Cuneiform 102 · Chapter 07

I am king

Chapter 06 closed with a promise: the little word that lets a king say “I am” — and the palace-sized vocabulary that follows it. Here is the surprise this chapter opens with: the little word is not new. You have owned both of its signs since 101 and since chapter 00 of this very course. What is new is only the vocabulary a king reaches for once he can say it.

Batch eight

Five times each, aloud as you write: ku₃, mah, kalam. That is the eighth batch of this course, and this one is not idle vocabulary — every sign in it goes to work before this chapter ends.

Grammar bite — the little word for “to be”

Sumerian builds “I am X” by gluing a short tag onto the end of X: -me-en. Attach it to lugal, “king,” and you get lugal-me-en, “I am (the) king.” Now look closely at what that tag is made of:

Me and en are both veterans doing new work, not new entries — you met me as “rites, divine powers” and en as “lord, high priest,” and neither of those meanings has gone anywhere. Fused together as a suffix, the same two signs spell the copulaa word or word-part meaning "to be," linking a subject to what it is — Sumerian attaches it to the word itself: lugal-me-en, "I am king": not a noun and a title standing side by side, but the verb “to be” itself, riding on the end of whatever it names. This is exactly how it appears in a real hymn’s opening line:

A librarian, thousands of years ago, filed a whole hymn under its first three signs — because the hymn itself opens with the king announcing exactly what those signs say. Many Sumerian royal hymns work this way: the king does not get introduced in the third person; he speaks, and the first thing out of his mouth is lugal-me-en.

One more thing, worth a single sentence and no table: Sumerian also has a third-person copulaa word or word-part meaning "to be," linking a subject to what it is — Sumerian attaches it to the word itself: lugal-me-en, "I am king", “it is” or “he/she/it is,” which shows up as -am₃ — commonly written with two more old friends of yours, 𒀀A · [a] · water and 𒀭AN · [an], diŋir · heaven; god. A real line at the end of this chapter puts it to work, as soon as its other pieces are yours.

Vocabulary that leans on it

Now the batch goes to work. Nam-mah, “majesty,” is chapter 03’s abstraction-maker in front of this chapter’s new majesty word — the same production line that turned lugal into nam-lugal, “kingship”:

And ku₃ alone, in a phrase that shows why “pure” and “silver” are, in practice, one word:

A temple is not just a house; it is the pure house — the same word that, applied to metal, means silver. One sign, one idea, carried into two different rooms.

The genitive’s hidden consonant, caught in the open

Chapter 02 taught you the genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash" -ak and warned you it likes to hide: e₂ lugal-ak, “the king’s house,” routinely surfaces on clay as e₂ lugal-a, its final /k/ swallowed. That chapter promised the /k/ comes back the moment a vowel gives it somewhere to land. Here is that promise, kept, in kalam, this chapter’s own new sign:

Read the chain slowly: kalam (“the Land”), then -ma- — the word’s own final /m/ written again as glue, the same job chapter 05’s -la- did for til — carrying the genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash"’s vowel, and then the genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash"’s /k/ stepping fully into view in -ka because, this time, a vowel follows for it to stand on. And that vowel is no filler: it is the locativethe grammatical case meaning "in, on, at" — Sumerian marks it with -a -a from chapter 01’s tag list — the line says “in (the house) of the Land,” and the house the poem has just named is the e₂-dub-ba-a itself, the tablet house, which chapter 16 will walk into through this very passage. Genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash" /k/, held up by a locativethe grammatical case meaning "in, on, at" — Sumerian marks it with -a — this is the exact mechanism chapter 02 described in the abstract, now sitting in front of you written out: the tag was never gone, only shy.

Here the same kalam-ma sits at the end of the line, /k/ hidden again, exactly as chapter 02 predicted it would — one phrase catching the consonant out in the open, another catching it hiding, and now you can tell the difference on sight.

One more thing rode into that line and deserves to be named: the -zu on nin-zu is chapter 03’s knowing-sign 𒍪ZU · [zu] · to know; the -zu of "your" in a second job — as a suffix it means “your.” You already own its partner: the -ni, “his/her,” inside chapter 05’s nam-ti-la-ni-še₃. -zu is the “your” of that same family, and the register this chapter opened leans on it constantly — praise is always spoken to someone. A veteran sign, a new reading; the verb “to know” has not gone anywhere. In fact it is working both jobs in that one line: a-zu, the healer, is — by the traditional reading — “the one who knows the waters”: 𒀀A · [a] · water, 101’s very first sign, plus the knowing 𒍪ZU · [zu] · to know; the -zu of "your". Suffix “your” on the lady, verb “know” inside the healer’s title, three signs apart.

And now that -zu is yours, the third-person copulaa word or word-part meaning "to be," linking a subject to what it is — Sumerian attaches it to the word itself: lugal-me-en, "I am king" from this chapter’s grammar bite can stop being an abstraction. Here it is on a real line, wearing this chapter’s own vocabulary:

Lugal-me-en said “I am”; e₂-zu mah-am₃ says “it is.” Between them, the copulaa word or word-part meaning "to be," linking a subject to what it is — Sumerian attaches it to the word itself: lugal-me-en, "I am king"’s two faces — and every sign in both is yours.

Drill before you go on

1. Write 𒆬KU₃ · [ku] · pure, holy; precious metal, 𒈤MAH · [mah] · great, exalted, 𒌧KALAM · [kalam] · the Land — Sumer as its own texts name it from memory; say ku₃, mah, kalam.
2. Write lugal-me-en from memory, sign by sign, and say what each of its three signs meant before it joined this phrase.
3. Build nam-mah and e₂ ku₃ in signs, and give both meanings each carries.
4. Read kalam-ma-ka aloud and explain, in one sentence, why its /k/ is written out while the /k/ in e₂ lugal-ak usually is not.
5. Write e₂-zu mah-am₃ from memory, name which two old friends spell the -am₃ — and say in one sentence how it differs from -me-en.

Next: the verbal chain taken apart — the prefixes ba-, i₃-, and in-, and how Sumerian says no.