I assume the somebody somewhere has mentioned this previously in regard to Nonnus’ Dionysiaca. If they haven’t then there’s no time like the present.
Page from tasbeha.org
The three adverbs here together mean “all throughout the day”.
If it is not read as an adjective with Αὔρη, it may be adverbial as in the Coptic.
μεσημβρινός, and presumably μεσημβριάς, mean “noontime”, not “all throughout the day.” For the “adverbial” usage, see Smyth 1042:
- Several adjectives of time, place, order of succession, etc., are used as predicates where English employs an adverb or a preposition with its case: ““ἀφικνοῦνται τριταῖοι” they arrive on the third day” X. A. 5.3.2, κατέβαινον σκοταῖοι they descended in the dark 4. 1. 10. In such cases the adjective is regarded as a quality of the subject; whereas an adverb would regard the manner of the action.
a. Time, place: χρόνιος late, ὄρθριος in the morning, δευτεραῖος on the second day, ποσταῖος how many days? ὑπαίθριος in the open air.
b. Order of succession: πρῶτος, πρότερος first, ὕστερος later, μέσος in the midst, τελευταῖος last, ὕστατος last.
Presumably, you are thinking in terms of circular (angular) movement. Another way to think of the Sun’s movement is that it goes up, travels across, then goes down.
If people are reading that I claimed μεσημβριάς means “all throughout the day”, then perhaps I was too succinct. Let me add a bit to what I said.
It seems I was too succinct here too. Let me expand:
The title of the Psali includes the detail that it was Greek (literally “Roman”), ie a translation or adaptation of some thing that was originally in Greek.
I am not advocating the interpretation of μεσημβριάς as an adverb, but seeing as it is a hapax legomenon in Nonnus, and Nonnus was from late antique Egypt, it is worth considering whether he was using the same word as he might have used liturgically each Saturday evening.
LSJ, presumably without knowledge of the Coptic text, describes μεσημβριάς as peculiar (either unique or strange). This that I’m presenting is just one one piece of information that may lead to a re-evaluation of the word μεσημβριάς in Nonnus.
Is there an Arabic text available
I’m not sure I completely follow your arguments, especially when you get into Coptic and/or Arabic, languages that I know next to nothing about. However, I don’t see anything unusual in Nonnus’ Greek.
Nonnus clearly created his nonce word μεσημβριάς, (it’s “peculiar" in the sense of “unique,” not “strange") in accordance with usual rules of Greek word-formation, because no feminine form of μεσημβρινός would scan in a hexameter. I’m sure you could find any number of other instances where feminine adjectives in -ας conveniently replace unscanable adjectives in -η in poetry metri gratia (and not just in hexameters). I doubt that any experienced reader of Greek poetry from any part of the Greek-speaking world would have raised an eyebrow over this word.
I probably should have translated μεσημβρινός, and μεσημβριάς more literally as “mid-day”, rather than noon. Latin meridies is calqued on μεσημβρινός, but, except for astronomers and astrologers, the ancients (and especially poets) were little concerned with astronomical precision in telling the time of day – they didn’t wear watches and sun-dials weren’t ubiquitous.
The mid-day siesta – seeking respite from mid-day heat – was (and is) a feature of Mediterranean communities, especially agricultural communities where farmers and shepherds worked outdoors during the day. This is a recurrent trope of Greek and Latin literature, particularly in the pastoral tradition. Typically, as in this passage of Nonnus, a locus amoenus is sought out, with water, shade and a breeze, and sometimes (in fact, often in Ovid) the locus amoenus takes a sinister turn. In Nonnus we also have flowers, nightingales, etc. But it’s Aure (in her Ionic guise – this is epic), the breeze herself, who comes to the locus amoenus hot and thirsty – a neat twist on the usual pattern. Hot, thirsty, and ripe for seduction.
Probably not a calque, but a collateral formation.
In any event, if I understand the Coptic text you cited correctly, MECHMBPIAC is not Nonnus’ nonce adjective μεσημβριάς. It’s the genitive of the noun μεσημβρία (genitive of “time”), as the parallel word ECΠEPAC shows.
There is a hyperlink to tasbeha.org there in the opening post. The translation is الظهيرة.
الظهيرة means noon or midday heat
Tread a bit lightly there, mate.
You are not wrong in saying that it means “noon”, but you are not completely right either. As a point in time, yes, it is “noon”, “midday”. As a period of time, however, “afternoon” is also quite possible.
Look at the many examples of that on the reverse dictionary site.
So far as I know (only by observation and not by instruction so far as I remember), the article with a noun of time serves the purpose of a preposition such as “in”, “on”, “at” or “during”.
Edit: there is no example of “midday heat” on the reverso dictionary site, or any other online dictionary sites that I looked at.
A German speaker might say that “Gesundheit!” was a noun, while an English speaker would say that it is an interjection. Likewise a francophone might recognise touché as a past participle.
