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 ...

na sign is a common, multi-use sign, a syllabic for ''na'', and an alphabetic sign used for ''n'', or ''a''; it is common in both 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 ...

'' over hundreds of years, and the 1350 BC

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 ...

. In the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' it also has

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 n ...

ic (capital letter (

majuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

)) usage for NA. An example usage for ''NA'' in the Epic is for the spelling of ''NA.GAD'', (also '' LÚ.NA.GAD'', and the plural '' LÚ.NA.GAD. MEŠ''), for

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 ...

"nāqidu", ''"herdsman"''. The usage for ''NA'' in herdsman is only for 3 spellings. The commonness of cuneiform ''na'', in the top 25 used signs by Buccellati (Buccellati 1979), (2nd highest usage, exceeded by a: ''

a (cuneiform) The cuneiform sign 𒀀 ( DIŠ, DIŠ OVER DIŠ) for a, and in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' the sumerogram A, Akkadian for ''mû'', "water", which is used in the ''Gilgamesh flood myth'', Chapter XI of the Epic, or other passages. The sign is ...

'') is because of usage for the spelling of ''a-na'' (Akkadian language "ana") -, the common preposition spelling for

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

: ''to, for, by, of, at, etc.''. It is also a component for the Akkadian language preposition: ''i-na'' (''ina''), meaning: ''in, into, by, etc.''. The ''na'' sign usage from the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' is as follows: ''na''-(736 times), ''NA''-(24).

Variety forms of cuneiform "na"

Flickr - Nic's events - British Museum with Cory and Mary, 6 Sep 2007 - 203

In the

, EA 205, EA 364, etc., (see her

for a medium resolution, line 3 ''ARAD-ka a-na'', Amarna letter EA 364, EA 364) an alternate form of ''na'', replaces the left side of the sign with: 2-horizontals , and a small wedge above, with the vertical anchoring the right, -. For

Marduk-nadin-ahhe Marduk-nādin-aḫḫē, inscribed mdAMAR.UTU''-na-din-''MU, reigned 1095–1078 BC, was the sixth king of the Second Dynasty of Isin and the 4th Dynasty of Babylon.''Babylonian King List C'', line 6. He is best known for his restoration of the E ...

kudurru A kudurru was a type of stone document used as a boundary stone and as a record of land grants to vassals by the Kassites and later dynasties in ancient Babylonia between the 16th and 7th centuries BC. The original kudurru would typically be stor ...

at the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, ''na'' is constructed approximately as follows: 1-horizontal lies at the sign's left , followed by a large wedge, then the vertical, resulting in a sign approximately as follows: .

References

* Buccellati, Giorgio, (Ugarit-Forschungen 11, 1979). ''Comparative Graphemic Analysis of Old Babylonian and Western Akkadian'', pp. 95–100. * Moran, William L. 1987, 1992. ''The Amarna Letters.'' Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, 1992. 393 pages.(softcover, ) * 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, and Glossary-(pp. 119–145), 165 pages.(softcover, )-(Volume 1) *Ugarit Forschungen (Neukirchen-Vluyn). UF-11 (1979) honors

Claude Schaeffer Claude may refer to: __NOTOC__ People and fictional characters * Claude (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Claude (surname), a list of people * Claude Lorrain (c. 1600–1682), French landscape painter, draughtsman and etch ...

, with about 100 articles in 900 pages. pp 95, ff, "Comparative Graphemic Analysis of Old Babylonian and Western Akkadian", author Giorgio Buccellati, ( i.e. Ugarit and Amarna (letters), three others, Mari, OB, Royal letters, OB, non-Royal letters). File:MLC 1805.jpg, Line drawing with usage of ''na'' sign.
Used in lines 1, 2, and 4. Cuneiform signs