Sumerian Addenda · Signs

abundance

Name	LA
Reads	[la]
Means	[la]; abundance
Taught in	05 · A dedication, whole

Where it comes from

As a word, abundance; as a working syllable, the spelling glue of the corpus — la smooths joins inside words and formulas: nam-ti-la-ni-še₃, “for his life”; lu₂-kal-la, “the precious one.” Plenty of everything, including work.

How to remember it

Abundance overflows: nine wedges heaped like grain over the rim. And like plenty itself, the sign turns up everywhere — wherever two syllables need a generous join, la fills the gap.

In the wild

𒇽 𒆗 𒆷lu₂-kal-la"the precious one" — an Ur III official's name, from his own cylinder seal

Ur III seal. CDLI P100014 via Nabu, urn:nabu:cdli:p100014:seal.1:1 · license: attribution. Name translations are approximate by nature.

Piece by piece:

lu₂ — man
kal — precious
-la — this sign, rounding the name off

A treasurer’s name, sealed in stone, with abundance doing the finishing. The seal is read in 102’s chapter 15.