The

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-sha ...

sign É, is a common-use sign of the

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 t ...

, the ''

Epic of Gilgamesh The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poetry, epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, and is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. The literary history of Gilgamesh ...

,'' and other cuneiform texts (for example Hittite texts). its most common usage is for the

logogram In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as ...

"É", which in the

Akkadian language Akkadian (, Akkadian: )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218-280 is an extinct East Semitic language th ...

is ''bītu'', (for

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

: ''"house"''), (and why ''bit / pit'' is listed in the alphabetic usages.) Linguistically, it has the alphabetical usage in texts for ''bit'', ''pit'', ''pet'', in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In

Amarna letter EA 290 Amarna letter EA 290, titled: ''"Three Against One"'', is one of the two shorter letters, of six, from Abdi-Heba the governing man of Jerusalem. In the Jerusalem letters, Jerusalem is "Uru-Salem" ("City-Peace"). Amarna letter EA 290, like Amarna ...

for Bit^d NIN.URTA.

''Epic of Gilgamesh'' usage

The ''É'' sign usage in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' is as follows: (''bit'', 11 times, ''pet'', 1 time, ''pit'', 7 times, and É,64 times.

Notes

References

* Parpola, 1971. ''The Standard Babylonian

'', Parpola, Simo,

Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project is an international scholarly project aimed at collecting and publishing ancient Assyrian texts and studies based on them. Its headquarters are in Helsinki in Finland. State Archives of Assyria State Archives ...

, c 1997, Tablet I thru Tablet XII, Index of Names, Sign List.

External links

* Cuneiform signs {{Writingsystem-stub