The Scribal Arts

Documenting my work on digitizing cuneiform, and all the random tangents it takes me on!

[thatlittleegyptologist]

[sumerianlanguage]

I was wondering if you knew of any taboo or 'in poor taste' names in Sumerian? For example you couldn't name a kid Judas or Lucifer today really even though the literal meaning of the name isn't negative. Would you be cursing your kid if you named them Huwawa?

What an interesting question! I don't really know of a great way to answer it, since there isn't a great resource out there on Sumerian onomastics generally.

That said, I doubt anyone would name a child Huwawa - in part because it's not really a "Sumerian" name. The w sound doesn't exist in Sumerian, and Huwawa's name is intended to sound foreign and/or onomatopoeic (like the bellowing of a monster).

If anyone has any further thoughts (or resources) on Sumerian onomastics, I'm always all ears!

[shafau]

So if that's the case (and apologies if this is a stupid question or I'm missing something obvious), then

a) how is the name written in Sumerian, if 'w' isn't a valid part of the language? Is there a method to render non-Sumerian loanwords/sounds in Sumerian cuneiform? (Kind of like katakana in modern Japanese, for example)

b) assuming 'w' has a unique symbol not used elsewhere, how do we know it maps to a 'w' sound? I would have assumed that came from comparison with later Akkadian variants of the story, but then wasn't the name more like 'Humbaba'? Or am I getting mixed up with something else?

I realise there's probably not an easy answer to this, so any attempt at an explanation is appreciated. It blows my mind sometimes that we can know as much as we do about a language so old!

[sumerianlanguage]

Not a stupid question at all! Any given name in Sumerian had several cuneiform spellings, and any given cuneiform sign can have several readings. The spelling corresponding to Huwawa is 𒄷𒉿𒉿. 𒄷 is hu here, while 𒉿 is usually listed as corresponding to the sound pi, though can also be read as ngeshtug ("ear", "to think"), bariga (a unit of measure), and, in this case, as wa. The name can thus be read several ways, including Huppipi (apparently the pronunciation in northern Mesopotamia, influencing the potential Hittite reading Hupipi or Huwiwi) and Hubaba (maybe source of Akkadian Humbaba), but we know that (southern) Sumerian pronounced it Huwawa based on subsequent Akkadian texts interpreting Sumerian versions of the myth. I recommend George 2003 pp. 144+ if you want all the details!

There was no standard way to write 'w' in Sumerian, and no standard way to render 'non-Sumerian' sounds, simply because Sumerians were inventing writing out of whole cloth - basically the short answer for any "why is cuneiform like this??" question. The choice of the 𒉿 pi sign may have been from northern Sumerian, or just arbitrary, as many comparable cuneiform choices were.

[namdubsar]

As far as I know, the usual spelling in Hittite is d^Ḫo-wa-wa, as we see here:

(KBo VI.1)

Hittite did have a W sound, and used the wa sign only for /wa/, never for /pi/, so this probably indicates a pronunciation like /xowawa/. (In Hittite, ḫu was always pronounced as ḫo.)

But, the next sign after the name here (in the two places where it survives; the first one is broken) is iš, which is probably a Hittite nominative case ending. And if the name actually ended with -a, we would expect the nominative ending to be -aš. A name ending in -aiš is odd. Not unheard of, but not super common either. That's why George interprets it as a logogram d^ḪU.WA.WA-iš, read as Ḫoppipiš /xoppipis/.

I don't find that especially convincing, though. Hittite had a different sign to write /pi/, and I'm not aware of any certain cases of the WA sign being read that way outside of heterograms. Personally, I think an -ai-stem noun Ḫowawaiš /xowawais/ is most likely.

As for the asker's original question, though, George notes that Huwawa was a fairly common personal name in the third millennium, so it seems there was no taboo around it! In fact, as best I can tell, Huwawa's gorgon-like face was often used as a sort of apotropaic symbol to ward away evil—people would put it on amulets and hang it over their doors and such—and being born with "the face of Huwawa" (IGI d^Ḫu-wa-wa, with huge eyes and a bulbous nose) was a good omen.

