Cuneiform 103 · Chapter 08

More than one: the plural

Chapter 02 taught the noun in the singular and said so out loud; the hedge comes due today. The stele rarely speaks of one verdict or one person — it speaks of the verdicts of justice and the people, and this chapter gives you their endings.

Batch nine

The endings, doubled

An Old Babylonian noun in the plural drops the mimation and wears one of these:

Three honest notes. First: in the plural the genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash" and the accusativethe case of the direct object — the noun the action lands on; Old Babylonian marks it with -am: awīlam, "(he accused) a man" give up their quarrel — one ending, -ī or -ātim, covers both, which is why the table says “everything else.” Second: some masculine nouns take the feminine-looking plural — dīnum, “verdict,” becomes dīnātum, “verdicts”; the dictionary decides, not the logic. Third: chapter 07’s nišī, “of the people,” now has a home — a plural-only noun, standing in the second row.

The verdicts of justice

The epilogue names the whole monument in one plural construct chain. Read it from the stone:

Take it apart, item by item:

• dīnāt — “verdicts-of”: a PLURAL in the construct statethe stripped-down form a noun takes to bind with the noun after it — bēl šamê, "lord-of-heaven" — losing its ending to gain an "of". Chapter 03’s rule holds exactly: the ending (-ātum) is stripped for binding, and what remains reaches for the next noun.
• mīšarim — “of justice,” genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash" singular, closing the chain — and opening on this chapter’s night-sign as pure [mi].
• ša — the hinge: chapter 00’s “which,” turning the whole clause that follows into a description of the verdicts.
• Ḫammurapi — the royal name you have spelled since chapter 02, behind its {diš} name-marker.
• šarrum lē’ûm — “the able king”: noun and adjective agreeing in the nominativethe case of the subject — the noun the sentence is about; Old Babylonian marks it with -um: šarrum, "the king (does something)", standing in apposition to the name.
• ukinnūma — “established, and”: the verb that made the verdicts stand. It is one of the “thickened” shapes chapter 05 promised to name — chapter 09 keeps that promise.

Reassembled, literally: “the verdicts of justice which Ḫammurapi, the able king, established.” You have just read the monument’s own name for itself — the phrase scholarship abbreviates as “the Code” is, on the stone, a plural.

The king counts his words

Two lines later the epilogue turns boast, and the boast runs on feminine plurals:

Item by item:

• awâtūya — “my words”: awâtum, the feminine plural of the word for “word,” wearing -ya, “my” — the same possessive family as chapter 01’s -šu, “his.”
• nasqā — “are choice”: an adjective doing a verb’s job with no verb in sight — the grammars call this the stativean adjective or noun conjugated like a tiny verb, stating a condition with no verb in sight — nasqā, "(my words) are choice", and the -ā is its feminine-plural voice, agreeing with the words it praises. This chapter’s curse-sign carries the as, mid-word and innocent.
• epšētūya — “my deeds,” the same build again: feminine plural, -ya. The corner-sign opens it as ep.
• šāninam — “a rival,” accusativethe case of the direct object — the noun the action lands on; Old Babylonian marks it with -am: awīlam, "(he accused) a man", waiting for its verb… which sits in the NEXT line of the stele, and which you cannot read for one more sign. The boast completes six chapters on, where the king finally says who he is.

Drill before you go on

1. Write 𒈪MI · [mi] · night, black, 𒀾AŠ₂ · [as] · a curse in the lists, 𒅁IB · [ib/eb/ep] · a corner in the lists from memory; say mi, as, ib.
2. Decline aloud: one king, kings (subject), of the kings. Then: one destiny, destinies, of the destinies.
3. dīnāt mīšarim — why does the first word carry no case ending at all? Which chapter’s rule is at work?
4. Spell mi-ša-ri-im in signs, from memory.

Next: the four shapes every verb can wear — and the course’s polite deferrals paid in full.