"תכמי בשר": לביאורה של מילה סתומה בלשון המגילות

The form תכמים, attested a dozen times in Qumran Hebrew, has peplexed commentators and lexicographers ever since the first scrolls were published. It has been recognized, on contextual grounds, to belong to the semantic field of body parts, but its exact interpretation as well as its etymology and linguistic history have eluded scholars thus far. The present analysis confirms that the word belongs to the terminological realm of partonomy, proposing that the lexeme is etymologically related to biblical Hebrew שכם 'shoulder', but that the given form is most probably an Aramaic loanword. The paper explosres the phonological and textual evidence for the process of borrowing, and traces the semantic development of the term from denoting specific organ ('shoulder') to the general notion of 'body part', on the basis of both internal and comparative evidence. Finally, it reconstructs a possible path of borrowing through the technical use of a specialized body of literature, namely, magical spells and medical recipes, espcially against serpents.