Cuneiform 103 · Chapter 14

Warm-up · 6 quick retrievals from earlier chapters

𒌌 [ul] — what does it mean?
never · UL · the flat no of statements ↩
verdict — draw it, then check
𒁲 [ṭi] · DI · veteran — DI gains [ṭi]: liṭīb, "may it be sweet" ↩
𒉈 — read it
[bi] — brazier · NE · veteran — NE gains [bi]: qibīma, "speak!" — the letter-opener's middle ↩
𒊑 [re] — what does it mean?
distant · RI · veteran — RI gains [re]: ašarēd, "foremost" — the e-colored ri ↩
the deep — draw it, then check
𒇉 [id] · ENGUR · the sweet waters under the earth (engur); with A before it one word — written ID₂, spoken Id: the River ↩
𒉿 — read it
[wa/wi] — ear · PI · ear; the w Sumerian never wrote ↩

Where you stand

One box has stood since chapter 10. This chapter removes it, reads the ordeal’s mirror clean, and then counts — honestly — what fifteen chapters of Akkadian have put in your hands.

Batch fifteen

Sign	Name	Key	Reads	Means	Notes
𒋼	TE	approach	[te]	to approach in the lists	the box's seat: it completes ūtebbibaššuma, "has cleared him"

The last box falls, again

Read the acquittal the way the stele wrote it — no boxes, nothing withheld:

𒋳 𒈠 𒀀 𒉿 𒇴 𒋗 𒀀 𒋾šum-ma a-wi-lam šu-a-tišumma awīlam šuāti — "If that man…"

𒀭𒀀 𒇉{d}IDId — "…the River…"

𒌑 𒋼 𒅁 𒁉 𒁀 𒀸 𒋗 𒈠u-te-eb-bi-ba-aš-šu-maūtebbibaššuma — "…has cleared, and —" whole, one year of your work wide

𒅖 𒋫 𒀠 𒈠 𒄠iš-ta-al-ma-amištalmam — "he has come out safe:"

𒀉 𒁕 𒀝id-da-akiddâk — "(the false accuser) shall be killed" — the verdict read in chapter 10, standing law

Codex Hammurapi (composite text), law 2 (re-read; the full mirror in chapter 10). urn:nabu:cdli:p464358:a:324–:a:327, :a:330 · license: attribution.

The count

Measured against this site’s own count of the Old Babylonian corpus: the seventeen new signs and four veteran readings of these chapters, on top of everything before them, put roughly three quarters of all syllable-occurrences in the documents of Hammurabi’s age within your reach. More useful than the number is the kind of thing you can now do:

read a law cold: šumma-condition, -ma chains, verdict in the durative — you have read four in the original, including the two everyone quotes;
read a letter’s frame and orders: qibīma, umma …-ma, the imperative and the hither -am;
parse a verb to its stem — G, D, Š, N — and tell a done deed from a standing rule from a wish;
decline a noun through both numbers, both genders, three cases — and read a construct chain of any length;
and say, of any of it, exactly which sign carries which sound, because every reading you have met was resolved sign by sign.

What waits

The stele has 280 more laws, and Babylon kept writing after it: contracts, omens, mathematics, and the long literary tradition of Standard Babylonian — Gilgameš stands in that line. Those are later chapters’ promises. The Akkadian Addenda holds every sign’s Akkadian story, and the drills of the Sumerian shelf keep your veterans sharp.

Drill before you go on

Write 𒋼 from memory; say te.
Recite law 196 entire, in signs, out loud. You know it.
Open a letter to Ḫammurapi: frame it, bless him for 3600 years, and tell him — politely, in the durative — what his laws still owe the weak.
anāku — say who YOU are, in the pattern of the epilogue: two titles and the pronoun.

The course pauses here to be measured; the laws keep going.