Cuneiform 102 · Chapter 08

The chain grows rings

Chapter 04 showed you the verbal chain’s silhouette and asked you only to spot its prefixes marching by, not to parse them. Chapter 05 left a promise: a later chapter would come back and take that silhouette apart, piece by piece. This is that chapter. Three new signs, and the chain finally gets named.

Batch nine

Five times each, aloud as you write: ba, in, nu.

Grammar bite — the chain, ring by ring

A finite Sumerian verb chain — one that actually reports “he did” rather than sitting as a bare stem — opens with a short run of prefixes before the stem itself ever arrives. The full system is deep water: person, direction, aspect, a dozen distinctions the standard grammars need whole chapters for — chapter 01’s footnote already names the one this track leans on. This course will not chase it that far. Three prefixes, named and put to work, are enough for a real grip on real lines.

i₃-. Spelled with 𒉌NI · [ni], i₃ · [ni]; oil, butter as i₃ — the same NI you met in 101’s chapter 11 as the syllable ni and, wearing its other value, i₃, “oil” (chapter 04’s delivery line used exactly that reading). Here it takes on a third job, its most common one of all: opening a finite verb chain, no lexical meaning of its own. A veteran sign, doing new work again.

ba-. Spelled with this chapter’s new 𒁀BA · [ba] · to allot; the verbal prefix ba-, and already a familiar shape from the receipts: as a whole word it means “allotted.” As a prefix it keeps that flavor — it colors the verb toward “away, for itself” — without always translating as a separate word of its own.

in-. Spelled with this chapter’s new 𒅔IN · [in] · [in]; the verbal prefix in- — the plainest prefix of the three: the ordinary opener of a transitivea verb whose action lands on something — someone builds SOMETHING, eats SOMETHING; a verb that just happens (going, sitting) is intransitive “he/she/it did,” with no extra color to explain.

Put one to work with a stem you already own. Chapter 06 taught you 𒋗ŠU · [šu] · hand šu, “hand”; chapter 04 taught you 𒋾TI · [ti] · arrow; by rebus, life — the textbook rebus pair ti, “arrow — by rebusborrowing a picture for its sound instead of its meaning — drawing a sun to write "son", life,” which also carries the plain meaning “to approach, to reach.” Hand-plus-approach is how Sumerian says receive — a hand that reaches an object is a hand that has gotten it:

nu-, the negation, sits first of all. Whatever else opens a Sumerian verb chain, nu- — this chapter’s new 𒉡NU · [nu] · not — the negation, three wedges — steps in front of it, so it is always the first thing your eye meets. It needs no further grammar: it just flips the sentence under it, the way “not” flips an English one.

That is the chain, ring by ring, as far as this course takes it: negation outermost, a finite prefix next, the stem last — with, sometimes, suffixes trailing after the stem, which chapter 04 already warned you existed and which the readings below will let you glimpse, though this course leaves them for another day.

Reading: the receipts’ most important sentence

Word by word, in chapter 01’s order:

• lu₂ — the man: the one doing the receiving, named first.
• šu — hand. Sumerian has no single word for “receive”; it says hand + reach, and this is the hand — the receiver’s own — that the sentence brings on stage to do it.
• ba-ti — the chain, last as always. Ba- colors the action toward the taker’s own benefit — the goods move away from the giver, into this man’s keeping — and ti, “to reach,” is the stem. His hand reached it, for himself: he received it.

Three words, one idiom, and the entire receipts genre stands on it. On tablet after tablet, whoever’s name stands where lu₂ stands is the one who signed for the goods.

Reading: an allotment, prefixed

This verb does not float alone — on its tablet it closes a complete sentence. The three lines before it (most of their signs still ahead of you) say: a field of one eše — the giver’s name — the receiver’s name, that last one wearing chapter 02’s dativethe grammatical case meaning "to, for (someone)" — Sumerian marks it with -ra -ra, “to, for.” Then comes this chain, one ring at a time:

• i₃- — the opener, the very prefix this chapter just taught: the sentence is a plain report, “he did.”
• -na- — “to him”: the chain points back at the receiver. Notice the doubling of roles — his name already wore -ra two lines up, and now the verb says “to him” again, inside itself. Sumerian likes to name the receiver twice; that habit is chapter 12’s whole lesson, met here in the wild first.
• ba — the stem, “to allot.” Yes: the same three wedges that are a prefix elsewhere in this chapter. Position decides everything. In front of a chain, 𒁀BA · [ba] · to allot; the verbal prefix ba- colors someone else’s verb; standing last, it is the verb — and a man just got a field.

Reading: a name, negated — cautiously

Reading: hero known, hero unknown

Real literary Sumerian, not an administrative line, and nu- flipping a verb you already own — 𒍪ZU · [zu] · to know; the -zu of "your" zu, “to know,” chapter 03’s sign:

Reading: the place where the lion ate a man

One more line, complete, real, and genuinely funny — a preview of the genre the next chapter opens: a proverb about a lion that ate someone, with every ring of this chapter’s chain visible at once.

Ring by ring, left to right:

• ki — “place,” on its own, from 101.
• ur-mah-e — “lion” (dog + mah, chapter 07’s sign for “great, exalted,” doing an adjective’s job here, not a noun’s) plus the e you have known since chapter 01: the doer of a transitivea verb whose action lands on something — someone builds SOMETHING, eats SOMETHING; a verb that just happens (going, sitting) is intransitive verb marked, exactly as that chapter taught — the lion is the one acting.
• lu₂ — “person, man,” from 101: the one the action lands on.
• in-gu₇-a — this chapter’s in- opening the chain, then 𒅥KA×GAR · [gu] · to eat gu₇, “to eat” (101’s mouth-with-bread compound), as the stem — and, trailing after the stem, one more -a. Be careful with it: this is not chapter 01’s locativethe grammatical case meaning "in, on, at" — Sumerian marks it with -a — that -a rides nouns and means “in.” This one rides a finished verb, and it folds the whole sentence into a description: “the lion ate a man” collapses into a label hung on ki — “the place where the lion ate a man.” Chapter 14 opens this describer ring properly; for now, just see where it sits — after the stem, exactly where chapter 04 said trailing suffixes would.

Read straight through: place, lion-as-doer, man, ate-there. A complete sentence, a real proverb, and not one sign in it wearing a box.

Drill before you go on

1. Write 𒁀BA · [ba] · to allot; the verbal prefix ba-, 𒅔IN · [in] · [in]; the verbal prefix in-, 𒉡NU · [nu] · not — the negation from memory; say ba, in, nu.
2. Read all five readings above cold, covering translit and gloss.
3. Say aloud, in order, the three rings of a Sumerian verb chain as this chapter named them — what comes first, what comes last, and which ring this chapter left, honestly, unopened.
4. Take in-gu₇-a apart on paper: which piece is the prefix, which the stem, which the trailing suffix — and which noun outside the verb (in either reading above) shows you what the action landed on.
5. Negate a verb of your own choosing from an earlier chapter’s reading by adding nu- in front, in transliterationthe sign-by-sign rendering of ancient writing in modern letters, so every sign stays accountable only, and say what it now means.

Next: proverbs — the oldest jokes on earth, and the first whole literary lines you will read start to finish.