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Sumerogram
A Sumerogram is the use of a Sumerian cuneiform character or group of characters as an ideogram or logogram rather than a syllabogram in the graphic representation of a language other than Sumerian, such as Akkadian or Hittite. Sumerograms are normally transliterated in majuscule letters, with dots separating the signs. In the same way, a written Akkadian word that is used ideographically to represent a language other than Akkadian (such as Hittite) is known as an ''Akkadogram''. This type of logogram characterized, to a greater or lesser extent, every adaptation of the original Mesopotamian cuneiform system to a language other than Sumerian. The frequency and intensity of their use varied depending on period, style, and genre. The name of the cuneiform sign written in majuscule letters is a modern Assyriological convention. Most signs have a number of possible Sumerian sound values. The readers of Assyrian or Hittite texts using these Sumerograms would not necessarily have been ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sumerian Language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer. It is one of the oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 3000 BC. It is accepted to be a local language isolate and to have been spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, in the area that is modern-day Iraq. Akkadian, a Semitic language, gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language in the area around 2000 BC (the exact date is debated), but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Akkadian-speaking Mesopotamian states such as Assyria and Babylonia until the 1st century AD. Thereafter it seems to have fallen into obscurity until the 19th century, when Assyriologists began deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions and excavated tablets that had been left by its speakers. Stages The history of written Sumerian can be divided into several periods: *Archaic Sumerian – 31st–26th century BC *Old or Classical Sumerian – 26th–23rd century BC *Neo-Sumerian – 23rd–21s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dingir
''Dingir'' (, usually transliterated DIĜIR, ) is a Sumerian word for "god" or "goddess". Its cuneiform sign is most commonly employed as the determinative for religious names and related concepts, in which case it is not pronounced and is conventionally transliterated as a superscript "d" as in e.g. dInanna. The cuneiform sign by itself was originally an ideogram for the Sumerian word ''an'' ("sky" or "heaven");Hayes, 2000 its use was then extended to a logogram for the word ''diĝir'' ("god" or "goddess")Edzard, 2003 and the supreme deity of the Sumerian pantheon ''An'', and a phonogram for the syllable . Akkadian took over all these uses and added to them a logographic reading for the native '' ilum'' and from that a syllabic reading of . In Hittite orthography, the syllabic value of the sign was again only ''an''. The concept of "divinity" in Sumerian is closely associated with the heavens, as is evident from the fact that the cuneiform sign doubles as the ideogram f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. The characters have Japanese pronunciation, pronunciations; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After World War II, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as shinjitai, by a process similar to China's simplified Chinese characters, simplification efforts, with the intention to increase literacy among the common folk. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Determinative
A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may derive historically from glyphs for real words, and functionally they resemble classifiers in East Asian and sign languages. For example, Egyptian hieroglyphic determinatives include symbols for divinities, people, parts of the body, animals, plants, and books/abstract ideas, which helped in reading, but none of which were pronounced. Cuneiform In cuneiform texts of Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite languages, many nouns are preceded or followed by a Sumerian word acting as a determinative; this specifies that the associated word belongs to a particular semantic group.Edzard, 2003 These determinatives were not pronounced. In transliterations of Sumerian, the determinatives are written in superscript in lower case. Whether a given sign ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hittite Cuneiform
Hittite cuneiform is the implementation of cuneiform script used in writing the Hittite language. The surviving corpus of Hittite texts is preserved in cuneiform on clay tablets dating to the 2nd millennium BC (roughly spanning the 17th to 12th centuries BC). Hittite orthography was directly adapted from Old Babylonian cuneiform. What is presented below is Old Akkadian cuneiform, so most of the characters shown here are not, in fact, those used in Hittite texts. For examples of actual Hittite cuneiform, see The Hittite Grammar Homepage or other similarly reputable sources. The ''Hethitisches Zeichenlexikon'' ("Hittite Sign List" commonly referred to as ''HZL'') of Rüster and Neu lists 375 cuneiform signs used in Hittite documents (11 of them only appearing in Hurrian and Hattic glosses), compared to some 600 signs in use in Old Assyrian. About half of the signs have syllabic values, the remaining are used as ideograms or logograms to represent the entire word—much as the char ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NIN (cuneiform)
The Sumerian word NIN (from the Akkadian pronunciation of the sign EREŠ)( 𒎏) was used to denote a queen or a priestess, and is often translated as "lady". Other translations include "queen", "mistress", "proprietress", and "lord".J A Halloran LexiconRetrieved 2012-06-07 & Many goddesses are called NIN, such as D NIN.GAL ("great lady"), D É.NIN.GAL ("lady of the great temple"), D EREŠ.KI.GAL, and D NIN.TI. The compound form NIN.DINGIR ("divine lady" or "lady of god"), from the Akkadian ''entu'', denotes a priestess. In writing NIN originated as a ligature of the cuneiform glyphs of MUNUS () and TÚG (); the NIN sign was written as MUNUS.TÚG () in archaic cuneiform, notably in the Codex Hammurabi. The syllable ''nin'', on the other hand, was written as MUNUS.KA () in Assyrian cuneiform. MUNUS.KU = NIN9 () means "sister". File:MUNUS-SAL-sinnishtu Cuneiform.svg, Basic cuneiform MUNUS sign ("woman") File:TUG-subatu-ku Cuneiform.svg, Basic cuneiform TÚG sign (sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lady Of The Lions
