Edubba A school of writing systems

Cuneiform 103 · Chapter 02

Warm-up · 6 quick retrievals from earlier chapters
  1. 𒅕 [ir/er] — what does it mean?

    scent · IR · scent, perfume in the lists ↩

  2. juniper — draw it, then check

    𒇷 [li/le] · LI · [li/le]; a juniper in the lists ↩

  3. 𒊭 — read it

    [ša] — which · ŠA · the particle ša — "which, of"; the school's hinge-word ↩

  4. 𒅇 [u] — what does it mean?

    and · U3 · the conjunction u — "and" ↩

  5. write — draw it, then check

    𒊬 [sar] · SAR · to write; garden plot in origin ↩

  6. 𒂼 — read it

    [ama] — mother · AMA · mother ↩

The noun wears its case

Sumerian marked a noun’s role with little tags at the end of the whole phrase — you spent half of 102 learning to spot them. An Akkadian noun does something your Sumerian eyes will find almost familiar and your ears completely new: it inflects. The word itself changes its ending for its role in the sentence, the way Latin or Russian nouns do. Three endings run the show, and this chapter teaches you to see all three.

Batch three — and a veteran

SignNameKeyReadsMeansNotes
𒄠AMwild bull[am] wild bull "mountain" in a bull — the accusative's ending
𒁴DIMpost[tim] post, pillar the genitive's favorite: mātim ends on it
𒍢ZE2bile[ṣi/ṣe] bile, gall your first emphatic: ṣ
𒁉BIits[pi] — veteran — 102's BI, now Akkadian [pi]

The three endings

An Old Babylonian noun in the singular wears one of three endings (the plural has its own table, in chapter 08):1

RoleEndingSounds likeYou will read it in
subject (nominative)-um𒌝šarrum, "the king" — chapter 00's very first spelling
object (accusative)-am𒄠rubâm, "the prince" — below
after "of" / a preposition (genitive)-im𒅎mātim, "of the land" — below

All three end in the same closing hum: -m. The grammars call it mimation, and it is the single most Old Babylonian thing about Old Babylonian — later stages of the language quietly dropped it. When you hear a text close its nouns with -um, -am, -im, you are hearing Hammurabi’s century.

𒊒𒁀𒄠ru-ba-amrubâm, "the prince" (object) — RU and BA on veteran duty, AM from this page closing the accusative
𒍢𒊏𒄠ṣi-ra-amṣīram, "exalted" (object) — the stele says the gods named Babylon's kingship exalted, and the adjective agrees with its noun: -am matching -am
𒄿𒈾 𒈠𒁴i-na ma-timina mātim, "in the land" — after the preposition, the genitive: -im, spelled with chapter 00's other workhorse and this page's DIM
Codex Hammurapi (composite text), prologue. urn:nabu:cdli:p464358:a:29, :a:17, :a:33 · license: attribution.

The name on the stone

Now the payoff. The stele’s prologue introduces its king with a personal-name determinative — 101’s tally-stroke 𒁹, which in Akkadian documents stands silently before a person’s name the way 𒀭 stands before a god’s. Read what follows it, sign by sign, out loud:

𒁹𒄩𒄠𒈬𒊏𒁉{diš}ḫa-am-mu-ra-piḪammurapi — HA and MU and RA from your Sumerian years, AM from this page, and the veteran BI wearing its new voice [pi] at the end. You have just read the name of the king of Babylon in his own spelling.
Codex Hammurapi (composite text), prologue. urn:nabu:cdli:p464358:a:28 · license: attribution.
𒄩 𒄠 𒈬 𒊏 𒁉
ḫa — am — mu — ra — pi: five syllables, four of them from signs you brought with you. The most famous name in Mesopotamian history is mostly review.

Drill before you go on

  1. Write 𒄠, 𒁴, 𒍢 from memory; say am, tim, ṣi.
  2. Recite the three case endings with their jobs. What do all three share?
  3. Spell the king’s name in signs, determinative included, without looking.
  4. ina mātim — why does the noun end in -im here and not -um? One sentence.

Next: two nouns bound into one phrase — the lord OF heaven — and the stele’s own titles for its gods.

  1. Case and mimation as in Huehnergard §§2.2–2.3; the dual and the plural wait for later chapters, where the texts demand them. ↩