#sumerian units

[sumerianlanguage]

Hello, I wanna ask, what exactly measurement of "shekel" in Sumerian? The reason I asked the question is because of this passage on "Bilgamesh and Huwawa" poem

I did some googling but other than Israel currency, shekel is only appeared as measurement for weight like silver, and 30 shekels are more n less equal to 340 gr. But I don't think that measurement is ever used in liquid object like oil? (CMIIW) Also isn't 340 gr oil too much to be used only to wake up someone (but to be fair, Gilgamesh's chest was explicitly noted to be massive)? Or is that the weight of oil + cloth that Enkidu used? Or did that mean something different entirely?

Hello! The term "shekel" is a translation of the Sumerian unit ging 𒂆, which was 1/60 of a mina, and could be used for weight of any object (though silver is most common). The exact weight of a ging could vary, anywhere between about 8 and 12 grams. The phrasing in the original text is tug 30 ging ia "a cloth (of) 30 ging of oil," which means the amount of oil would convert to around 300 ml, between a cup and a cup and a half. To me that doesn't seem unreasonable for attempting to fully smother a demigod's chest in oil, not just to wake him up but to prepare him for his day - oiling of the body was a common practice, and, for example, is a key part of the "humanization" of Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Do note that the term ging can also refer to a separate unit of volume, which Halloran lists as about 0.3 cubic meters. This would convert out to about 2,378 gallons of oil, which is definitely not what's meant here.

[sumerianlanguage]

According to my knowledge, the Sumerians used double-hours and sexagesimal. A day was divided into twelve hours, each hour into sixty minutes, and each minute into sixty seconds.

The Sumerian word for hour is "Danna" (𒆜𒁍). Do you know what minutes and seconds were called in Sumerian?

Used a translator, there may be some grammatical or semantic problems. Please don't take it amiss.

Hello! From what I can find, a day (ud 𒌓) was divided into twelve hours, called danna 𒆜𒁍 (also written 𒁕𒈾). A danna was also a unit of distance, a bit less than 11 kilometers (6.7 miles), which was the amount of distance one could march in a danna (at a speed of 5.5 km/h, 3.4 mph).

However, this source on Mesopotamian measurements has the next smallest unit as an (Akkadian) geš, equaling 1/30 of a danna or four of our minutes. I can't find a source for what a geš would be in Sumerian though it may have been written with the signs MU.ESH 𒈬𒍑. But the paper in question (Kasprik & Barros 2020) isn't a NELC source and I can't find what source it even cites for geš. And I can't find any source for a unit of time smaller than a geš, corresponding to a second or certain number of seconds (but see below).

This system is made more complicated by the fact that often in Sumerian texts, especially early ones before the solidification of the danna time system, they would refer to units of time instead with units of volume measure, and dividing up a workday instead of a day. So a ging or "shekel" would refer to 1/60th of a workday, which Englund (1988) assumes is twelve hours, resulting in a ging of about twelve minutes. Smaller units of time would be fractions of a ging - so one of our seconds would be "1/720 ging". If you want a comprehensive and math-heavy analysis of this topic, I recommend Englund's article (though it requires Jstor access).

I hope that helps answer your question! For more on these units check out my Sumerian units tag and Sumerian time tag. And if anyone (maybe @mostlydeadlanguages?) knows of additional sources on Sumerian/Mesopotamian time units, let me know!

[sumerianlanguage]

I just stumbled upon this blog and I love it! I have a question from a completely noob point of view. I'd be interestest how you would translate the old biblical saying "Mene mene tekel upharsin" into sumerian. I've had some short conversations with an expert on that matter, but never got an actual translation. Thank you!

Hello! This is actually quite a complex question, due to the double meaning of the phrase. For some background, it is a quote from Daniel 5, a phrase that appears on a wall as an omen. The puzzle lies in its two interpretations, with the words acting as nouns or as verbs.

As nouns, the phrase means “mina, mina, shekel, half-mina”; both a mina and a shekel are units of money or weight. Both mina and shekel (1/60 of a mina) are derived originally from Mesopotamian units of measure, specifically from the equivalent Akkadian words manû and shiqlu (along with a talent, or kakkaru, equal to 60 mina). The Sumerian equivalents to talent, mina and shekel are gun, mana and ging or gin. So the translation for this phrase (with shurua “half”) in its literal sense would be mana mana ging mana-shurua.

However, interpreted as verbs (or, more precisely, participles), the sentence can be instead translated as “numbered, numbered, weighed, divided” (and thus the interpretation by Daniel as an omen of the imminent dissolution of Babylon). In this meaning, I’d translate the phrase as shita shita inla hala “(having been) numbered numbered weighed out (and) divided up”.

Puns and double-meanings like this are hard to translate across languages. But I hope that answers your question!