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SUMERIAN

Language spoken by the inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia until sometime in the late 3rd or early 2nd millennium b.c.e., when it gave way to the Semitic Akkadian. Thereafter, scribes continued to employ Sumerian as a religious, learned language until the beginning of the present era. The world’s oldest written documents known thus far date from ca. 3100 and were found at ancient Uruk in southern Mesopotamia; although for the most part undeciphered, indications are that their language was Sumerian.

Progress in the analysis of the Sumerian language has been slow due to several factors. It is linguistically unrelated to any other known language, so comparative data are nonexistent. Early texts were extremely selective in their representation of the morphemes of the spoken language, being apparently composed primarily as aids to memory. Later texts, while more explicitly written, were produced by Akkadian-speaking scribes who had learned Sumerian in the schools and whose usage is, consequently, less trustworthy. Nevertheless, monolingual Sumerian texts can now be read with considerable understanding; and reliable editions of literary texts are being produced.

Linguistic investigation has been facilitated by several kinds of texts. Lexicography has benefited from lexical lists which provide Akkadian translations of many Sumerian words, and pronunciations are sometimes included, to the aid of phonology. Phonology has also profited, as well as morphology, from Sumerian texts written wholly in syllabic script (in contrast to the customary continuation of syllabic and logographic signs), although these texts are limited in number, relatively late, or not from Sumer proper. Initial decipherment of the language and subsequent study of syntax have been aided by bilinguals that contain Akkadian translations of connected Sumerian compositions. Both morphology and syntax have been assisted by grammatical texts with their elaborate principles of organization.

Nominal and verbal chains were formed in Sumerian by placing morphemes and words in a determined sequential order with limited internal modification. The main verbal chain occupied the final position in a clause. Some access to the ways in which Akkadian scribes understood and translated Sumerian verbal forms comes from two Akkadian terms employed in the Sumerian grammatical texts they produced, although these texts derive from the later Neo-Babylonian period. Sum. ḫamṭu (or ḫanṭu) means “quick” and indicates something like punctual Aktionsart; marû means “fat” or, by derivation, “slow” and indicates something like durative Aktionsart. Subjects of some ḫamṭu verbs were marked, whereas others and all subjects of marû verbs were not. There were likely dialectal differences in southern Mesopotamia during the period while Sumerian was in living use, but only two can thus far be certainly identified, a main dialect (eme-gir15) and a specialized dialect used in literary texts by women and lamentation priests, and possibly in other contexts (eme-sal).

Walter R. Bodine

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

SUMERIAN

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)