If you really want to curse your kid, name them something like "more beautiful than Inana" instead!

[parkchanwoohoo]

This is so funny. People never change

[patrochilles-or-bust]

EVERYONES PICKING ON ME BECAUSE I DONT HAVE THE NEW SHOES MOM I'M NOT POPULAR MOM AND ITS ALL YOUR FAULT!!

[parkchanwoohoo]

#this could be a literal text message lol#i don't think he's manipulating her lol just being a salty teenager

LITERALLY LMFAO "HIS dad works for MY dad but he looks BETTER than me" is an outraged cry from spoiled teens all throughout time all throughout the world

[thatlittleegyptologist]

Things a Serious Egyptologist shouldn’t laugh about:

The explanation of the nominal sentence marker -pw “Sometimes the -pw comes in a sandwich between two other words”

Having the various iterations of the verb “ii” “to come” recited at you by your Professor. “He has come” “She is coming” “They came together”

The line in Sinuhe where it translates as “He entered to them through their back passage”

The description of the snake in the Shipwrecked Sailor, whereby it is 120 cubits (54m), rears up in front, and was better than anything. 

Someone saying prostate instead of prostrate. 

That Egyptian god who has a rock for a head.

Pretty much most depictions of random gods from various religious texts

The story of Isis as a bird, shagging her dead husband after she made a penis out of gold because his original one got eaten by a fish.

The disappearance and reappearance of Tutankhamun’s penis

Late Period attempts at archaism 

The fact that there are 2 signs for the penis in hieroglyphs, and it makes a difference whether you use the one that is normal, or the one that’s “issuing fluid”

Never fully understanding why the same sign turns up in words that have nothing to do with penises.

The line in Gardiner’s grammar that states “Man bent over with stick. More senile than previous sign”

The text from Deir el Medina, where some guy had to take time off work to look after his mate’s cow because his mate was ill, but it was later discovered that the guy had been duped and his mate was just at home getting drunk.

The Urkunden’s poor drawings of various animal signs, which leave you confused as to which animal it is. You translate that strange animal blob as as “Abw” “Elephant” but it’s actually a Hippo.

Plus many more! 

[thatlittleegyptologist]

#well. I guess I am not a serious egyptologist #can’t stop laughing at someone’s handwriting being so bad that people think it’s entirely different hieroglyphics

pls feast your eyes upon Sethe’s Urkunden and weep:

the sign I’ve underllined in purple are two owls very close together. no I don’t know why that’s happening, thank you Kurt Sethe.

bro what *is* that? (if I remember rightly it’s an ox head but he didn’t draw ears or horns)

So many issues

[namdubsar]

This is still where we're at with cuneiform, sadly: your options for a text are either "hand-drawn copy of the signs" or "typeset transliteration". I'm currently writing about how a certain sign has been consistently mis-drawn in those hand copies for the last hundred years, and most people don't notice because they just work with the transliteration…

Part of my thesis work is building a system to make nicely-typeset editions, and I'm hoping it'll eventually catch on like these ones did for Egyptian.

Only time will tell…

[sumerianlanguage]

Hello!

How to translate "hurricane of life", "path of life", "journey of life".

By 'life' I mean biological life, living beings.

Hello! For "life" here I'd just use zi 𒍣 (as in Abzu zi kalamma "Abzu, life of the land").

"Hurricane" is a concept restricted to the Atlantic basin, and I don't know of a general word for "cyclone" (or if they understood storms to be cyclonic). I'd use maruru 𒈥𒋽 "tempest, floodstorm, deluge" to make maruruzi 𒈥𒋽𒍣 "tempest of life".

"Path" can be ngiri 𒄊 (which also means "foot"), or harraan 𒄯𒊏𒀭 "path, route". "Journey" more specifically is kaskal 𒆜, also "way, military campaign." All three can have -zi added to them in the same structure as above: ngirizi 𒄊𒍣 or harraanzi 𒄯𒊏𒀭𒍣 "path of life", kaskalzi 𒆜𒍣 "journey of life".

Do note that the genitive "of" doesn't appear after a vowel (like in zi) unless a subsequent vowel follows, in which case it appears as -k- e.g. harraanzika "on the path of life".

