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Writing Semitic with Cuneiform Script. the Interaction of Sumerian and Akkadian Orthography in the Second Half of the Third Millennium Bc*

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Writing Semitic with Cuneiform Script. the Interaction of Sumerian and Akkadian Orthography in the Second Half of the Third Millennium Bc* WRITING SEMITIC WITH CUNEIFORM SCRIPT. THE INTERACTION OF SUMERIAN AND AKKADIAN ORTHOGRAPHY IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM BC* Theo J.H. Krispijn Introduction The oldest written examples of cuneiform script were found by Ger- man archaeologists on clay tablets from the Eanna temple complex in the ancient city of Uruk during excavations in the 1930s. These tablets exhibit some development in their use of script but, since the stratigraphy of this area is extremely complicated and confusing, scholars have had serious problems in dating the documents that are known. But Sürenha- gen (1999), after examining the original fijield notes of the excavators, has recently proposed a more balanced relative chronology for them. – Uruk V: numerical tablets ± 3400 BC – Uruk IVc–b: numerical tablets with logograms ± 3300 BC – Uruk IVa: a more developed script, incorporating logograms and pho- netic signs (phonograms), used for administrative and lexical texts ± 3200 BC – Uruk III(c): an even more developed script, following the canonization of lexical series. ± 3000 BC. Texts of this type have also been found at Jamdat Nasr, Tell Uqair, and possibly at Larsa. Versions of the canonized lexical series of Uruk III (see Englund & Nis- sen 1993) continued to be reproduced till the Early Old Babylonian period (± 1800 BC), so it is possible to read the earlier versions with the help of the later versions, where the script is more easily readable. Phonograms clarifying logograms that we are thus able to recognise can determine the language of these documents. Both lexical texts and administrative documents of the Uruk III period for the most part appear to have been * I am much indebted to Mervyn E. Richardson for improving the English of this paper and for some valuable suggestions concerning the paper itself. 182 theo j.h. krispijn composed in Sumerian, and any use of logograms for phonograms can be explained as a Sumerian rebus:1 – Logogram E2 (/hai/) “house” for the phonogram /ha/ – Logogram GI “reed” for the phonogram /gi/ “to return, to hand over” later written (šu) gi4 – Logogram ZU/SU “flesh” for the phonogram /su/ While we can be reasonably certain that cuneiform was used for Sumerian texts from the Uruk III period onwards, as is especially clear from literary texts from the Fara period (± 2600 BC) which have been handed down in later traditions, it is more difffijicult to establish the language of the texts from Uruk IVa. Only a few phonograms were used in this earlier stage of the script, leading some scholars to think that the language of these texts is also Sumerian while others have serious doubts about that idea.2 The question of the presence of Semitic elements in the cuneiform texts of the Uruk IV/III and subsequent Early Dynastic (ED) I/II Period (3000–2600 BC) is intriguing. Fifty words (14 from the Uruk period and 36 from the ED) have been proposed as Semitic loanwords and names in scholarly literature. But Sommerfeld (2006) has critically discussed all these assumed Semitic elements and concluded that the only loanword that can undoubtedly be regarded as a Semitic loanword is mana “half- kilogram”. Such diverging opinions among Assyriologists make it clear that we are in the middle of a lively discussion about the earliest evidence for Semitic writing. The ED III (2600–2400 BC) period gives a clearer picture concerning Semitic elements. Several Semitic loan words and Semitic (Early Akka- dian) names occur in texts from Fara (Šuruppak), Abū Ṣālābīkh (Kre- bernik 1998, 260–270) and Telloh (Ĝirsu) (Bauer 1998, 437).3 The influence 1 The conventions of the main text are: Bold face for Sumerian and italics for Akkadian phonograms, morphemes and lexemes. Capitals indicate a ‘sign name’, i.e., a translitera- tion of a sign without explicit phonemes that are arbitrarily chosen from all possible trans- literations of a sign. 2 Englund (1993, 80–81) assumes that the texts of the Uruk IVa render a language dif- ferent from Sumerian, but Krebernik (1994) thinks that the language of this period was already Sumerian. The sign AMA could support the Sumerian hypothesis. AMA is a picture of house inscribed with a star and can be interpreted as a depiction of a storageroom (ama5). The inscribed star AN must be read am6 as phonetic indicator for the logogram ama5, that served as phonogram for ama “mother”. 3 The important article by W. Sommerfeld (2010) came too late to use it properly for this article..
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