Cuneiform 103 · Chapter 10

The River decides

Law 1 dealt with a murder charge that could not be proven; the court’s answer was to kill the accuser. Law 2 asks a harder question — what if the charge is sorcery, where no witness can exist? — and hands the case to a judge no one can bribe.

Batch eleven

A god you can wade into

The stele writes the River as 𒀭AN · [an], diŋir · heaven; god𒀀A · [a] · water𒇉ENGUR · [id] · the sweet waters under the earth; with A before it one word — written ID₂, spoken Id: the River — the divine determinativea silent sign at the end (in cuneiform, often the front) of a word that classifies it — person, god, place, motion — never pronounced, then water, then the deep — and the last two signs are read as ONE word: Id, the River’s name. Neither sign is sounded on its own; water-plus-deep IS the name, a picture of a river speaking as a river.

So the one writing wears three labels, and they never compete — hold the chain once and every line below reads itself:

• ENGUR is the deep-sign’s NAME on the shelf — its identity, never spoken in this course;
• ID₂ is how the sign lists FILE the pair 𒀀A · [a] · water𒇉ENGUR · [id] · the sweet waters under the earth; with A before it one word — written ID₂, spoken Id: the River — a word-sign in capitals with its little index, the same habit as E₂;¹
• Id is what your mouth says: the god’s name, declined like any noun — and the voice is what a reading line prints, in chapter 03’s green capitals: ID, on green-marked signs.

Name, spelling, voice — in that order, every time the River flows through a line. This is the ordeal: the accused walks into the god and the god gives a verdict no appeal can touch. Every sign of the phrase is now yours, and so is the whole law.

Law 2, first half: the charge unproven

The new machinery, item by item:

• kišpī / kišpū — “sorcery”: a noun that only exists in the plural, like chapter 08’s nišū — first as object (-ī), then as subject (-ū) of…
• nadû — “(is) laid”: the stativean adjective or noun conjugated like a tiny verb, stating a condition with no verb in sight — nasqā, "(my words) are choice" again (chapter 08), now masculine plural — charges lie on a man the way a burden does.
• Id — the divine River: on the page {d}ID₂, the determinativea silent sign at the end (in cuneiform, often the front) of a word that classifies it — person, god, place, motion — never pronounced and then 𒀀A · [a] · water𒇉ENGUR · [id] · the sweet waters under the earth; with A before it one word — written ID₂, spoken Id: the River, water-plus-deep spoken as one name — and declined like any noun. The law walks a man into a god.
• išalliamma — “he shall plunge, and”: the durativethe Akkadian verb shape for what happens or shall happen — inaddin, "he shall pay": the laws pronounce every sentence in it of plunging, with the hither -am you met on šūbilam in chapter 09 — the motion aimed at the river, then -ma chaining the verdict.
• iktašassu — “it has overwhelmed him”: the overwhelming-verb with the -t- infix chapter 09 named — here it marks the deed as done and decisive; the grammars call this shape the perfectthe Akkadian verb shape for what HAS happened — a -ta- slipped in after the first root consonant: iptaras "he has decided", uḫtappid "he has blinded"; the laws use it for the newest deed in a chain. The final -šu, “him,” melts against the verb into -ssu.
• bīssu itabbal — “he shall carry off his estate”: E₂, the house-sign from 101, as a sumerograma Sumerian word-sign kept inside Akkadian text as learned shorthand — written LUGAL, read aloud as Akkadian šarrum, "king" wearing an Akkadian suffix — bītum + -šu → bīssu, the same melting as above.

Law 2, second half: the mirror

Now the stele turns the coin over. One sign in this half is not yet yours — the box marks it, and it falls four chapters on:

The mirror’s own pieces:

• šuāti — “that (man)”: the pointing word, riding after its noun in the accusativethe case of the direct object — the noun the action lands on; Old Babylonian marks it with -am: awīlam, "(he accused) a man".
• ūtebbibaššuma — “has cleared him”: the purifying-verb, doubled-middle build with the -t- infix — a chapter 09 D at full formality. Its second sign is the one remaining box.
• ištalmam — “he has come out safe”: šalāmum, “to be whole,” in the perfectthe Akkadian verb shape for what HAS happened — a -ta- slipped in after the first root consonant: iptaras "he has decided", uḫtappid "he has blinded"; the laws use it for the newest deed in a chain — the same root the whole Near East still greets with.
• bīt mubbirīšu — “the estate of his accuser”: the construct chain of chapter 03, built on the doer-noun of chapter 06.

Read the whole law once more, aloud, both halves. A man walks into a god carrying an unprovable accusation, and walks out — one way or the other — with the case closed. Four thousand years on, the law still knows this problem; it has simply run out of rivers.

Drill before you go on

1. Write 𒇉ENGUR · [id] · the sweet waters under the earth; with A before it one word — written ID₂, spoken Id: the River, 𒁍BU · [bu/pu] · [bu]; to tear away in the lists, 𒅅IG · [ig/ik/iq] · the door from memory; say bu and ig — and for the deep-sign say nothing alone: put water before it and say Id.
2. Spell the River — determinativea silent sign at the end (in cuneiform, often the front) of a word that classifies it — person, god, place, motion — never pronounced, water, deep — and say its Akkadian name.
3. iktašassu and ištalmam share a shape. What does the -ta- say that a plain preteritethe Akkadian verb shape for a done deed — iddi, "he charged": simple past, one word, subject included would not?
4. Who takes whose estate, in which verdict? Answer from the endings, not from memory.

Next: the lines everyone quotes — an eye for an eye, read from the original.