Sumerian Addenda · Signs
heart
| Name | ŠA3 |
|---|---|
| Reads | [ša] (fuller form šag4) |
| Means | heart, midst, mood |
| Taught in | 09 · Let me eat, let me drink |
Where it comes from
Ša3 is the heart — and the midst: where feelings, thoughts, and the middle of anything live. Put water’s sign before it and you get a-ša3, “field” — the plot at the heart of the water. Literary spelling often shows the fuller shape šag4.
How to remember it
The heart sits in the middle of everything, and so does this sign’s meaning: the inside of a person, a city, a month. When a text goes inward — moods, wombs, interiors — the heart-sign is already there.
In the wild
urn:nabu:etcsl:2.1.7:6 · license: ETCSL ·
non-commercial. The gloss follows the standard rendering of
the flood image.
Piece by piece:
- šag4 — the heart
- {d}en-lil2-la2 — of Enlil
- gu2-bi nam-gi4 — overflowed its banks, a river’s image for a god’s feeling
A god’s heart in flood — the interior made a landscape. The line is read in 102’s chapter 17.