[namdubsar]

For something like "hurricane" I'm fond of dalḫamun, "huge storm, natural disaster", especially because it's sometimes written with a "Kreuzform" sign: four copies of the same sign meeting at the center like a cross. From the Hethitisches Zeichenlexikon:

I don't think the Kreuzform one was ever used as a generic noun for "storm", only as an epithet of the storm god, but that's mostly because it's a really awkward and unwieldy sign that doesn't fit in a normal line of text.

[namdubsar]

Oh, and I don't know why I didn't add this before, but—the name dalhamun comes from dal "to fly" + hamun "mutually opposed". As a result Halloran glosses it as "tornado" and "whirlpool" among others.

[nonporous]

[thatlittleegyptologist]

From the Sayings of Khakheperraseneb (18th Dynasty c.1400 BCE:

“Seni’s son Khakheperreseneb, called Ankhu. He says, `If only I had unknown utterances and extraordinary verses, in a new language that does not pass away, free from repetition, without a verse of worn-out speech spoken by the ancestors! I shall wring my body for what is in it, - a release of all my speech. For what is already said can only be repeated; what is said once has been said; this is no vain boast of the ancients’ speech that those who are later should find it good.’”

Inscribed on a writing tablet known as BM EA 5645.

Source

[sumerianlanguage]

Hello!

How to translate "hurricane of life", "path of life", "journey of life".

By 'life' I mean biological life, living beings.

Hello! For "life" here I'd just use zi 𒍣 (as in Abzu zi kalamma "Abzu, life of the land").

"Hurricane" is a concept restricted to the Atlantic basin, and I don't know of a general word for "cyclone" (or if they understood storms to be cyclonic). I'd use maruru 𒈥𒋽 "tempest, floodstorm, deluge" to make maruruzi 𒈥𒋽𒍣 "tempest of life".

"Path" can be ngiri 𒄊 (which also means "foot"), or harraan 𒄯𒊏𒀭 "path, route". "Journey" more specifically is kaskal 𒆜, also "way, military campaign." All three can have -zi added to them in the same structure as above: ngirizi 𒄊𒍣 or harraanzi 𒄯𒊏𒀭𒍣 "path of life", kaskalzi 𒆜𒍣 "journey of life".

Do note that the genitive "of" doesn't appear after a vowel (like in zi) unless a subsequent vowel follows, in which case it appears as -k- e.g. harraanzika "on the path of life".

[namdubsar]

For something like "hurricane" I'm fond of dalḫamun, "huge storm, natural disaster", especially because it's sometimes written with a "Kreuzform" sign: four copies of the same sign meeting at the center like a cross. From the Hethitisches Zeichenlexikon:

I don't think the Kreuzform one was ever used as a generic noun for "storm", only as an epithet of the storm god, but that's mostly because it's a really awkward and unwieldy sign that doesn't fit in a normal line of text.

[memories-of-ancients]

Ceremonial axe, Elamite, Igi-Halkid Dynasty, 1345-1305 BC

from The Louvre

[whollyunnecessary]

@sumerianlanguage what is he saying

[sumerianlanguage]

Love this axe, that's awesome! Unfortunately, it's in Elamite cuneiform, which I can't read - it's more like Akkadian cuneiform, so maybe an Akkadianist can help out?

[namdubsar]

ú m^un-taš d^GAL "I, Untash-Napirisha"

d^GAL (that is, the sign for "great" with the divine determinative) is read as the divine name Napiriša in Elamite: napir "god", riša "great". So this is a theophoric name, Untash-Napirisha. (Unfortunately, the meaning of untaš is unclear, since as far as I can tell it only appears in names.)

As a side note, I like this form of the AN sign. I've never seen it outside Elamite, though it might appear in some varieties of Akkadian as well—Labat lists it as a Neo-Assyrian form, but a non-standard one.

