Sumerian Addenda · Signs
mountain
| Name | KUR |
|---|---|
| Reads | [kur] |
| Means | mountain; foreign land |
| Taught in | 00 · Orientation |
Where it comes from
Three mountain peaks — a classic picture, kept through every rewriting of the script as three simple wedges. Sumer itself is river flatland; mountains stood on the horizon where the foreigners lived, so one picture came to mean mountain, highland, and foreign land at once. Doubled as kur-kur, it means “all the lands.”
How to remember it
A mountain range needs three peaks — count the wedges: one, two, three, a child’s drawing of a skyline. Where the flat land ends, the kur begins.
In the wild
urn:nabu:etcsl:2.1.7:210 ·
license: ETCSL · non-commercial.
Piece by piece:
- en zid — true lord
- a — seed, literally “water”
- kur gal-e — by the Great Mountain (Enlil’s own epithet), the -e marking the doer
- ri-a — poured out, the -a wrapping the verb into a description
Enlil himself is kur gal, the Great Mountain. The line is walked through fully in 102’s chapter 10.