Sumerian Addenda · Signs

spirit

Name	KID
Reads	[kid/ke], lil₂
Means	air, spirit (lil₂) — the LIL of Enlil
Taught in	01 · Clay and reed

Where it comes from

Commonly connected with a reed mat — plaited rows are still suggested by the wedges, though the late form is worn smooth. As kid it stays a mat; as lil₂ it is air, wind, spirit — the LIL of {d}en-lil₂, Enlil, “Lord Wind” himself. And in the grammar it serves as ke₄, the little tag that stacks a genitive and a doer into one syllable.

How to remember it

A woven mat is mostly spirit: air held in a lattice of reeds. Wind you cannot draw — but you can draw the thing it passes through. One humble mat, and it writes the name of the king of the gods.

In the wild

𒈨 𒀭 𒈾 𒆤išib an-na-ke₄"purification priest of An"

Votive inscription, Uruk, late third millennium BCE. CDLI P216758 via Nabu, urn:nabu:cdli:p216758 · license: attribution.

Piece by piece:

išib — purification priest
an-na — of An, the sky-god
-ke₄ — this sign, stacking the genitive’s hidden /k/ with the doer’s -e

The mat-sign, doing pure grammar at the end of a priest’s title. The stack is unpacked in 102’s chapter 11; the reed mat itself first appears in 101’s chapter 01.