[babyfoxcollectionthings]

[pandariousgooch]

i never realized cuneiform was made with the corner of a cuboid tool, i thought the wedge shapes were carved such that you would press straight down with the tool at a 90° angle to the clay

[kitchenwitchupinthisbitch]

Wow! My mind is super into this new information

[ferret-on-pancakes]

[mostlydeadlanguages]

Since I was asked: the two signs being repeated are SAL (munus, woman) and GI/GE (qanû, reed), in a Neo-Assyrian script. Probably they’re just two random signs for practice. However, there is a slight possibility that this is a Fantastic Four reference (“Mrs. Reed” = Sue Storm?).

The video is at least a few years old, so who knows. But square-based chopsticks are indeed how I was taught to write cuneiform, too!

[namdubsar]

Chopsticks are unironically a really good way to practice cuneiform! They’re generally much longer than an ancient stylus would be, but the rectangular end is a perfect shape.

Notably, there’s some debate in the Assyriological community about whether the horizontal and vertical wedges were written with different edges of the stylus (as shown here) or with the same edge (by rotating it 90 degrees). I’ve always found it easier to use different edges, but Michele Cammarosano argues (based on the patterns visible on the surface of the clay) that they were universally made with the same edge in Mesopotamia, and probably also in Anatolia.

[namdubsar]

#Enthusiast here asking: have the determined shape of tool now? #I recall years ago there being debate on if it was a square or triangle shape.

The most recent in-depth analysis I know of is Cammarosano's 2014 "The Cuneiform Stylus", which is freely available here. The short answer is, it's hard to be sure, because reed styli just don't survive very well archaeologically. But we have some bone and metal styli that did survive (these were popular in Anatolia, where reeds aren't as plentiful), and those have rectangular or trapezoidal ends.

Wedges written with a reed stylus often show a curved impression on one side (what Cammarosano calls "the reed pattern"), which suggests part of the outer surface of the reed was involved, but this could be compatible with either a triangular or a rectangular end. Either way, you'd get an approximately 90-degree angle, with one side curved.

The internal dimensions of the wedges can also be measured to figure out what sort of angle they were written with. Apparently out of these six designs, tip "C" most closely matched actual ancient wedges. (But since only one corner left an impression, this also doesn't tell us if it was a triangle or rectangle.)

So in theory, you could file down the end of a chopstick (or cut a reed stylus with a knife) to get this angle for more authenticity. But chopsticks are just so readily available that I default to them without modification.

[valarhalla]

YMCA in Akkadian (Ancient Babylonian), as written by Gilgamesh's exasperated tourism minister trying to attract more gay guys to Uruk to keep Gil distracted from politics:

.

Eṭlū!- Young men!

Lā tuštamarraṣā- Do not, do not be troubled!

Aqabbi, eṭlū!- I said, young men!

Lā lā taṣallalā- Do not, do not lie down!

Aqabbi, eṭlū!- I said young men!

Šunu ina ālim- You are in a town,

Bēt bēt šikārim ḫanbā- Where taverns sprout luxuriously,

Eṭlū!- Young men!

Ina ālim alkā- Go to the city,

Aqabbi, eṭlū!- I said young men!

Bēt kaspī ul tīšâ- When you do not have money,

Annikīam tuššabā- Here you can dwell,

Bēt napṭirim nīšu- We have guest-houses,

Itti awīlī umtallâ- They are filled with men….

.

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

Wašābum ṭāb ina - The living is good in,

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K!

Ziquratum elâ! Purattum amrā!- Climb up the ziggurat! See the euphrates!

Šikārum ṭābum šitâ!- Drink fine beer!

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

Wašābum ṭāb ina - The living is good in,

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K!

Amuḫḫūni šaqû! Ziqnūni ītebbū! - Our walls are high! Our beards are shiny!

Nuppušātunu!- You are allowed to breathe [relax]

.

Eṭlū!- Young men!

Eṭlū šimeanni!- Young men listen to me!

Aqabbi, eṭlū! Agana šimeanni!- Young men! Come on, listen!

Aiālam terrišāšu- You desire assistance,

Shū ali īde- This I know for certain!

Šārqum wērum ul ninaddinkunūti- We will not sell you poor copper,

Eṭlū! Ālum ša Uruk bani- Young men! The city of Uruk is beautiful!

Aqabbi eṭlū! Bālātka tezzibši!- I said young man! Leave your pride behind!

