Articulación e internacionalización del sistema

Lesson 1 5

This is another standard inscription of Amar-Sin. It may have been inscribed on the pedestal of a statue.

Sign-list and vocabulary alam statue

� mu name

�

ama mother

� numun seed; offspring, progeny

1]

^{sig9 (g)} to be narrow

><

kur to change

��

bU6 to tear out, to uproot f>---« til to put an end to

1'-

^me

�4t-

^Im

�

^b�

�

^eb

Notes

alam Transliterated by some as alam, and by others as alan. Some Sumerologists believe that alan is the older, and alam the later form. On the other hand, Lieberman reconstructs the original form as /alag/; he believes that nasals in word-final position were neutralized with respect to point of articulation. Others have postulated some kind of connection with the word appearing in Akkadian as in Hebrew as �elem, "image".

barag-sig9 -ga The exact meaning is unsure. It may mean "narrow dais", barag.sig.a. It is translated by the PSD as "socle (of a statue)". It was borrowed into Akkadian as barasigQ, translated by the CAD as: "low socle for cultic purposes".

1 65

166 Lesson 15

kur This was equated with Akkadian �aml and nakaru. Both have many meanings. For nakaru in the D-stem, the CAD lists, among others, "

... 8.

to discard an object (tablet, stela, etc.), to remove an inscription

... 9.

to clear away rubble, etc., to discard, remove from a container, to demolish a building ...

1 1 .

... to place an object in a new location ... ".

Most frequently, kur governs a direct object (patient).

bU6 This is translated by the PSD as "to tear out", "to pull out", "to uproot", "to extirpate".

Although the meaning is clear, the precise reading is not. The sign is a with an inscribed This is most clearly seen in the Neo-Assyrian form of the sign:

�.

Sumerologists often transliterate such inscribed signs with an "x": KAxKAR.

Older works transliterate the ka-sign as bus (when necessary), KAxKAR as

�

^and

KAxSU as bu. Recent works, however, transliterate ^both KAxKAR and KAxSU as bu,

and add the fuller transliteration in parentheses: However,

such a system can lead to confusion, because it is easy for the forms in parentheses to be accidentally dropped in the mechanical process of printing. And, since the entire function of transliteration is to provide a one-to-one correspondence of a specific cuneiform sign with a specific transliteration, it seems counter-purposeful to use bu for two different signs.

Therefore, the older procedure is followed here, and the sign is transliterated as

�

^.

It is probable that the root of this word ended in some kind of Ir/-Auslaut; in Text

15

it appears in a verb form written However, no Iburl value for this sign is re­

cognized by the standard sign lists. A possible reading is recorded, but this may be some other use. The problem deserves further study.

usually governs a direct object (patient).

til This sign has several meanings in Sumerian. In its reading as it is equated with Akkadian laqatu, and qatu. The CAD glosses as

"1.

to come to an end, to be used up,

2.

to perish,

3.

to become completed, finished, settled". In the causative stern,

�uqtu is glossed as "to bring to an end".

Lesson 15

Text 1 5

Column ^I

* E±E

� � � _rf

� M§

� *� mE1

�� �

� �

Column ^I (continued)

1 The sign is partly restored from the d

�

plicate, No. ^90039.

167

168 _{Lesson 15}

Column ^II

� � t=:1 :t

�.::.::.

x if\:f rt "

� ] � rwti>

ii===> �1N n

�T=:I m

Column ^II (con tinued)

�.&-)r=CJ �

T=f �

*

� p

Lesson 15 169

Notes

11 9: The and the U1!-sign are either partly effaced or poorly drawn on the original. Not all scholars, in fact, believe that there even is a U1!-sign in this particular text.

But since this curse-formula occurs in several other texts, its restoration is relatively certain.

I

1 :

2-4: proposed in Nippur by Enlil,

Transcription

170 Lesson 15

5-6:

patron of the temple of Enlil,

7

the mighty king, S the king of Ur,

9:

the king of the four quarters.

10,12:

The name ofthis statue is:

1 1 :

"Amar-Sin is the beloved of Ur".

11 5-6:

May Nanna, the king of Ur,

7-8:

and Ningal, the mother of Ur,

9:

curse

13-2:

the man who changes the place of this statue

3:

and the man who tears down its pedestal,

10- 1 1 :

and may they put an end to his offspring!

Commentary

1 . The first nine lines of this inscription are the same as in Text

13,

except for the later form of the royal title in line

7.

9. me is the first person singular enclitic copula, "I am". In older Sumerian, it is usually written -me-en. The form of the second person singular is also -me-en. The third person singular is -am. Thus, the paradigm for the singular of the enclitic copula is:

first person singular

The distribution of -me - -me-en does not exactly correspond to a difference in time.

In older Sumerian, -me-en is the norm, but in Ur Ill, both -me and -me-en occur, with -me predominating. However, both also occur in later texts. It is not sure if this should be regarded as an orthographic or as a phonological problem; it is discussed further below.

The regular form of the enclitic copula for the third person singular is laml, written with the am-sign. After a vowel, the enclitic copula appears as Iml, as in line

10

of Text

1 5.

1 0. The next three lines give the actual name of the statue. The construction is an anticipatory genitive, with an enclitic copula: "of this statue, its name is ... ". Thus, the bi of mu-bi resumes alam: alam.bi.a(k) ... mu.bi.m.

