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כַּר kar – elaborate ladies' saddle

Semantic Fields: Utensils   Transport   
Author(s): Eric G.L. Peels
First published: 2011-05-10
Last update: May 2025 (Marten van Dam)
Citation: Eric G.L. Peels, כַּר kar – elaborate ladies' saddle,
               Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database (sahd-online.com), 2011 (update: May 2025 (Marten van Dam)) (WORK IN PROGRESS)

Introduction

Grammatical type: noun masc.
Occurrences: 1x HB (1/0/0); 0x Sir; 0x Qum; 0x Inscr. (Total: 1)

  • Torah: Gen 31:34

1. Root and Comparative Material

A.1 Root. Klein: ‘saddle ... pbh [= Postbiblical Hebrew] bolster, pillow’ ... related to Aram. כַּר, כָּרָא (= bolster, pillow), Arab. kūr (= camel saddle), karr (= mat).’1

A.2 Egyptian. The word occurs as a West-Semitic loan in Egyptian, as a designation of a donkey saddle.

A.3 Akkadian. karru (a word for throne).3 Possibly it is simply a pars pro toto use of the word karru A, ‘knob, pommel’, a costly ornament of chairs for dignitaries.4

A.4 Postbiblical Hebrew. כַּר, ‘bolster, mattress’.5

A.5 Jewish Aramaic. כַּר, כָּרָא, ‘bolster, mattress’.6

A.6 Samaritan Aramaic. כר, ‘saddle’.7

A.7 Syriac. kārtā, ‘a burden for the back, a load’;8 ‘sarcina ... onus’;9 ‘bundle, pack, load’.10

A.8 Classical Arabic. kūr ‘camel saddle’, kūrat ‘bundle of clothes’.11

A.9 Ethiopic. In several Ethiopic dialects kor ‘saddle’ occurs, but this is regarded as an Arabic loanword.12

A.10 Judaic Sources. The כר was obviously a mattress or bolster according to the rabbis.13

2. Formal Characteristics

[Discussion will be added later.]

3. Syntagmatics

[Discussion will be added later.]

4. Ancient Versions

a. Septuagint (LXX) and other Greek versions (αʹ, σʹ, θʹ):

  • LXX σάγμα ‘pack-saddle’.14

b. Samaritan Targum (TgSmr):

  • כר ‘saddle’.15

c. Targum (Tg):

  • All targumim have עביטא ‘sumpter saddle’;16 Levy, CWT, ‘Kamelsattel, Kamelzelt, ein kleines Zeltchen, welches auf den Rücken der Kamele angeschnallt wird u. in welchem die Frauen sitzen’17, but Levy, WTM, simply ‘Sattel’;18 Dalman: ‘Kamelsattel’;19 Sokoloff: ‘basket saddle of a camel’.20

d. Peshitta (Pesh):

  • ʿabīṭā, Payne Smith: ‘a camel's saddle for women tented over with a framework’;21 Brockelmann: ‘clitellae (cameli)’ (= camel's sumpter-saddle).22

e. Vulgate (Vg):

  • stramen ‘litter’.

5. Lexical/Semantic Fields

[Discussion will be added later.]

6. Exegesis

6.1 Literal Use

A.1 כַּר in Gen. 31:34 is a hapax legomenon in the Hebrew bible (not recognised as such by Cohen, BHL and Greenspahn, HLBH). In Gen 31:34 the narrator describes how Rachel hid the household gods (תְֹּרָפִים), which she had stolen when Jacob and his family had been obliged to flee to Canaan, in the הַגָּמָל כַּר to prevent discovery by her father Laban. The older interpretation to the effect that הַגָּמָל כַּר would describe the straw for the camels (wrongly based on the Vulgate) has been abandoned since at least the early 19th century.23 Undeniably it is a camel's saddle of considerable dimensions, probably mainly intended for women, in which all kinds of objects could be kept. The use of such a camel's saddle as a seat in the tent was not uncommon.24 It is therefore not a saddle in the current sense of the word, but a kind of sedan or litter.25 According to Soggin it must have been a rather elaborately worked chair for women (‘Es handelt sich vermutlich um den grossausgearbeiteten Frauensattel, eine Art Sessel’26). See further Conclusion.

6.2 Figurative Use

A.1 Not attested.

6.3 Pictorial Material

A.1 A 19th century drawing of a ladies' camel saddle is found in Riehm:27 ADD PICTURE....................

A.2 On a relief of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser II a woman is seated on a box-like saddle on a camel.28

6.3 Archaeology

A.1 [Will be added later.]

7. Conclusion

A.1 The addition of גָּמָל as well as the cognates indicate that כַּר in itself does not mean ‘camel-saddle’. It could be any saddle on any riding animal, or even merely a mattress or bolster. However, the height of the camel, the circumstance that in this particular case it was a woman who was transported on it, and the fact that Rachel was able to hide several cultic images in it, invoking a woman's right to privacy to prevent Laban from discovering them, render the hypothesis that we are dealing with an object resembling the domed Arabian ladies' camel saddle very likely. Several authors have provided fairly accurate descriptions of this type of spectacular saddle over which outdoors a dome-like tent (→ אַרְגַּז) was extended to keep the women from the heat of the sun and from impudent stares.28 It was not uncommon to place such a saddle, without cover, as a woman's seat inside a tent.30 It was probably a privilege of prominent persons to travel in such a relatively comfortable way.

Bibliography

For the abbreviations see the List of Abbreviations.