NIN-UR.MAH.MEŠ, named the ''"Lady" of the Lions'', was the author of two letters to the pharaoh, the King of Ancient Egypt, in the 1350–1335 BC Amarna letters correspondence. Her name is a representation of the original written script characters of Babylonian '' 'Sumerograms' '', " NIN- + UR.MAH + (plural: MEŠ)", and means, "woman–lion–plural", namely: ''"Lady (of the) Lions".'' (See: NIN for "lady"). The Amarna letters are mostly written in Akkadian cuneiform, with local words/phrases/etc due to various city-states or countries. The name, and location of her city/city-state is unknown(?). It is today assumed to be Beit Shemesh. The two Amarna letters The two letters by the 'Queen Mother', (of her unnamed location), are both minimally short and concise EA letters (26 lines and 19 lines) and are topically about the takeover of regional cities, by the attacking bands of people: the Hapiru, ( EA for 'el Amarna'). EA 273: ''"From a queen mother"'' :Say to the kin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amarna Letters
The Amarna letters (; sometimes referred to as the Amarna correspondence or Amarna tablets, and cited with the abbreviation EA, for "El Amarna") are an archive, written on clay tablets, primarily consisting of diplomatic correspondence between the Ancient Egypt, Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru kingdom, Amurru, or neighboring kingdom leaders, during the New Kingdom, spanning a period of no more than thirty years between c. 1360–1332 BC (see Amarna letters#Chronology, here for dates).Moran, p.xxxiv The letters were found in Upper Egypt at el-Amarna, the modern name for the ancient Egyptian capital of ''Akhetaten'', founded by pharaoh Akhenaten (1350s–1330s BC) during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. The Amarna letters are unusual in Egyptological research, because they are written not in the language of ancient Egypt, but in cuneiform, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia. Most are in a variety of Akkadian language, Akkadian sometim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurunta
Kurunta (Cuneiform: ) was younger son of the early 13th century BC Hittite king Muwatalli II and cousin of Tudhaliya IV. Kurunta was thereby a Hittite prince and king of Tarhuntassa country. It has been suggested that he may have captured the Hittite capital for a very short time during the reign of the Hittite king Tuthaliya IV and declared himself a great king. Name His Luwian name ''Kurunta'' was after one of the patron gods in the Hittite pantheon. As is customary for late Hittite princes, the Kurunta had also a Hurrian name ''Ulmi-Teššup'' (spelled also''Ulmi-Teshup"''). The names of the gods and the monarchs are derived from a Proto-Indo-European root ''*ker-'', meaning 'head', 'horn'. In the Anatolian branch, the root originated Hittite ''kara=war-'' and Cuneiform Luwian ''zarwaniya'' ('pertaining to horn'). Life Most of the information about Kurunta is known from two treaties concluded between Hittite state and kingdom of Tarhuntassa. His name is also mentioned ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marduk
Marduk (Cuneiform: dAMAR.UTU; Sumerian: ''amar utu.k'' "calf of the sun; solar calf"; ) was a god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon. When Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi (18th century BC), Marduk slowly started to rise to the position of the head of the Babylonian pantheon, a position he fully acquired by the second half of the second millennium BCE. In the city of Babylon, Marduk was worshipped in the temple Esagila. Marduk is associated with the divine weapon Imhullu. His symbolic animal and servant, whom Marduk once vanquished, is the dragon Mušḫuššu. "Marduk" is the Babylonian form of his name. The name ''Marduk'' was probably pronounced ''Marutuk''. The etymology of the name ''Marduk'' is conjectured as derived from ''amar-Utu'' ("immortal son of Utu" or "bull calf of the sun god Utu"). The origin of Marduk's name may reflect an earlier genealogy, or have had cultural ties to the anc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions (Latin: ) which form its signs. Cuneiform was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system. Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian. Akkadian texts are attested from the 24th century BC onward and make up the bulk of the cuneiform record. Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language in the early second millennium BC. The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian. The Old Persian and Ugaritic alphabets feature cuneiform-style signs; however, they are unrelated to the cuneiform lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assyriology
Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , '' -logia'') is the archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic study of Assyria and the rest of ancient Mesopotamia (a region that encompassed what is now modern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and northwestern and southwestern Iran) and of the related cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers Sumer, the early Sumero-Akkadian city-states, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic speaking states of Assyria, Babylonia and the Sealand Dynasty, the migrant foreign dynasties of southern Mesopotamia, including the Gutians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Suteans and Chaldeans. The large number of cuneiform clay tablets preserved by these Sumero-Akkadian and Assyro-Babylonian cultures provide an extremely large resource for the study of the period. The region's (and indeed the world's) first cities and city-states like Ur are archaeologically invaluable for studying the growth of urbaniza ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
