IRANIAN AND HITTITE-LUWIAN PARALLELS OF THE ARMENIAN WORDS TAPAST-'CARPET' AND TAPAST- 'A KIND OF DEADLY PAIN, DISEASE'

Abstract The author discusses etymology of the Armenian word ‘tapast’ ‘cover, carpet’ and ‘tapast’ ‘a kind of deadly pain, decease’, that generally are considered to be Iranian loanword or of unknown origin. We would like to indicate to the word ‘tapašpa’ in Hittite with meaning ‘a type of cloth or cover’ and tapaš- ‘fever, heat, an unknown decease’ that have no clear etymology in Hittite. We suppose that the Armenian words may have etymological connection with the Hittite ones as they have similar meaning, however Avestan tapasti- and Middle Persian (Pahlavi) tapasta- ‘carpet’ parallels cannot be ignored. As we see from semantic point of view there are three lexical parallels in Armenian, Hittite and Iranian with comparable sounding and meaning: Iranian tapasti- (‘fever’) - tapasta (‘carpet’), Armenian ‘tapast’ (‘fever, unknown decease’) and tapast (‘carpet, cloth’), Hittite tapaš (‘fever’, decease’ and tapašpa, tapišša, tapašša- (‘a type of clothing or cover’). Both Armenian and Iranian parallels enable us to identify their matches in Hittite and other IE languages (Armenian and Iranian in this case) that have not been made so far and specify their meaning