Nušallakkunūti- We cause you to go,

Ina Uruk alkā!- Go to Uruk!

Ūmum anniam iseddūkunūti- Today they will help you…

.

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

Wašābum ṭāb ina - The living is good in,

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K!

Šarrum šitpiṣā! Ittmalûšu ṣālā! - Wrestle the king! Fight with him!

Ittīšu mekkê mēlilā!- Play ball with him!

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

Wašābum ṭāb ina - The living is good in,

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K!

Ziquratum elâ! Purattum amrā!- Climb up the ziggurat! See the euphrates!

Šikārum ṭābum šitâ!- Drink fine beer!

.

Eṭlū! Bilītkunu īde! - Young men! I know your burdens

Amtaraṣ! Ina šinigī- I was unwell, in my village,

Ātanaḫ! Erēšum ezzēr- I was tired, I hated plowing,

Awīlum ana yâšim iṭeḫḫe- A man to me approached,

Inūšu! Awātum awânim- Then! Words were said to me,

Šumašu, Sîn-lēqi-unninni- His name was Sîn-lēqi-unninni!

Ina Uruk alkā! Iqabbi ana yâšim- Go to Uruk! He told me,

Ina Uruk awīlī ūterrešū- In Uruk men are needed…

.

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

Wašābum ṭāb ina - The living is good in,

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K!

Ziquratum elâ! Purattum amrā!- Climb up the ziggurat! See the euphrates!

Šikārum ṭābum šitâ!- Drink fine beer!

.

Eṭlū!- Young men!

Addāniqa tallkānim- Please come

Aqabbi, eṭlū!- I said, young men!

Inam anniam ezêršu- I hate this job…

Aqabbi, eṭlū!- I said, young men!

Anāku ānḫāku - I’m so tired….

Bēt bēt šikārim ḫanbā- Where taverns sprout luxuriously,

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

(Šarrum lillam ina - The king is an idiot in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K…)

Ao3 link

[arlechinav-blog]

Watch me make this into a trance chant.

[babyfoxcollectionthings]

[pandariousgooch]

i never realized cuneiform was made with the corner of a cuboid tool, i thought the wedge shapes were carved such that you would press straight down with the tool at a 90° angle to the clay

[kitchenwitchupinthisbitch]

Wow! My mind is super into this new information

[ferret-on-pancakes]

[mostlydeadlanguages]

Since I was asked: the two signs being repeated are SAL (munus, woman) and GI/GE (qanû, reed), in a Neo-Assyrian script. Probably they’re just two random signs for practice. However, there is a slight possibility that this is a Fantastic Four reference (“Mrs. Reed” = Sue Storm?).

The video is at least a few years old, so who knows. But square-based chopsticks are indeed how I was taught to write cuneiform, too!

[namdubsar]

Chopsticks are unironically a really good way to practice cuneiform! They're generally much longer than an ancient stylus would be, but the rectangular end is a perfect shape.

Notably, there's some debate in the Assyriological community about whether the horizontal and vertical wedges were written with different edges of the stylus (as shown here) or with the same edge (by rotating it 90 degrees). I've always found it easier to use different edges, but Michele Cammarosano argues (based on the patterns visible on the surface of the clay) that they were universally made with the same edge in Mesopotamia, and probably also in Anatolia.

[sumerianlanguage]

i feel like i didn't phrase my question quite right the first time, so to be more specific: did average people use base 60 in everyday life, or was it something only used by scribes for accounting?

Oh, I understand! (Original reply here.) Yes, people in Mesopotamia used base 6x10 in regular life, there was no "other" system recorded anywhere. Use of base 10, in particular, is nowhere near as universal as modern standardized systems spread by European colonial powers would make it seem.

That said, schooling (for non-scribes) wasn't regularized, so it's unlikely most people would (or would have need to) count to numbers beyond a certain threshold. My guess is most people would know up to shar = 3,600 since it's so round, though that's just a gut feeling.

[namdubsar]

Though also remember, numbers less than 60 were made up of tens and ones. The base-60 number system was for very big (>60) or very small (<1) numbers, and at least in Akkadian, both the signs and the words for the numbers in between were base-10: išten "one" + ešeret "ten" = išteššeret "eleven", šina "two" + ešeret "ten" = šinšeret "twelve", etc.

