Friday Culture Word: reed > canon

qn(h) is the common Semitic word/root for "reed." It not only appears in Biblical Hebrew as קנה but also in Ugaritic (qn), Akkadian (qunû), Aramaic (קנה), Ethiopic and Arabic (قنا). It is likely a loanword into the Semitic family from Sumerian GI.NA, "reeds." But in both Hebrew and Akkadian it could also stand for a measuring instrument and an exact measure.

The most common meaning of Hebrew קנה is "reed" but in Ezekiel 40:5, for example, it clearly means a unit of measure, six cubits (~2.5 m) to be exact. One of the more humorous examples of this usage of Akkadian qunû, is qa-na-am [mindassu] ul idēma, "I took a measuring rod, but I did not know its length (Sumer 7, 39 No. 7:2; See CAD Q, 89-90, for this and other examples.)." But, like the Hebrew equivalent, in both Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian it could be an exact, known, measurement, generally six cubits. GI also meant both "reed" and 6 cubits in Sumerian.

If this were all there was to it, one would likely think that Semitic qn(h) was a cognate word/root with a likely Sumerian origin. One might wonder about the rather specific meaning of 6 cubits in both Hebrew and Akkadian but one could, and perhaps should, understand this meaning in Hebrew as a borrowing from Akkadian usage to Hebrew usage. But there are two additional factors that indicate that we are likely dealing with a rather wide spread culture word.

First, Greek has a word of similar pronunciation and meaning and not in just any old Greek, Homer's Ionic Greek. That word is imbedded in the following from the Iliad 13:407, δύω κανόνεσσ' αραρυιαν, "fitted with two staves," parts of Idomeneus' shield. And see also κάνeoν, meaning a basket of reed or cane, in, for example, Iliad 9:217. On this usage compare Akkadian ša GI.NUN.ME.TAD iššûnim, "who brought reeds for weaving grain baskets (CAD Q, 88)." The Greek form closest to the Semitic forms is κάννα meaning "reed" and sometimes "reed mat." We'll see this second meaning later in yet another language. In certain derived Greek forms, it can also have metaphorical uses like those that we see in some Semitic instantiations. Euripides, Hecuba, 602, uses the Greek word κανών metaphorically to mean "rule, standard" and Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, 1105a3, uses κανονίας, to mean "standards" that guide our lives.

Second, as Loren Fisher noted in a comment to my earlier post, there is Egyptian, ḳn meaning "reed mat." Remember Greek κάννα meaning "reed mat."

We have here a set of words with overlapping usages that spans not only many ancient Semitic languages but includes obviously related Greek and Egyptian words. While Sumerian origin is hard to deny, it is hard to define etymological pathways to every linguistic corner of this set of words. But it is also hard to deny that each word in the set has an interrelated heritage with the others.

Of course, our modern European languages are part of that continuing heritage: the canon, le canon, der Kanon. But these modern instantiations most certainly came to us by way of Greek κανών.