Les pronoms suffixes cataphoriques en phénicien et les statues d’enfants au sanctuaire du dieu Echmoun de Sidon (Bostan ech-Cheikh)

This paper reviews the syntactic construction with a cataphoric pronoun suffixed to the nomen regens in a construct-genitive relation in Phoenician. This construction seems to occur when the construct noun is an infinitive after a preposition and when the following noun conveys the notion of the subject of the verbal matter (subjectivegenitive). The following noun cannot be explained as an apposition. The cataphoric pronoun is used to avoid incorrect reference by the addressee. This is set againstexamples without the pronoun (§ 1). In the second section, an inscription from Bostan esh-Sheikh is discussed, in which the aforementioned pattern might be present. It is argued, however, that this is not the case for different reasons (§ 2). The last section deals with the pragmatic context of the inscription studied in § 2 which comes from the collection of (inscribed) children’s statues in the holy grove of Eshmun. After two other existing inscriptions are presented, the paper addresses the question of the identity of the speaker in the inscriptions, the referent of the pronouns and the identity of the sculpted children. It is argued that the children’s statues don’t represent real individuals, but are rather symbols of the prospective progeny, i.e. the continued good health of the genealogical line and the renewal of life. The lexeme šrš, “root, offspring”, and its usage are studied in contrast to zrʿ, “seed, offspring”, and bn, “son” (§ 3).