom they call in Persian
6 It is noticeable, that the order of planets of the Armenian and Latin versions are alike, Jupiter being at the head of the list of «stars».
Vahram, of a red stone, the colour of blood; Nabo the scribe, who is called in Persian Tir, of an emerald; Bel, who is called in Persian Hormazd, of a white stone; Balti, who is called in Persian Anahid, of a sapphire stone of a dark colour, and the horoscope of copper (?), which is called in Persian Farnoj» (Budge 1SS9: 5-6)
Although the Syriac version contains the most elaborated description of the horoscope, it is certainly a later development of the Greek original; the augments maybe even due to the Arabic transmission, cf. Budge 1SS9: lx-lxi.
The confusion of the ascendant with the seven stars that we find in Wolohojian’s translation is rooted in the Greek original, where the actual name of Zeus’ stone is substituted by its epithet — airy.1 As we have seen, the epithet was associated with the supreme god by mistake. Why a precious gem remarkable enough to signify the head of the Pantheon remained unnamed is enigmatic and is a subject for a study that would require a detailed comparison of the list of the planetary stones in The Alexander Romance with the known lapidaries of antiquity. For instance, one of the Armenian epitomesS of Epiphanius’s De gemmis9 contains the following description of the first stone in another divination device with a fixed set of precious stones, the Aaron’s breastplate, known also as oracular breastplate or breastplate of judgment, cf. Blake 1934: 196-197: «Sardionn sikagoyn e, ariwnatesil; gtani i Babelon merj ar Asoris; zorut'iwn uni aroljut'ean yaytmuns ew i vers; е ewt'anc' akn» («The sardion is ruby, like blood. It is found in Assyria. It has the power of healing swellings and wounds. It is the stone of the seven»). R. Blake notes that in the Jerusalem copy of the epitome (Ms. Arm. Hier. 1217) the final collocation is tapanac akn «a transparent gem». It goes
7
The translation of the air-stone as ‘beryl’, cf. the English translation of the Ethiopian version of The Alexander Romance by Budge (1896: 12-13), is arbitrary, cf. also Kroll 1926: 5, comment on line 6: «Theoph. Jovi beryllum et quemlibet album lapidem attribuit».
The epitome was first published in Alishan 1856, then, reproduced with a translation into English in Blake 1934: 196-212. Alishan’s edition was made from the Venetian manuscript Ven. 262 [hin t'iw 1537], cf. the catalogue (Sargisean 1914, vol. 2, colls. 817-830); text on manuscript pages 179-180.
A popular commentary on Ex. 28: 15-21, known under the title De gemmis, was written by Epiphanius of Cyprus and contained an account of physical and supernatural properties of twelve precious stones. The available Greek text of Epiphaneus’ De gemmis is not complete; its content varies in the preserved translations and epitomes. The Armenian version is considered to be one of the oldest, cf. the stemma in Blake 1934: XLIX.
The list of twelve stones on the Aaron’s breastplate as described in the Bible (Ex. 28: 15-21), most probably known to both an Alexandrian author of The Alexander Romance and the Armenian translator of the story, has already been itself a subject for voluminous commentary the discussion of which goes far beyond the scope of the present paper.
without saying that the cited fragile piece of evidence on behalf of the Armenian literary tradition only aims to illustrate the complexity of the matters involved in the attempts to restore the Greek archetype of Pseudo-Callisthenes’ The Alexander Romance.
Bibliography
Alishan 1856 - Alishan L. Srboyn Epit'anu asac'eal zanuans vasn akanc' patuakanac' // Bazmavep X, 46-50.
Blake 1934 - Blake R. Henri de Vis. Epiphanius. De gemmis. The Old Georgian Version and the Fragments of the Armenian Version. The Coptic-Sahidic Fragments. London.
Budge 1889 - Budge E. The history of Alexander the Great, being the Syriac version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes. Cambridge.
Budge 1896 - Budge E. The live and exploits of Alexander the Great, being a series of translations of the Ethiopic histories of Alexander by the Pseudo-Callisthenes and other writers. London.
Kubler 1888 Kubler B. (ed.). Juli Valeri Res gestae Alexandri Macedonis translatae ex Aesopo graeco. Lipsiae.
Sargisean 1914 - Sargisean B. Grand catalogue des manuscrits armeniens de la bibliotheque des PP. Mekhitharistes de Saint-Lazare. Vol. 1-2. Venice. Simonyan 1989 - Simonyan H. Patmut'iwn Alek'sandri Makedonac'woy. Erevan.
Stoneman 1991 - Stoneman R. The Great Alexander Romance. London. T'reanc' 1842 - T'reanc' R. Patmut'iwn Alek'sandri Makedonac'woy. Venice. Wolohojian 1969 - Wolohojian A. The Romance of Alexander the Great by Pseudo-Callisthenes. New York-London.
Summary. P. A. Kocharov. Air-stone on Nectanebo’s Divination Tablet: the Armenian Evidence.
The Alexander Romance by Pseudo-Callisthenes has a passage describing an astrological device that Nectanebo used for divination. The Greek text and its available translations describe this artifact with more or less precision. In the present article, I will deal with the Armenian version of the passage in question and point out the shortcomings of the only published English translation of the Classical Armenian text.
