W. Skalmowski & A Van Tongerloo (eds.) (1993). Medioiranica. Louvain: Peeters Press.

New stock recently appeared in Vangsgaards Antikvariat on Fiolstræde – not in the shelves near the front windows where covers and spines are left exposed to bleach by the sun's UV radiation – but in the back in back room on the top shelf marked Filologi where the good shit is kept. I laid my hands on a volume of papers about Middle Iranian philology and linguistics and I knew it had to be mine.

Lots of fun stuff in here (table of contents below). I started reading the first paper by R. Bielmeier on Alanic glosses in John Tzetzes and I was delighted to find some interesting stuff on the first attestation of an obscene Greek word μουνί 'cunt'. Apparently in Tzetzes' Theogony there is an epilogue as a show of his learnedness in which he gives greetings in many different languages. The glosses the article looks at are:

Greek:  

τοῖς Ἀλανοῖς προσφθέγγομαι κατὰ τὴν αὐτῶν γλῶσσαν· 

καλή ἡμέρα σου αὐθέντα μου ἀρχόντισσα πόθεν εἶσαι·

"I greet the Alans in their language:

Good day my lord, noblewoman, where are you from?"

Alanic: 

ταπαγχὰς · μέσφιλι ·· χσινὰ · κορθὶ · καντὰ; καὶ τἄλλα.

To which is also added, where the gloss is found:

Greek:

ἄν δ᾽ἔχη ἀλάνισσα παπᾶν φίλον; ἀκούσαις ταῦτα·

οὐκ αἰσχύνεσαι αὐθέντριά μου νὰ γαμῇ τὸ μουνίν σου παπᾶς;

"But if an Alanic woman has a priest as an intimate companion, you might hear:

Aren't you ashamed, my lady, that a priest fucks your μ.?"

Alanic: 

το φάρνετζ, κίντζι · μέσφιλι · καὶτζ · φουὰ · σαοῦγγε ·

Now, I don't know what the pejoration of μουνίν is at this time in Medieval Greek, nor if it is necessarily Tzetzes' original or a scribal interpolation (Nick Nicholas over at Ἡλληνιστεύκοντος gives us some context about this). I suspect Bielmeier's translation (in German) is given in the way that it is ("Schämst du dich nicht, meine Herrin, (daß) ein Priester (mit dir) Geschlechtsverkehr hat?") to avoid having to deal with this issue, but intransitive Geschlechtsverkehr haben "to have sexual intercourse" isn't exactly what the Greek actually says. The verb γαμέω definitely has a direct object that is possessed by the αὐθέντρια.

Anyway, that was quite fun to learn about. I have not yet had a chance to read much of the rest of the volume yet, but 10/10 I would buy again.