You'd write (though not say!) "100" as "1×60+30", but most people would never need to work with hundreds of things. It's sort of like how you generally wouldn't say "100 teaspoons of water" in a recipe, you'd say "two cups". Similarly, an ancient Mesopotamian would generally switch units when talking about so many things, in order to keep the numbers reasonable.

Just like today, it's the accountants and mathematicians who needed the fancy big numbers!

[namdubsar]

And then you have the Hittites, who used the base-60 symbols, but crowbarred them into a base-10 system—they came up with a different way of writing 60 that didn't look like a 1, and new symbols for 100, 1k, 10k, and 100k, so they wouldn't have to use 60 or 3600 as units.

We have no idea how they actually pronounced any of these, but they were willing to go to great extents to avoid the base 60 elements, so what they wrote probably corresponded pretty well to how they said them out loud.

[sumerianlanguage]

i feel like i didn't phrase my question quite right the first time, so to be more specific: did average people use base 60 in everyday life, or was it something only used by scribes for accounting?

Oh, I understand! (Original reply here.) Yes, people in Mesopotamia used base 6x10 in regular life, there was no "other" system recorded anywhere. Use of base 10, in particular, is nowhere near as universal as modern standardized systems spread by European colonial powers would make it seem.

That said, schooling (for non-scribes) wasn't regularized, so it's unlikely most people would (or would have need to) count to numbers beyond a certain threshold. My guess is most people would know up to shar = 3,600 since it's so round, though that's just a gut feeling.

[namdubsar]

Though also remember, numbers less than 60 were made up of tens and ones. The base-60 number system was for very big (>60) or very small (<1) numbers, and at least in Akkadian, both the signs and the words for the numbers in between were base-10: išten "one" + ešeret "ten" = išteššeret "eleven", šina "two" + ešeret "ten" = šinšeret "twelve", etc.

You'd write (though not say!) "100" as "1×60+30", but most people would never need to work with hundreds of things. It's sort of like how you generally wouldn't say "100 teaspoons of water" in a recipe, you'd say "two cups". Similarly, an ancient Mesopotamian would generally switch units when talking about so many things, in order to keep the numbers reasonable.

Just like today, it's the accountants and mathematicians who needed the fancy big numbers!

[sumerianlanguage]

I’m looking for words to assemble into something that means “Built on memories/soul” or “created with memory/soul as a foundation”. Working on a story where a soul is trapped in stone and the stone is hidden, and an alternate universe begins to sort of crystallize around that stone and form itself based on the memories of the trapped soul.

Hi there! There isn't a great exact term for "memory", see this post for more, though here I might use mengar "remembrance", which seems close enough. I most often translate "soul" as zi "breath".

There also isn't a great translation of "built" without a full sentence - ankimengara dim "I built the universe (anki) from remembrance". The easiest would be to use "of remembrance" -mengara (or "of soul" -zi) as a genitive attached to a noun, the thing that's made of it - like how I used ankimengara "universe of remembrance". Using temen "foundation", we could make temenmengarada "with a foundation (made) of remembrance" or temenzida "with a foundation (made) of soul(s)", though again these are sort of "floating phrases" without context.

I hope one of these works for you! Let me know if there's a longer "frame sentence" that might help me nail down the phrase.

[namdubsar]

Hittite might have what you need here!

The Hittites, like a lot of Ancient Near Eastern cultures, did a lot with cult statues: specially-prepared statues that their gods would literally be summoned into, to be fed and bathed and entertained. Usually this was an actual statue, but sometimes it could be more abstract art, like a sun-disc for the sun god.

And sometimes, instead of a statue, it was a specially-carved monolith called a huwasi. From the start of the New Kingdom onwards they used two Sumerian words to write this term: ZI.KIN, literally "soul object" (sometimes with a determinative NA₄ "stone"). This was also a play on the Akkadian root for "to inhabit", S-K-N, since the god inhabits the monolith.

