A Note on Armenian hrmštk-el

Abstract

The hapax *framastaq in the Babylonian Talmud is a loan from a Middle Iranian slang word for the penis; from its base comes the common Armenian verb hrmstkel, "to shove in", which is not attested in Classical texts and might have had an obscene connotation in ancient times that it no longer possesses. The Aramaic of the Babylonian Talmud is replete with Middle Iranian loan words, some of which reflect the same dialect variations as the Middle Iranian loans into Armenian of roughly the same period: hraman instead of framān for "command", navasard instead of nō sāl for "new year", and so on. The narratives in the text abound in Iranian themes, too; and in recent years a number of scholars, notably Daniel Sperber, Isaiah Gafni, Shaul Shaked, Yaakov Elman, and Geoffrey Herman have been exploring these. They are of interest to the study of ancient Armenia in both expected and unpredictable ways. For instance, we learn that in the fourth century the Sasanian monarch Sābuhr (Shapur II, r. AD 309-379) sat down to lunch with the Jewish Exilarch and the two august personages dined upon a single ethrog―a sort of citrus fruit used by Jews during the festival of Sukkot. This sounds rather silly on the face of it and it is probably an abbreviation: presumably they ate, and most definitely drank, a great deal more. The dessert of fruit is most likely to be understood as a kind of rhetorical shorthand for the comfortable intimacy of friendship and leisure the two men enjoyed. This was an enviable situation for the leader of a religious minority of course. In a world of swords and sabers one checked at the entrance to the