Sumerian Addenda · Signs

𒂊E · [e] · [e]; as a word, levee/ditch

levee

Where it comes from

As a word it is a levee or ditch — the earthwork lines of an irrigated country. Its rank comes from grammar: the bare vowel e marks the agent in context and sits inside everyday words like za-e, “you” — enough duty to make it the third-commonest sign of the literary corpus.

How to remember it

A levee is a long bank with cross-cuts — and the sign is exactly that: a row of wedges banked against a line. Not to be mistaken for its towering cousin É, the house: the levee lies low, the house stands tall.

In the wild

Piece by piece:

• za-e — you: this sign closing the pronoun
• -me-en — are: the copulaa word or word-part meaning "to be," linking a subject to what it is — Sumerian attaches it to the word itself: lugal-me-en, "I am king"
• en / lugal — lord, king: the two claims

Inside “you,” inside the agent’s tag, inside half the corpus — the levee-sign is everywhere water is. The line is read in 102’s chapter 13.

Easily confused