Cuneiform 102 · Chapter 13

You are

Chapter 07 taught a king to say “I am.” This chapter teaches the other half of every hymn and every argument — you are — and then pays off a case the course has been quietly reading past since chapter 10. A light batch of two, both put to work at once.

Batch fourteen

Grammar bite — the second person

Me-en, chapter 07 said, means “I am.” The honest fuller truth: -me-en serves the first and second person — context decides, and when Sumerian wants no doubt, it puts the free pronoun in front. Za-e is “you.” Za-e-me-en: “YOU are.” Watch a myth use it at full ceremonial volume:

And the same machinery pointed the other way — as a challenge. In Inana’s descent to the netherworld, the goddess arrives at gates where questions are asked:

Four signs to hail a king; five to stop a goddess at a door. The same little 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" carries both.

The case that was hiding in plain sight

One case tag has been on quiet duty since chapter 01’s list first named it: the locativethe grammatical case meaning "in, on, at" — Sumerian marks it with -a -a, “in, on, at” — one bare vowel, easy to read past. Chapter 10’s ud re-a, “in that distant day,” wore it; its everyday twin is everywhere:

With the locativethe grammatical case meaning "in, on, at" — Sumerian marks it with -a named, every case this course has taught is on the table — literally. Here is the whole system, one line each, every example already yours:

Seven cases, seven tags, no memorization drills sprung on you — each one arrived when a reading (or, for the rarer comitativethe grammatical case meaning "together with" — Sumerian marks it with -da, a composed example) needed it, which is why the table reads like a scrapbook instead of a syllabus.

The month of the festival

The month-sign earns its keep on the dated receipts. Ur III bookkeepers closed their tablets with the month, and one month is named for the Akiti, the great new-year festival of Ur:

A date line is a case lesson in miniature: the bare month names when; add -ta and the clerk is counting since. Four thousand years later, accountants still bill exactly this way.

Drill before you go on

1. Write 𒌗ITI · [iti] · month — the day-sign with thirty tucked inside and 𒍝ZA · [za] · bead, precious stone; [za] — za-e, "you" from memory; say iti, za.
2. Say “you are king” in transliterationthe sign-by-sign rendering of ancient writing in modern letters, so every sign stays accountable, then write it in signs — every sign is old except one.
3. Recite the seven cases with their tags, using only the examples you have actually read.
4. What is 𒌗ITI · [iti] · month — the day-sign with thirty tucked inside made of, and why is that good design? One sentence.

Next: proverbs by the row — your first run of connected lines, and the sign that answers back.