Sumerian Addenda · Signs
lord
| Name | EN |
|---|---|
| Reads | [en] |
| Means | lord; high priest |
| Taught in | 10 · One script, many tongues |
Where it comes from
The late form gives no picture to hold, but the earliest forms have a story: museum sign-charts (the Louvre’s among them) read the archaic shape as a throne, rotated and simplified over the centuries like everything else in the script — a fitting seat for the word. The word carries the weight either way: en is “lord,” and in the oldest cities also the high priest, the one who stood for the city before its god. It ranks among the most frequent signs of the literary corpus, because hymns are always addressing someone above.
How to remember it
The lord holds the middle of the sign like a seat — a frame with the bar of authority across it. Where prayers and epics need a superior — god, king, master — this sign opens the address.
In the wild
urn:nabu:etcsl:1.2.1:143 · license: ETCSL ·
non-commercial.
Piece by piece:
- en — lord
- za-e-me-en — you are: za-e “you” wearing the copula
- lugal za-e-me-en — the same claim, doubled up to king
Praise says it twice — Sumerian’s oldest intensifier. The line is read in 102’s chapter 13.