There are no genitive in the Coptic language. Loan words don’t bring with them the system of grammar that they were originally meaningful in. In the case of the Greek in this text it is probably not appropriate to call it a loan word, though the resulting lack of grammatical understanding is the same. The text may have originally been a bilingual assuming that a bilingual community understood both languages of a Roman (ie linguistically Greek and culturally Byzantine) - Coptic diglossia, but gradually after the displacement of the Byzantine rule, Greek came to be no longer used for public administration. A different diglossia evolved. Including Arabic in the title, and hyperlinking to the tasbeha.org page with parallel Arabic text, was an attempt to put the Coptic text in context.
If I had ignored the changes to the language ecologies in which the text has been used, and normalised the spelling of ⲉⲥⲡⲉⲣⲁⲥ ⲕⲉ ⲡ́ⲣⲱⲓ́ ⲕⲉ ⲙⲉⲥⲏⲙ ⲃ́ⲣⲓⲁⲥ to our modern (small “m”) Greek orthographical norms as ἑσπέρας καὶ πρωῒ καὶ μεσημβριάς, then there wouldn’t be need for this discussion. After the change in the language ecology, when the words retained their meaning but lost their grammar, what was a genitive of time, ie, functionally a temporal adverb, retained its functional (discourse level) grammar, but lost its morphological (morphosyntactic level) grammar.
Anyway, I believe you are right about it being understood at the time of Nonnus - when Greek was the public language in a diglossia with Coptic - in terms of its own Greek grammar. My thinking was anachronistic. I had Nonnus pictured as a member of the general population in an era later than he was in. In actual fact, however, he was living during the period of Greek - Coptic diglossia, and he was exceptional in his command of Greek.
My thinking was little more than a ill-directed sneeze and “Touché” for your reminder that it is Greek in its own terms that is in the Coptic Psali.
There is an online Coptic keyboard available here.
Midday heat is given as one of the meanings in H Wehr Arabic English dictionary which is the best in existence
Doesn’t it give “afternoon” as a meaning then?
The non-exact meaning aside, I found this story showing just how exact μεσημβρίας can be.
No it doesn’t and the lapse of time for الظهيرة in those countries is from about 12 pm to 3 pm
I suggest you reapraise the value of the entry for ظهيرة in the English translation of H Wehr’s dictionary. All of the examples for هذه الظهيره, which I understand as “that afternoon”, in the reverso dictionary are rendered “this afternoon” or “that afternoon”.
12-3 is “early afternoon”, is that listed in the English rendering of Wehr’s dictionary?
All of the examples for هذه الظهيره, which I understand as “that afternoon”, in the reverso dictionary are rendered “this afternoon” or “that afternoon”.
If we’re trying to understand the meaning of a Greek word from an Arabic translation of a Coptic text that incorporates the Greek word, using an Arabic-English dictionary translated from German, I’d suggest we’re headed in the wrong direction. “Afternoon” in any event is a concept that has meaning in a society regulated by clocks and watches, where noon can be determined more or less precisely. Again, apart from astronomers and astrologers (and leaving aside the description of a striking natural phenomenon in Aelius Aristides), the ancients were not so precise about time. But the translation of the Arabic word as “midday heat” conveys the connotations of μεσημβρία (paroxytone, in contrast to Nonnus’ μεσημβριάς).
It’s also noteworthy that the first word of the Coptic text is also Greek: ΖΗΛWTE, ζηλωτέ, “happy” or “blessed” in the vocative case. I can’t discern any more Greek in the Coptic text, but the Greek words and the concatenation of the adverbial words by κε/και suggest that this is at least the beginning of a grammatical sentence in Greek, perhaps an indication of diglossia on the part of the author, not an example of Greek words incorporated into Coptic without regard to their grammatical form or function in Greek.
Be that as it may, as little is known about Nonnus as about Homer himself. Even his date is uncertain, but whether he was a Coptic speaker or a Greek speaker at home or in his everyday milieu is an unanswerable question. The one thing we can be certain of, however, is that the author of the Dionysiaca was adept at composing poetry in traditional epic/Homeric Greek and was thoroughly acquainted with Greek literature and Greek pagan mythology.
Herodotus, seems to imply an “afternoon” (or “aftermidday”) period in India.
ἀπὸ τούτου ἀπιὼν … ἐς ὃ ἐπὶ δυσμῇσι ἐὼν suggests there is a space between leaving the midday and arriving at the setting - what we call afternoon.
The meaning given in LSJ perhaps doesn’t explain the intervening period
ἀποκλίνω … of the day, decline towards evening, ἀποκλινομένης τῆς μεσαμβρίης, τῆς ἡμέρης, Hdt.3.104, 114, 4.181.
unless the declination of the sun first mentioned is a summary of what he is going to say.
Ok u intrigued me so I have checked the ultimate reference which is lisan Al Arab by Farahidi. Basically he gives the same meanings as Wehr. On the other hand Kazimirsky’ s Arabic French dictionary which is based upon the other ultimate reference the crown of the bride does not indicate the meaning of midday heat. I would stick to what lisan Al Arab says however.
NB for afternoon there is a different world much in use in Arabic which is asr عصر. No one ever mixes them up.