Akkadian Addenda · Signs
eye
| Name | IGI |
|---|---|
| Reads | [ši/lim] |
| Means | veteran — IGI gains [ši/lim]: šīmātum's opener, awīlim's close |
| Taught in | 03 · Lord of heaven and earth |
| In Sumerian | the same sign's Sumerian page |
Where it comes from
The eye-sign of 102 — igi, “eye, face, before,” the witness formula’s workhorse. Its Sumerian readings included ši, and that is the piece Akkadian kept: a bare, busy syllable spent on any word that needs it, no eyes involved. Thirty-second most frequent value in the Old Babylonian corpus — the veteran works harder abroad than it ever did at home.
How to remember it
The eye goes abstract: what was watching is now just whispering ši. When destinies are decreed on the stele — šīmātum — the old eye opens the word without seeing a thing.
And from chapter 10 the same sign carries a second syllable: lim, the closer of awīlim, “of a man” — every time the laws put a man in the genitive (a-wi-lim), the old eye seals the word. One sign, two workaday sounds, no eyes in either.
In the wild
urn:nabu:cdli:p464358:a:7 · license: attribution.
Akkadian readings taught in 103’s chapter 03 (ši) and chapter 10 (lim).