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THE ORIGIN AND PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SUMERIAN WRITING 29
containing S were first employed in Semitic words, contain a s which
hadbeen evolved from s'.
§27 bis Simplesyl!ables containing theemphaticletter 's, which belongs
apparentlyto theoriginal phoneticsystem, are ~ 1'sa' ,original!yemployed
as the unit of liquid and dry measure, ¡gI! 'sin> 'si, to send3, ~~
'sum >'su, to thresh. It is not at al! likely that Sumerian possessed
syl!ables containing the emphatic letters t and ¡:;. The Semites were
forced to employ for such syIlables those signs whose values most
nearly conformed to these sounds. For ta they wrote ~n(da); for
ti ag, employed also for ak
and a's. a~~fHu!Ju, poison, >utJ, em ployed also for atJ and itJ.
1. The permutation of sibilants in Semitic does not apply to the sibilants in
Sumerian. The point to be kept in mind is that, when the Semites changed
s> s, they also changed the Sumerian signs. For example the suffix for
his appears as ~~11(su) in the early period, but !(sú) or ~T(su) in the later
periodo
2. According to the grammarians ~a is composed of ~ pap and 1 dis,
= pap-desseku, CT. XII, 16 a, 16. The sound if- is proven by the loan-word !sil,
ibid.,17.
3. The original consonant!s is partly supported by the variant gin> gi, to
send.
4. The Sumerian valne ofa dug may have
the Semites employed for ti.
given rise to a value di which
5. Only in ~~11-me, 'thou art', pronounced ú-me, Gud. Cyl. A 6,13.
Emphatic
letters.
Origin of
simple
syllables
beginning
with
a vowel.