Albrecht 1899
K. Albrecht, ‘Zum Lexikon und zur Grammatik des Neuhebräischen’, ZAW 19 (1899), 140

Dalman, AuS, Bd. 6, 19, 46, 53, 157-8

BDB, 468: ‘basket-saddle’, i.e. the basket-saddle of the camel, a sort of palankeen bound upon the saddle proper’

Burckhardt 1831: J.L. Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys: Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, vol. 2, 85

Klein, CEDHL, 285

CHALOT, 164: ‘saddle-bag (on camel)’

Alonso Schökel, DBHE, 344: ‘Montura’

DCH, vol. 4, 458: ‘saddle-basket’

Dercksen 2009
J.G. Dercksen, ‘Sattel’, RLA, Bd. 12, Lief. 1/2, 90-93
Doughty 1888
C.M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, vol. 1, Cambridge 1888, 437; vol. 2, Cambridge 1888, 304

FHAW AT, 127: ‘Satteltasche’

Frankena 1972
R. Frankena, ‘Some Remarks on the Semitic Background of Ch. 29-31 of the Book of Genesis’, OTS 17 (1972), 53-64 (61)

GB, 361: ‘Kamelsattel, meist ein tiefer, m. einem Zelte bedeckter Korb, der auf den Rücken der Kamele geschnallt wird, und in dem gew. die Frauen des Reiszugs sitzen’

Gunkel 1902
H. Gunkel, Genesis (HKAT), Göttingen 21902

HAHAT, 569: ‘Kamelsattel’
HALAT, 472: ‘Satteltasche’

Hartmann 1809
A.Th. Hartmann, Die Hebräerin am Putztisch und als Braut, vol. 2, Amsterdam 1809, 397
HAWAT, 187: ‘Höhlung, speziell der als ‘‘Kamelsattel’’ bezeichnete Sitzraum für die Frauen bei den Karawanen’

HCHAT, Bd. 1, 625: Identify with all other occurrences of כַּר in biblical Hebrew and explain: ‘eig. Wulstiges, Dickes, dah. übertr. wulstiges Polster, Sattel auf dem Kamel, um darauf zu sitzen, u. dick genug, um darin etwas zu verstecken’, referring to several cognates

Hofman & Gressmann 1923
G. Hoffmann, H. Gressmann, ‘Teraphim: Masken und Winkorakel in Ägypten und Vorderasien’, ZAW (40) 1923, 90-1

KBL, 453: ‘Satteltasche, basket-saddle’

Layard 1854
A.H. Layard, A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineve, New York 1854, 63, 72

LHA, 371: ‘sella camelina, sc. magna corbis in dorso cameli fixa, in qua mulieres iter facientes sedent’

LMHC, 468: ‘sella camelina, quae jumento alligitur’

MHH, 531: הגמל כֶּסֶת אוכף כנראה

Montagne 1937
R. Montagne, ‘Contes poétiques bédouins’, BEO 5 (1937), 33-119 (Pl. II and VIII)

NIDOT, vol. 2, 713: ‘Camel's saddle bag; saddle’

Riehm 1884
E.A.C. Riehm, Handwörterbuch des biblischen Altertums, Bd. 1, Bielefeld 1884, 811
Rosenberg 1905
H. Rosenberg, ‘Zum Geschlecht der hebräischen Hauptwörter’, ZAW 25 1905, 333

Salonen, Möbel, 94-6

Staubli 1991
T. Staubli, Das Image der Nomaden im alten Israel und in der Ikonographie seiner sesshaften Nachbarn (OBO, 107), Freiburg 1991, 126-33, esp. 129, Fig. 5 and Abb. 113-117

Hoch, SWET, 326-7

Gesenius, Roediger, TPC, 715: ‘lectina camelina’ ... i.e. sellae, s. pilenti genus, quod camelorum clitellis superne alligatum et velo cortinave obumbratum mulieribus et infantibus transportandis inservit. Plurima harum sellarum nomina apud Arabes celebrantur’

Van Selms 1967
A. van Selms, Genesis (PredOT), vol. 2, Nijkerk 1967, 124
Wilson 1884
Wilson, PPSE, vol. 4, 153.

  1. Klein, CEDHL, 285. ↩

  2. Hoch, SWET, 326-7. ↩

  3. CAD (K), 222 karru C. ↩

  4. cf. R. Frankena 1972; CAD (K), 221-2; Salonen, Möbel, 94-6. ↩

  5. Jastrow, DTT, 663. ↩

  6. Jastrow, DTT, 663; Sokoloff, DJBA, 598; Sokoloff, DJPA, 268. ↩

  7. Tal, DSA, 407. ↩

  8. Payne Smith (Margoliouth), CSD, 228. ↩

  9. Brockelmann, LS, 323. ↩

  10. Sokoloff, SLB, 657. ↩

  11. Lane, AEL, 2637; WKAS (K), 429. ↩

  12. Leslau, CDG, 289. ↩

  13. cf. Krauss, TA, Bd. 1, 64; Bd. 2, 123. ↩

  14. Lust et al., GELS-L, 421; LSJ, 1580. ↩

  15. Tal, DSA, 407. ↩

  16. Jastrow, DTT, 1037. ↩

  17. Levy, CWT, 197. ↩

  18. Levy, WTM, Bd. 3, 609. ↩

  19. Dalman, ANHT, 304. ↩

  20. Sokoloff, DJBA, 840. ↩

  21. Payne Smith (Margoliouth), CSD, 398. ↩

  22. Brockelmann, LS, 507. ↩

  23. Hartmann 1809. ↩

  24. Dalman, AuS, Bd. 6, 19, 46, 53. ↩

  25. cf. Gunkel 1902. ↩

  26. Soggin 1997. ↩

  27. Riehm 1884, 811. ↩

  28. Dercksen 2009, 90. ↩

  29. Cf. Burckhardt 1831; Layard 1854; Wilson 1884; Doughty 1888; Montagne 1937; Van Selms 1967; Staubli 1991; Dercksen 2009. ↩

  30. Dalman, AuS, Bd. 6, 46. ↩

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