I don't believe this term was ever used in actual Sumerian, but if you want a term for a soul bound into a physical object, Hittite has you covered—with a bilingual pun, no less!

[thatlittleegyptologist]

Random question: what is the Ancient Egyptian word for hyena and how do you pronounce it/spell it out in English?

There isn't one, really. There are words we think *might* be hyena, but since the Egyptians would have only very rarely encountered them. All we have is:

HT.t

As always, there isn't a pronunciation in English. You can verbalise the transliteration in a number of ways by adding vowels back in. This would be something akin to Hetchet or Hatchet or Hutchet, or Hutchat, Hetchut, Hetchat etc etc

[namdubsar]

In Coptic we see ϩⲉⲓϯ (Fayyumic), ϩⲟⲉⲓⲧⲉ (Sahidic), ϩⲁⲓⲧⲉ (Lycopolitan), ϩⲱⲓϯ (Bohairic), so we can make a guess at the Middle Egyptian vocalization—I'm not great at this step, but something like ḥāiṯət perhaps? So very approximately "HIGH-chet" (/ħa:j.tʃʰət/).

But this sort of uncertainty is why most Egyptologists don't bother with reconstructed vowels and just use transliterations of the consonants.

[namdubsar]

Slides from the Hittite Instructions to Temple Officials, late 1300s BCE

[thatlittleegyptologist]

sorry, i'm confused and have no one else to clarify my egyptian questions. is there a semantic difference in meaning between the direct genitive and indirect genitive? i know they're often translated the same, but?

*looks at the clock* 11:19pm on a Saturday night. Yeah sure, lets do grammar right now.

There is no semantic difference in meaning between the direct and indirect genitive in Middle Egyptian. They're translated the same because they are both representative of two nouns where one takes possession of the other.

The difference occurs in the way they're written. For the direct genitive, it is two nouns together, not separated by an intervening word. This usually occurs in set phrases, titles and the like (often with honorific transposition), so: nb imAx mr pr 'possessor of imAx-status' or sA-nsw 'prince' (lit. son of the king). If one of the nouns is to be described with an adjective, then that adjective will come after both nouns.

For the indirect genitive the two nouns are split by the genitive 'n(y)'** or 'of' (or variants depending on gender or number of people speaking) which is literally referred to as the indirect gentive when used this way. So nsw n kmt 'King of Egypt' or wrw nw AbDw 'great ones of Abydos' are good examples of the indirect genitive in action. The indirect genitive can also be split using an adjective, so: inw nb nfr n sxt 'all good products of the countryside'.

** n(y) is almost never written out with the 'y' because it isn't in the Egyptian, but it's important to note that while visually it isn't distinct from the preposition 'n', it is gramatically distinct and should be treated as such.

[namdubsar]

This is beyond my expertise in Egyptian, but many Afro-Asiatic languages have this same distinction between direct and indirect genitives, and generally, the difference is a lot like "can" vs "is able to" in English.

Fundamentally, "she can do it" and "she is able to do it" mean the same thing. "Is able to" is a few syllables longer, so we tend to default to the shorter one; but, if someone decided to use the longer one for some reason, nobody would really bat an eye. They're both perfectly valid ways to say some action is possible.

But, the shorter one also has some restrictions on how it can be used. We can't say *"she will can do it" to mean "she isn't capable of it now but will be capable in the future". We can say "she will be able to do it" to get that meaning.

Well, same with the direct and indirect genitives! The direct genitive is shorter and often more convenient—in Egyptian, there's not a huge difference in writing, but we know direct genitives glommed together into a single big word while indirect genitives kept the stress on each word individually—but it has limitations on how it can be used.

In Akkadian at least (not sure about Egyptian), you can't have multiple nouns with the same possessor in the direct genitive construction, so for something like "the lord's house and lands" or "the king's gold and silver", you need an indirect genitive. And there are limits on where adjectives can go in a direct genitive construction; an indirect genitive has no limits there, and you can put the adjectives exactly where you want them for the right shade of meaning.

So, they mean the same thing; one of them is shorter, but has some limits on how it can be used syntactically, the other is longer but doesn't have those limits, so there are reasons to use them both.

Hope this helps!

( @aphemorpha )