The

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

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 from ancient Mesopotamia. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian language, Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh (formerly read as Sumerian "Bilgames"), king of Uruk, some of ...

'' over hundreds of years, and the 1350 BC Amarna letters. 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, Eblaite, or Hittite. Th ...

ic (capital letter (

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

)) 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 ( ; )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 was an East Semitic language that is attested ...

"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)'') 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 that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

: ''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"

In the Amarna letters, 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's

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 Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, ''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 of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and studies based on them. Its headquarters are in Helsinki in Finland. 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: People and fictional characters * Claude (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Claude (surname), a list of people * Claude Callegari (1962–2021), English Arsenal supporter * Claude Debussy (1862–1918) ...

, 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 Amarna (; ) is an extensive ancient Egyptian archaeological site containing the ruins of Akhetaten, the capital city during the late Eighteenth Dynasty. The city was established in 1346 BC, built at the direction of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, and a ...

(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