ἁμαζακάραν <Iranian; Early Byzantine period>
👉 ἁμαζακάραν – a Persian gloss with the meaning of ‘to fight, to be at war, to make a war etc.’ (Hsch. α 3390); the gloss is marked with † in the editions of K. Latte and I.C. Cunningham; cf. conjectures: ἁμαρανακαραν (F.C. Andreas) and ἁμαρακαραν (H.C. Tolman); however, the alphabetical order is correct: α 3389: ἁμαδρυάδες, α 3390: †ἁμαζακάραν, α 3391: ἁμαζανίδες.
⚠ Hsch. α 3390: ἁμαζακάραν· πολεμεῖν. Πέρσαι – “hamazakaran: to fight. Persians”.
🅔 A distorted Old Persian phrase hamaranam kar ‘to fight a battle’, containing hamarana- n. ‘battle, combat’ and kar ‘to do, make’; cf. also Old Persian hamaranakara- m. ‘fighter, warrior’. Netither Hesychius himself nor the manuscript transmission of his lexicon are responsible for a deformation of the Persian phrase, but it is likely that an erroneous form had already existed in a source of Hesychius. An example of such an error may be the Hesychean gloss ὀρμάται· οἱ ἀνδροκτόνοι. Σκύθαι – “ormatai: killers of men by Scythians”, which is a distorted form of Οἰόρπατα, i.e. a Scythian name for Amazons with the original meaning of ‘killers of men’ (Hdt. 4.110); the Herodotean Οἰόρπατα was falsely reinterpreted as a Greek nominative plural with an article (*οἱ ὀρπαται), as well as being conceived as a common word and slightly miswritten (μ instead of π); this must have occurred in a source of Hesychius, for the alphabetical order in his lexicon is correct: ο 1244: ὁρμάς, ο 1245: ὀρμάται, ο 1246: ὁρμειαί. Many scholars treat the form ἁμαζακάραν as correct, but they have not yet delivered a satisfying explanation. According to a widespread hypothesis, ἁμ- and -καρ- are interpreted as Old Persian ham- ‘with, together’ and kar ‘to do, make’, while -αζ- is compared to Avestan az ‘to lead’, Sanskrit aj- ‘to drive’, sam-aj- ‘to bring or collect together; to bring into conflict’, sam-āja ‘meeting with, falling in with; a meeting, assembly’ (as well as to the first part of the Iranian personal name Hamazasp attested in the South Caucasus region, also written in Greek Ἀμαζάσπος and Ἁμαζάσπης; -asp means ‘horse’). Cf. also similar explications: 1. ἁμ- and -καρ- as above, -αζ- is juxtaposed either with the Iranian root *ǰan- ‘to kill, to strike’, Avestan jan- (ɣn-) ‘to kill, to slay’, Old Persian gan- (jan-) ‘to strike, to slay’, or with the Indo-European root *magh- reconstructed e.g. on the basis of Greek μάχομαι ‘to fight’; 2. -καρ- as above, ἁμαζα- comes from the alleged Iranian word *hamaza- ‘war’ supposed also for Ἀμαζών f. ‘Amazon’.
📖 Data: WAK: 187f. and 200f. Ref.: Tolman 1921: 237; cf. Brust 2008: 66-70; Hinz 1975: 112; Justi 1895: 125; Lagercrantz 1912: 272f.; in der Smitten 1973: 366f.