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Art. VI.—Sumerian or Cryptography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

Fifteen years ago I read before this Society a paper treating of “the languages of the Early Inhabitants of Mesopotamia,” in which I expressed my conviction that the non-Semitic dialects (for there are at least two closely-allied idioms) spoken in that district, revealed to us by the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions, were really languages, and not cryptographies or “allographic systems of writing,” as they were called by those who favoured the theory of the artificial nature of the script employed.

Type
Original Communications
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1900

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References

page 77 note 1 It is to be noted that this is only in compound words, borrowed from Sumerian. Thus , gallum, quoted by Brünnow (6842), is in reality the second part of the word gugallum, ‘great bull,’ from the Sum. gugala.

page 79 note 1 It is to be noted that iṣ is regarded by Assyriologists as a Semitic value, not taken from the Sumerian, but from the common Semitic word îṣu or êṣu, ‘wood.’ The Sum. word is given in the next line.

page 81 note 1 The word seems really to be paṭ-ri, but a close examination suggests that the character rum is written over ri, correcting the word to paṭrum.

paeg 82 note 1 W.A.I., v, pl. 10. This text has been treated very fully by Haupt and other scholars.

page 82 note 2 Lines 1–7.

page 83 note 1 See p. 80.

page 84 note 1 W.A.I., iv, 17, 40 ff.

page 85 note 1 W.A.I., iv, 27, 19.

page 85 note 2 A learned and important paper upon the linguistic side of the question by Dr. F. H. Weisbach unfortunately came into my hands too late to make use of in the present article.

page 93 note 1 It occupies four plates in part vi of Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets (1898).

page 94 note 1 Tablet S. 1190 (the lines are quoted in Bezold's Catalogue, vol. iv).

page 94 note 2 Tablet 81–7–27, 130.

page 94 note 3 The text of the Assyrian translation reads: lišan Šumeri tamšil Ak[kadi], “the tongue of Šumer the likeness of (the tongue of) Ak[kad assumed?].” The Sumerian original has the character eme, “tongue,” before the break, implying that the original, when complete, read eme Ura, “tongue of Akkad.”

page 94 note 4 Tablet K. 1413 (cf. Bezold's Catalogue, vol. iii).