Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

indicate that Enmerkar seeks neither the inhabitants of the city themselves, nor the
destruction of the city, but rather simply the material wealth accumulated in Aratta. The
entire passage is built up around the grapheme NAM which occurs in the *XP nam bi-√
construction, the compound verb nam-√ku 5 “to curse,” and an *XP nam bi-√
construction in which the cohortative prefix, *ga-, also occurs. 35 Note as well that,
although not a single progressive/imperfective (marû) verbal root occurs in the entire
passage, the temporal reference is to the future, so I have translated the modal forms as if
they were imperfective so as to capture the temporal reference as well as its presumably
modal associations. The only exception is the verb in line 117, which I interpret as
equivalent to *na- plus perfective, yielding the assertive rather than prohibitive meaning
in that line. Although one might be tempted to justify the differential treatment on the
basis of the syllable closing grapheme in line 117, since one would have expected the
orthographic sequence si.ge.en rather than si.ig.en had the root been in the
progressive/imperfective (marû) aspect, the best evidence for the differential
interpretation of line 117 as opposed to the other *bi-√ prefix lines is the variation in the
pronominal agreement in the *bi-√ prefix verbs. Whereas the verb in line 117 shows *-n-,
the *bi-√ prefix verbs elsewhere in the passage—lines 116, 118 and 120 as well as 115,
which should probably be assimilated to the *bi-√ prefix verbs in this passage—have *-b-
as the preverbal pronominal agreement marker.
35 There is a great deal of confusion of ga.nam and nam.ga evident in the text artifactual record, so the proper
interpretation of line 120 remains uncertain.
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