1 1 . The actual name of the statue is: "Amar-Sin is the beloved of Ur". This is an equational sentence, and so one might have expected to find an enclitic copula. However, it is not uncommon to find simple equational sentences without a copula, and this name may be such an instance. It is also possible that the name is not a complete sentence, but rather is a noun phrase with an appositive: "Amar-Sin, the beloved of Ur"; this is discussed

Lesson 15 171

further below.

The next few lines are rather complicated. Lines I:

13

through

IT: 4

are all the comitative complement of the verb in

IT: 9.

This complement includes a relative marker iliD governing two relative clauses. The first is marked by the -� at the end of line IT:

2.

The second is marked by the -ft at the end of line IT:

4.

All of this is embedded inside an anticipatory genitive:

"of this statue, the man who changes its position and tears down its pedestal" )

"the man who changes the position of this statue and tears down its pedestal".

The anticipatory genitive in I:

13

is resumed by the -bi in

IT: 1

and

11: 3.

11 ^{- 1 . =} ki.gub.a, "standing place" or something similar. Presumably, gub-ba is a passive participle in .a.

2. Since the sense being conveyed is future, the verb is put into the maru. kur is a member of the affixation class, so forms its maru with the maru-suffix .e, hence kur.{;, written kur­

re.

The initial lil of the ib-sign represents the conjugation-prefix i.

There are two Ibis in this particular prefix chain; it is easier to look at the second Ibl first. Since this is a maru form of the verb, the Ibl in the slot immediately preceding the verbal root cross-references the direct object , kiguba.bi.0.

The da is the dimensional-prefix which cross-references a nominal phrase in the comitative case. The Ibl before the da is an element not yet seen. Before the dimensional­

prefixes .da (cross-referencing the comitative .da), .�i (cross-referencing the terminative .�e), and .ta (cross-referencing the ablative), it is possible for an "optional pronominal­

prefix" to appear. For the third person, these prefixes are: .n for the animate, and .b for the inanimate (forms for first and second person are discussed below). These prefixes help cross-reference the nominal phrases occuring in the sentence; they do not convey any new information. Here, the Ibl refers back to alam of line

10.

The use of these pronominal­

prefixes appears to be purely optional (at least, no-one has figured out any rules for their distribution); they did not appear in any of the previous texts used in this book, and only show up sporadically in the remaining texts. This is not apparently a problem in orthography. That is, unlike the personal-affixes appearing immediately before the root, one should not assume that these pronominal-prefixes were always present.

Thus, .bda represents the comitative dimensional-prefix, with an optional pronominal­

prefix.

An obvious problem here is that there is no comitative nominal phrase in the sentence for the dimensional-prefix to cross-reference. In fact, in this verbal prefix chain there oc­

curs both a dimensional-prefix (.bda) and a personal-affix (.b). However, there is only one noun phrase that these could cross-reference, ki-g!!h-ba-bi. Furthermore, this particular verb seems to normally be construed with a direct object. Therefore, the personal-affix .b cross-references the direct object, and the dimensional-prefix .bda does not refer back to any particular nominal phrase.

As was mentioned in Lesson

12,

there are numerous cases where a comitative dimensional-prefix appears in the verbal prefix chain, but with no corresponding comitative nominal phrase in the sentence. There is probably not just one single rule governing th(

172 Lesson 15

appearance or non-appearance of the comitative dimensional-prefix. More likely, there are several different factors at work, which have not yet been unraveled.

To summarize the verb form:

( 4)

personal-affix cross-referencing patient

(5)

verbal root

4. ⁼ L(b).bur.e.a. i is the conjugation-prefix. However, the verb has no dimen­

sional-prefix, nor (on the surface) does it have any personal-affix cross-referencing the apparent direct object, baragsiga.bi.0. Since the verb form is in the one might have expected to find /b/ immediately preceding the verbal root. There are at least two possible reasons for its apparent absence. Lines

3-4

are roughly parallel in form and content to lines

1-2.

It is possible that its use in the verb form in line

4

would have been felt as redundant;

that is, the parallelism in construction permitted deletion of the personal-affix .b. Some scholars have suggested that personal-affixes are only present (and therefore only written) in ambiguous contexts.

However, there may be an entirely different reason for its absence. Perhaps there was a phonetic reduction of /ibburea/ ) /iburea/. That is, the problem may be phonological, not morphological. As is often the case in Sumerian, it can be difficult to determine whether a problem is orthographic, phonological, or morphological in nature.

4. The assumed comitative case-marker .(d) at the end of this line marks lines I:

13

through

IT: 4

as the comitative complement of the verb nam ... kurS in line

11: 9.

The same use of the assumed comitative with this verb occurred in Text

12.

6-8. The two agents of the verb forms in lines

9

and

1 1

are both marked by the ergative case-marker .e.

9

. . nda is the comitative dimensional-prefix plus the optional pronominal-prefix .n. Here the animate form is used, because it refers back (essentially) to "the man who ... ".

All the verb forms seen up to this point have been singular. Here, there is a plural agent ("Nanna and Ningal"), and so the verb must be put into the plural (Sumerian has no dual). The plural third person of a maru verb is usually written with a suffixed -�-ne.

Sumerologists have different understandings about the morphology implied by this writing.

One analysis sees this writing as reflecting: e.ene.0. The .e is the .ene is the plural marker; and .0 is the personal-affix cross-referencing the agent. Another analysis is

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